Image courtesy of www.Lavenderluz.com
Dear Reader: I first became interested in open adoption in 1985 when, in my clinical practice, I worked with two little guys adopted from foster care. These boys, ages 7 and 8, were tormented by unanswered questions about their first mother, “Susie,” who suffered from mental illness and drug addiction.
Susie’s parental rights had been involuntarily terminated due to her abusive neglect of her young sons. A loving couple had recently adopted the boys, yet the kids continued to struggle; hence, their referral for psychotherapy with me, an adoption specialist. The boys could not understand why they could have no contact whatsoever with Susie, as they worried endlessly about whether or not she was still alive, or if they would ever see her again. Listening to my young clients, I too wondered why it would be so awful for them to at the very least be able to contact Susie by mail.
Bewildered and curious myself, I looked at the adoption literature at the time. I read a lot of beliefs about how secrecy was necessary. But I found little if any research data to support these beliefs.
Thus began my two decade long study of families living with open adoptions. In 1988 I identified 22 families who had just adopted an infant in open adoptions, and I have re-inteviewed these families every seven years since then in order to find out what open adoption is like, from the perspective of those who are living in it. The infants in that study are now young adults, able to tell me their stories in their own words. The research findings are the basis for the “Myths and Facts” below.
MYTH: When adoptive parents to give their child’s biological parents their home address, they set themselves up for unwanted intrusion.
REALITY: While in real life anything can happen, in the vast majority of open adoptions unwanted intrusions are not a problem. The first step in making an open adoption work is for the biological and adoptive parents to get high quality pre-adoption education and counseling, to help them clarify their respective hopes, expectation, fears and anxieties, and communicate these each other as they develop an open adoption agreement that works for them. No one size fits all.
Part of an effective open adoption plan includes a clearly spelled out mechanism for re-negotiating the plan collaboratively as the participants’ needs change.
MYTH: The best reason to do an open adoption, as opposed to a closed one, is to get a baby faster.
REALITY: Open adoption is for the child. The child’s needs come first, over the adults’ needs, as the child is the most vulnerable member of the extended family formed by adoption.
The most compelling reason for open adoption is that humans need access to information about themselves. An adopted person has the same right to access to his or her genetic, cultural and ethnic heritage as anyone else. This information can be lifesaving now that we know how important genes are in cancer and other life threatening illnesses. The health information available at the time the adoption is finalized is incomplete, as more information inevitable evolves in the birth family as time passes.
In addition, we all need human connection and identity. When we are cut off from people who are emotionally important to us, we experience pain. As one adoptee put it, “The more love in my life, the richer I am.”
MYTH: Children raised in open adoptions are bound to be confused about who their “real” parents are. The birth parents will have trouble letting go of the child. The adoptive parents won’t feel that they are free to parent the child.
REALITY: There is no research evidence to support these myths. In fact, there is a solid body of research showing that the opposites are true. The children of open adoption know who their parents are. They can understand adoption better because there are fewer secrets and cut offs. The birth parents are comforted knowing that their child is okay. The adoptive parents feel empowered by their ability to answer their child’s questions, by knowing their child’s birth family.
MYTH: Expectant biological parents who are thinking about making an open adoption plan for their unborn baby choose open adoption to meet their own needs, not the child’s.
REALITY: Many people hold brutally negative views of birth parents. We say things such as, “I could never give up my own flesh and blood” and “the birth parents didn’t want this child.” Yet the vast majority of birth parents terminate their parental rights reluctantly, with great pain and ambivalence. Those who terminate voluntarily do so because they deeply believe that they are unable to parent this child at this time in their lives, and that their child deserves what they are unable to provide.
Birth parents may recognize that their child will have questions that only the birth parent can answer; they recognize that in giving birth they take on certain responsibilities that no one else can fulfill. One of those responsibilities is to be available to their child, if the child needs that, and to keep a distance, if that’s what the child needs.
Given their great loss and their wish for their child to be safe and well cared for, birth parents do not want to hurt the adoptive family.
MYTH: Most adoptive parents end up regretting having openness in their adoption, wishing for less rather than more contact with their child’s birth family.
REALITY: Actually, according to research, some adoptive parents may enter open adoption with trepidation, somewhat anxious about the unknown that lies ahead. As time passes, however, for most adoptive parents, their anxieties are allayed by the reality of their experience. Over time, nothing untoward happens. They develop warm, respectful relationships with the birth parents and see that the birth parents give them their blessing to parent the child and want only the best for the adoptive family. Adoptive parents who may have entered open adoption timidly come to value openness.
Rather than wishing for less contact, when adoptive parents are uncomfortable with the contact they have, usually it’s because they wish for more, rather than less, contact with the child’s birth family.
MYTH: An open adoption may work out all right when the child is too young to know what’s going on, but just wait until adolescence when the child is old enough to play one parent off against the other.
REALITY: When the adoptive and birth parents communicate honestly and respectfully with one another, they are able to navigate disagreements and discomforts in their relationships with each other. This means that the child is less able to “divide and conquer.” In one example that arose in my research, a fifteen year old boy said to his birthmother, “I can’t stand my mom. She won’t let me do anything. I want to come live with you!” His birthmother responded, “Every teen feels that way some times. Your mom is your mom. Like it or not, she’s the one you have to live with.” Then his birthmother shared the incident with the boy’s adoptive parents, who thanked her for her support.
Deborah Siegel, Ph.D., LICSW, ACSW, DCSW is a Professor at the School of Social Work, Rhode Island College. Passionate about adoption issues, she is an adoption researcher, clinical social worker specializing in adoption issues, adoption agency consultant, and an adoption legislation activist. She has written and/or co-authored several books on the subject and is a keynote speaker at related conferences. She and her husband adopted two infants domestically, in 1988 and 1993.
For more information on this and other related adoption issues: www.adoptioninstitute.org