Home

 

Why Choose Adoption Angel?

 

How We Can Help - Our Services to You

 

What Do Open and Closed Adoption Mean?

 

Adoption Myths

What Do Open & Closed Adoption Mean?

In the United States now, in every state, birth parents and adoptive parents have the right to decide how open or closed their adoption will be.  Some people believe there’s only one way to go; we believe that view is not very realistic.

Every person we work with has their own unique personality.  Each one handles stress in her own way, has her own current and past crises to cope with, deals with issues in her own timing and in her own ways, and has different needs for information and contact.  So each person needs to decide how open their own adoption will be.

What do open and closed adoption mean?  It may help if you think of it like a door.  It may be completely closed, open just a crack, flung wide or somewhere in between.     

Closed/Confidential	Open Just a Crack
Somewhat Open	Fully Open

You, the birth parent, must be the one to choose how open your adoption will be.  You should learn more about it before you decide on an adoptive family.  And when you’re thinking about it, it’s important to understand what you’re choosing.  It’s our job to help you, our client: 

• Be realistic about your own needs and limits.
• Think about the needs of the child you’ll place for adoption.  What does research show about this?
• Consider the effects on children you are now parenting or will parent in the future.
• Look at how other members of your family might handle different possibilities.
• Think about how you and your needs and desires might change in the future.
• Choose—or ask us to choose—adoptive parents who feel good about the same type and amount of contact you do. 

What you must know is that it’s your choice.  Openness is not something adoptive parents generously bestow upon birth parents as if granting a favor.  It’s an arrangement made for the benefit of all parties to an adoption. 

Openness is not something an adoption agency has the right to dictate.  If you check out an agency or other adoption professional and you don’t care for their policies about open adoption, look into other agencies.  There are many, and each has its own way of doing things.  Keep looking until you find a good fit.

Research* shows that it’s not the amount or type of contact that are most important, but rather the attitudes of the players.  Contact between birth parents and adoptive parents is positive for adopted people when both parties have respect and empathy for one another, and value the relationship.  Whether there is a lot of contact or only a little, it doesn’t work when birth parents and adoptive parents are not respectful and honoring toward one another.

 *Grotevant, H.D.  (2001).  Adoptive Families:  Longitudinal Outcomes for Adolescents.  Final report to the William T. Grant Foundation.

Back to top

Fully Closed Adoption

Closed Adoption = Confidential—Birth parents and adoptive parents may have basic descriptions, but have no identifying information about each other. Closed Adoption = Choosing Not to Choose—In fully closed adoptions, birth parents ask their adoption professional to choose an adoptive family for them, letting us know traits that are important to them, like religion or where the family lives. Closed Adoption = No Contact—Birth parents and adoptive parents don’t meet each other.  The adoptive parents agree to send a limited number of pictures and progress letters to Heritage for the birth parents, where they are held in a file until the birth parent asks for them.  That could be right away or it might be never.  It’s up to each birth parent to decide. A birth parent choosing a closed adoption may also decide not to have contact with the baby; she may not want to see or hold the baby at the hospital.  That’s her decision, and no one else’s.

We’ve worked with birth parents who were very sure about having a closed adoption.  Sometimes they explained their reasons to us and sometimes they didn’t.  Not many birth parents choose closed adoption, but maybe once a year, someone does.  We don’t have to agree with their reasons or even know them to understand that people sometimes have complicated lives.  Our job is to help each birth parent understand what she or he is choosing, the effects on their own future, the effects on the lives of the child they place for adoption and their other children, and then to help each one carry out her plans.

Open Just a Crack

This type of adoption is what we would call an open placement as opposed to an open adoption.

Birth parents and adoptive parents may choose each other after seeing pictures and written materials only, or by also talking on the phone, or also meeting each other in person. Both parties are free to ask each other any questions they like, either directly or through our staff.  After looking at pictures and written information and having questions answered, both parties agree to work together to create an adoption. A post-placement contact agreement is worked out which, in a barely open adoption, will usually only include pictures and letters, sometimes sent for a limited time or held in a file at our office until the birth parent asks for them. Adoptive parents may be at the hospital or even be in the room when the baby is born, if the birth mother wants them to be. Birth mothers always have control of how much contact they have with the baby before placement, but often a birth mom choosing a barely open adoption doesn’t want a lot of contact.  After the birth, she can take care of the baby herself or she may want the adoptive parents to take care of the baby in a separate room.  The birth mother always has the option to have the baby brought to her, or to go and see the baby in the adoptive parents’ room or the nursery—it’s up to her.

Why do birth parents choose a “barely open” adoption?  Here are some of the reasons birth parents have given us:

• I love my child, and I had to be the one to choose the family.  Meeting them was very reassuring.  But to get through this, I had to close off contact after we left the hospital.  Seeing the baby, or even seeing pictures and letters, would make it too hard to let go.

• There is a lot of difficult stuff going on in my life.  As much as I love this baby, I don’t have the emotional energy to handle my other responsibilities and have contact with the baby too.

• There are people in my life who don’t know about the adoption, or even about the pregnancy.  If I have contact, or even get pictures, I would have to explain them somehow.

Back to top

Somewhat Open

Many of our clients want to meet and know the family who will adopt their child, but feel they also need at least some distance in order to manage their lives after the placement.  They want some openness, but are not interested in a fully open adoption. 

A somewhat open adoption could include some or all of the following, depending on what both parties want: Birth parents and adoptive parents choosing and meeting one another Going to prenatal appointments and/or childbirth preparation classes together Getting to know each other before the birth through letters, phone calls, e-mail, meals together at a restaurant or in a park, visits at the office or another neutral location Adoptive parents being present at the hospital, one or both of them being present during labor and/or delivery Care of the baby at the hospital by the birth mother alone, together with the adoptive parents, or by the adoptive parents in another room An entrustment ceremony, alone with the adoptive parents or also including other important people Contact after placement through letters, phone calls, e-mail, a specific number of visits or a minimum number of visits, visits in public or neutral settings, or visits in one another’s homes.

 Flung wide—Fully Open

“Open adoption results in being very much like the blended family—a life journey with complexities which must be navigated with sensitivity and cooperation on the part of all those involved.”

--Dorner & Silver, Children of Open Adoption

 The focus in a fully open adoption is on building a trusting, cooperative relationship for the good of all parties, especially the child.  Fully open adoption essentially means that birth parents and adoptive parents welcome each other as extended family, joined together because they both love their child.

Full information is shared: last names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses.  There is direct contact after placement, without the agency acting as a go-between.  A post-placement contact agreement will be signed, setting out the parties’ plans, intentions and commitments to one another.  Just as in any other adoption, this agreement will be legally enforceable.  But the focus is on the relationship, rather than on legalities.

It’s important for everyone who chooses fully open adoption to realize that it may need more thought and effort, and sometimes more tact and self-discipline.  It’s not perfect or painless.  Those living with fully open adoptions say the effort is well worth it.  As James Gritter, one of the pioneers of open adoption, says, “Open adoption hinges on [the participants’] integrity.”  If a concern comes up, Heritage is there to answer questions, think through the issues, help you plan what you would like to say, and/or meet with both parties to help you work it out.

There is far too much to say about open adoption to put it all here, but we’ll hit some of the highlights and hope to share more with you in person, if you’re interested.

Back to top

What are the benefits of a fully open adoption?

All parties to open adoption can enjoy relief from the secrecy involved in closed adoptions.  Secrecy leads to shame, and adoption is not a shameful thing.  Here are some of the other benefits: 

Adopted kids benefit from: Knowing where they come from Feeling loved by both birth family and adoptive family Having a bigger family to love them Hearing stories about their family history Hearing their birth parents’ stories about their pregnancy and the day they were born Feeling safe and secure with both birth family and adoptive family Birth parents benefit from: The honesty between themselves and their children’s adoptive parents Having more control over the experience Being able to see how their child is doing, not just through pictures but live and in person The chance to speak for themselves in letting their child know the reasons for their choices The opportunity to express their thankfulness to adoptive parents Adoptive parents benefit from: Feeling secure about who their child’s birth parents are and what kind of people they are Knowing they were chosen by the birth parents, and feeling fully entitled to their children The honesty between themselves and their child’s birth parents Having more control over the adoption experience The improved information, both immediate and throughout the child’s life The opportunity to be involved at the hospital Being able to express their thankfulness to birth parents Seeing where their child gets his talents, inclinations, character traits and appearance

Back to top

 

What are the challenges of

open adoption?

It’s as critical to realize what open adoption is not as to realize what it is.  Open adoption is not co-parenting, foster parenting or temporary custody.  Adoption is always permanent and can’t be undone once it’s complete.  Open adoption still means birth parents turn over their parental rights to the adoptive parents they have chosen.  Their role in the child’s life will change forever.

To make open adoption work, birth parents and adoptive parents must face the challenge of honoring, respecting and embracing one another’s roles in the child’s life.  When they respect the boundaries involved in embracing their own roles, they honor their own decisions and meet the needs of their child for security and peace.

James Gritter divides parental responsibilities into three roles:  Giver of Life, Sustainer of Life and Affirmer of Life.

Lifegiver:  In adoption, only birth parents can be the Lifegivers.  They contribute their heritage, family history and genetics to their child, and that is a huge part of who they are and will become!  They can tell their child as no one else can what their pregnancy was like, how they made their decisions and how they went about selecting their permanent family.   Birth parents contributed their brown eyes, their artistic ability, their distaste for academics, their affinity for tools and all kinds of things that we forget have genetic roots.  Their family carries the child’s history—how they came to America, what his great-grandpa did for a living, what traditions surround the holiday season.

Life Sustainers:  In adoption, only the adoptive parents are Sustainers of Life.  Birth parents forever entrust adoptive parents with the responsibility to provide a home and food and clothing.  Adoptive parents make decisions about child care and education.  They will be called Mom and Dad and will be the ones to change diapers, clean up the messes, and take the child to the hospital when he falls out of the tree and breaks an arm.  They will have the privilege of helping the child learn to talk, say their ABCs and hit a baseball.  They will bear the task of choosing how to correct the child when he or she makes a mistake or a poor choice.

Life Affirmers:  Birth parents and adoptive parents alike are Affirmers of Life.  Both have the joy of celebrating the child’s uniqueness, showing excitement in her successes, being in awe of his talents, offering sympathy about setbacks.  Both carry the responsibility of helping the child feel loved and treasured.

Open adoption will not erase the pain of loss.  Your role in your child’s life will be forever changed, and there is sorrow in that.  You will probably not be present for your child’s first steps.  You will not be the one to put her to bed at night and sing her to sleep.  It is critical to respect yourself enough to let yourself face the grief and recover.

On the other hand, there can be great freedom and joy in open adoption.  One of the earliest open adoption birth moms we know remarked, “Just because I can’t raise my daughter doesn’t mean I never want to see her again.”  Being able to see her daughter showed both birth mom and child that adoption had been a good choice.

If you have the self-discipline to respect the adoptive parents’ boundaries and role in your child’s life and to embrace your own role, this may be the way you would like to go.  If you are an open person who is trusting and trustworthy, then a fully open adoption may be a good choice for you.

Reach Deborah at 1-888-331-4040 or by email Deborah and we'll be glad to help you explore whether adoption is the right answer for you.