Lisa was 15 and pregnant. She had thought
about abortion, but it was too late in her
pregnancy. She had thought about raising her
baby, but her mother and father had already
told her they would not support her and her
child. Without their help, she knew she could
not raise the baby, especially if she planned
to complete high school and go on to college
to study music.
Adoption seemed to be the most logical and
available option. But Lisa was scared. She
could not bear the thought of turning her
baby over to someone she did not know, of
never seeing her child again. She knew she
would be haunted by the memories she would
never have a chance to share—her child's
first birthday party, the first day of kindergarten,
grade school graduation. She was anxious,
too, about the psychological effects on her
son or her daughter. Would he, as he grew
into adulthood, yearn to see a face that looked
like his? Would she wonder why her mother
placed her for adoption?
Lisa spent many restless nights wrestling
with the decision she must make. "In my heart,
I know that adoption is the best thing for
me and my baby," Lisa told her counselor at
school, "but I'm not comfortable with just
handing her to somebody and trying to forget
she ever existed."
Like Lisa, most people see adoption as closing
a door to which there is no key. And until
the early 1970's, that was an accurate perception.
Adoption was cloaked in secrecy. Adoptions
were arranged by an agency or other intermediaries,
such as doctors or lawyers, who chose the
adoptive parents. A birthmother had no control
over who would adopt her child. Sometimes
she saw her child once or twice after delivery,
sometimes not at all. She was rarely given
the opportunity to hold her baby because it
was believed that she would then find it too
difficult to place him for adoption. Adoptive
parents were assured that the final adoption
records would be sealed by the courts and
that they need not fear future intrusion from
the birthmother.
Today that scenario can be dramatically different.
There is a new openness in adoption that is
seen by a growing number of child welfare
and mental health experts as a long- awaited
solution to problems created by the traditional
secrecy.
Through open adoption, birthmothers like
Lisa are able to play a role in what happens
to the children they place for adoption.
[back to top]
What is Open Adoption?
Open adoption means that birthparents and
adoptive parents have some knowledge about
one another. The birthparents know something
about the adoptive parents and may even help
choose them. Adoptive parents and their children
know medical and genetic information about
the birth family and other information that
might help in dealing with the emotional issues
that often accompany adoption.
There is no universally accepted definition
of open adoption. While informal open adoptions
have occurred for centuries, whereby grandparents,
aunts and uncles, or godparents raised children
not born to them but whose parents were known
to them, the concept of formal open adoption
is quite new—less than 20 years old.
Open adoption can take many forms. In some
cases, a birthmother may leaf through a book
containing photographs and descriptions of
prospective adopters and choose a couple or
person she feels would give her baby a good
home. She may never meet the adopters, and
this may be her only contact with them. At
the other extreme, a birthmother may meet
the adoptive parents, visit their home, and
have ongoing contact throughout the child's
life.
Formal open adoption is a controversial idea.
It raises questions to which there are not
yet clear answers. Will a child raised with
knowledge of two sets of parents grow up confused?
Will adoptive parents feel threatened by the
intrusion of the birthparents? Will the child/parent
relationship be able to develop in a healthy
and normal way? Will the birthmother want
to reclaim her child? Will she make unwelcome
visits and phone calls? When the child is
older, will he choose his birthmother over
his adoptive parents? Can open adoption really
be successful?
Those experienced in working with open adoption
say that problems are likely to occur when
the birthparents and adoptive parents have
an ambiguous agreement as to how open the
adoption will be, or if they have a clear
agreement, and then one party oversteps the
bounds. The degree of openness usually depends
on the comfort level of both the birthparents
and adoptive parents. Some adoptive parents
have no problem with a birthparent who coparents.
Others desire much more limited contact.
Adoption social workers also disagree about
the degree of openness that is desirable in
adoption. Some agencies encourage the birthmother
to play a prominent role in the child's life.
Others limit the amount of personal information
(i.e., telephone numbers and addresses) exchanged
between the prospective adoptive parents and
the birthmother. There are also agencies that
allow the birthmother and the adoptive parents
to decide how much and what kind of future
contact they will have with each other.
In Lisa's case, she was comfortable with
being able to help select her child's parents
from a book that included their photographs
and descriptions and to meet them once. But
she did not feel it was appropriate for her
to participate in raising her child.
"Being able to know a little bit about
who would adopt my baby made my decision
a lot easier—not that adoption can
ever be easy," says Lisa. "It took away
a lot of the `unknowns,' things like, What
do they look like? What will my child know
about me? Where is she living? But most
of all, Will they love my baby more than
anything else? Meeting Joan and Bill made
me more comfortable with my decision to
place my baby for adoption."
Open adoption is not just for newborns. Families
who adopt older children are provided with
information about the birth family that they
might not receive in a traditional, confidential
adoption. If there was abuse or neglect in
a child's background, the adoptive parents
need to know the specifics about the situation
so that they can deal with any behavioral
or emotional problems that might arise because
of that abuse or neglect.
Because an older child lived with his birth
family members for a time, he has memories
of them. Those memories are a part of him,
and the adoptive family has to understand
this. "You inadvertently become participants,"
says Christine Jacobs, exchange supervisor
at the National Adoption Center in Philadelphia
and an adoptive mother of two sons, one of
whom joined her family at age 5. "The history
is there. The child's life did not start when
he moved in with you, and he can't be expected
to forget everything that happened to him
earlier in his life."
Because of this, some families who adopt
older children decide that it is in the best
interests of the child to maintain contact
with those individuals who are significant
in his life, such as birthparents, siblings,
grandparents, or foster parents. "You become
almost distant relatives," says Jacobs. "Even
if you don't keep in touch regularly, you
are still a part of each other's lives."
[back to top]
The Origins of Open
Adoption
The concept of openness grew out of discontent
by all parties involved in adoption—the
birthparents, the adoptive parents, and the
adoptee—who protested against traditional
adoption's neglect of the importance of the
genetic family.
The Birthparents
Traditional adoption gave birthparents no
input into the future of their children. They
were encouraged to trust the agency's judgment,
accept the agency's rules, agree to sealed
records that would preclude any further contact
with the child, and "get on with their lives."
Like Lisa, many birthmothers had parted with
their children reluctantly, often without
the benefit of counseling that would have
helped them make a thoughtful decision. Years
later—sometimes after they had married
and raised other children—they would
frequently yearn for information about the
child they had placed.
Birthmothers began to reach out to one another
as a way of working through their grief surrounding
the adoption, eventually forming the support
group Concerned
United Birthparents (CUB) in 1973. In
addition to providing emotional support, CUB
began working to change the adoption process
so that the pain many birthmothers had experienced
would not be repeated in the next generation.
Lee Campbell, the founder of CUB, remembers,
"My social worker told me, `Lee, walk out
this door and forget this happened!' The trouble
was, I was never able to do that."
"What angers birthmothers everywhere,"
says JoAnne Swanson in her book The Adoption
Machine, "is that their `guarantee of
confidentiality' was always forced on them,
never offered as an option."
Studies of birthmothers echoed what they
had been telling agencies. They often saw
their adoption decision as having had a serious
negative impact on their lives. They continued
to suffer feelings of loss years after they
relinquished their children. These feelings
frequently affected all aspects of their lives.
Many suffered from poor self-esteem, troubled
marriages, and over protectiveness toward
their subsequent children. If they had it
to do over again, many said they would not
choose adoption.
CUB's fight to open the adoption process
started to gain credibility with adoption
agencies as the number of healthy white infants
available for adoption began to diminish.
With the development of birth control pills,
legalized abortion, and societal changes that
removed the stigma attached to being unmarried
and pregnant, birthmothers had the leverage
to demand more input into their children's
futures. "Agencies began to realize that they
couldn't just forget about the birthmother
after the adoption," says Maxine Chalker,
director of The Adoption Agency, an adoption
agency specializing in open adoption in Ardmore,
Pennsylvania.
Agencies acknowledged that they needed to
provide the birthmother with services, like
preadoption and postadoption counseling. Today,
most agencies offer group and individual counseling
to birthmothers to help them plan for their
children's futures and to support them once
they have decided to pursue adoption. At Chalker's
agency, women are in the same support group
prior to and after the birth. After the adoption,
nothing is mandatory, but counselors are available
if they are needed. "When women do call, the
counseling is very informal," comments Chalker.
"Maybe we'll meet them for lunch, or just
for a cup of coffee somewhere. They just need
to talk to someone every once in a while—someone
to tell them that their feelings are perfectly
normal."
The Adoptee
Many adoptees have felt the "disquieting
loneliness" that Roots
author Haley described. Not knowing their
heritage or why they were placed for adoption
left many with devastating feelings of rejection.
They wondered why they had been placed for
adoption, who their birthparents were, and
if they had siblings. They were often troubled
about how little they knew about their genetic
past. They were concerned that there might
be some unknown in their birth family's medical
history that would surface later in life.
The need for such knowledge frequently nudged
adoptees into a consuming and never ending
search for the truth, sometimes impairing
their ability to lead productive lives.
"Adoptees can feel frustrated at their inability
to connect with their roots," says Marshall
Schecter, a psychiatrist at the University
of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. "Some
have trouble forming an identity when they
reach adolescence. Others may develop fantasies—both
positive and negative—about their birth
family. Some adoptees spend a lifetime never
finding answers to their questions. For others,
this black hole which exists where their past
should be becomes too much of an emotional
burden for them to bear, leaving deep psychological
scars."
Statistics support claims that knowledge
about our genetic past—our roots—plays
a vital role in who we are, and that the lack
of such information can be detrimental to
the adopted child. Although adopted children
comprise less than 2 percent of the population,
they make up about 5 percent of the outpatients
and up to 15 percent of the inpatients at
psychiatric institutions. And according to
adoption scholar David
Brodzinsky of Rutgers University, the
cause for many is the adoption experience.
"For adoptees, part of them is hurt at having
once been relinquished," says Brodzinsky.
"That part remains vulnerable for the rest
of their lives as they grieve at various predictable
points for the unknown parents who gave them
away."
In studies of adopted children, Arthur
Sorosky, a psychiatrist, and David Kirschner,
a clinical psychologist, have found that adoptees
tend to be more aggressive, suffer from low
self-esteem, and are at greater risk for learning
disabilities than nonadopted children. Although
some of these problems can be traced back
to a teenaged birthmother with poor prenatal
care, or exposure to drugs or alcohol in utero,
many mental health experts believe it is the
result of the adoption experience itself.
Sorosky and Kirschner coined the term "adopted-child
syndrome" to define the most extreme exhibition
of personality traits found in adopted children.
These behaviors include rebellion, truancy,
sexual promiscuity, and often trouble with
the law.
Open adoption supporters believe many adoptees
encounter these problems because they lack
a heritage—what one psychiatrist referred
to as "genealogical bewilderment." Open adoption
eliminates the need for adopted children to
fantasize about who their birthparents are,
why they have red hair, where they got their
artistic talent, and most importantly, why
they were placed for adoption.
The Adoptive Parents
As adoptive parents started hearing more
about this new openness in adoption, some
felt troubled by rules that seemed to be changing
in midstream. The adoption they had thought
was confidential— inviolate—was
being threatened, making them feel hurt and
vulnerable. They experienced a rash of emotions—fear,
anger, sadness, and confusion. Some parents
worried about what their children would find
if they located their birthmothers. Would
their fantasies be better than the reality?
Would their child feel rejected yet again?
Would they lose their child to the birth family?
Some parents tried to talk their children
out of searching and made it clear that they
would offer no support. Others believed it
was in the best interest of their child's
mental and emotional well-being to help them
gain access to the information they needed
to lay the mystery of their ancestry to rest.
One adoptive mother was so concerned over
her 5-year-old daughter's obsession with her
birthmother that she decided to convert her
closed adoption into an open one. "My daughter
would go up to total strangers at shopping
malls or in parks and ask, `Are you my mother?'
" she remembers. "Finally, I contacted the
agency to see if we could get more information
about our daughter's birthmother. They contacted
the birthmother, and she was just as eager
to receive information about the baby she
placed for adoption. She sent a picture and
letter which we shared with our daughter.
We haven't met in person, yet. I don't know
how I would handle that."
Supporters of open adoption see it as a way
for adoptive parents to have answers to questions
that will most surely be asked by their children.
They point to studies that indicate that open
adoption actually improves the relationship
between the adoptive parents and the child.
"They have finally been given permission to
be the parents, and they actually bond quicker
with the baby, having met the birthmother,"
says Kathleen Silber, coauthor of the book
Dear
Birthmother: Thank You for Our Baby.
Another study also found that open adoption
strengthens the relationship between the child
and the adoptive parents, because the child
knows that his adoptive parents not only accept
him, but that which belongs to him.
[back to top]
Experiences with
Open Adoption
Pamela and Mark are the adoptive parents
of Joshua, age 5. They met his birthmother,
a 20-year-old college student, who had selected
them from a picture album at their adoption
agency in a Philadelphia suburb. Pamela felt
strongly that the birthmother should have
a place in her child's life—that he should
consider her to be a "relative," but that
she should not interfere with the way he was
being raised. They decided together that the
birthmother would visit the child, at her
home or theirs, twice a year. For the first
3 years, this arrangement worked well. Then
the birthmother moved to Arizona, and the
visits became more difficult to orchestrate.
However, Josh and the birthmother speak on
the telephone several times a year, and he
regards her as a member of his extended family.
"I feel the arrangement is a healthy one,"
says Pamela. "I think it will eliminate a
lot of the anxiety that adopted children often
feel about their origin. My husband and I
are considering another adoption and we would
want to do it the same way."
On the other hand, open adoption has many
critics. One of the strongest opponents of
the practice is the Washington, DC-based National
Council for Adoption (formerly the National
Committee for Adoption). In its Adoption
Factbook, it states that it has "long
championed the importance of confidentiality
in adoption."
"We have many concerns with it," says William
Pierce, president of the National Council
for Adoption. "We think that down the line,
it will prove harmful to all those involved
in the adoption circle."
Many fear that open adoption will result
in coparenting, which often brings unexpected
difficulties. That was the case for Kathleen
and John Hickman, who once supported open
adoption but later regretted their decision,
saying they were not prepared for the birth
family's continual involvement in their lives.
The Hickmans first looked into open adoption
after years of seeing infertility specialists,
followed by years of waiting with a State
adoption agency, only to have a possible placement
fall through because of bureaucratic bumbling.
"My husband and I decided that open adoption
seemed to be the way to go after that. Now
we would have control and would not be in
the dark as to what was going on," says Hickman.
The Hickmans registered with an agency in
California that practices open adoption. They
were told that the amount of contact between
themselves and the birth family would rest
solely with the parties involved—the
birth family and the prospective adoptive
family. After filling in the registration
form and completing a short video biography
of themselves, they waited to be selected
by a birthmother. When the call did come,
Mrs. Hickman was surprised to learn the meeting
would not be with the birthmother, but rather
with the birthmother's family. She was informed
that the birthmother was in a psychiatric
hospital, so her parents would be the ones
making the decision.
"At first, we were somewhat relieved," says
Mrs. Hickman. "The grandparents were closer
to our age. We had, I thought, a lot more
in common with them than we had with their
teenage daughter." But after a few meetings
with the family, Hickman began to have concerns
about their desire for future contact. "The
baby was biracial," says Hickman. "This was
the reason they gave for not wanting to adopt
the baby themselves. They were ashamed! They
didn't want anyone to know that their grandchild
was biracial—as if, somehow, this made
the baby inferior."
Still, the grandparents wanted future contact.
At first they agreed to letters and photos
for the first year only. As time went on,
however, they began to demand visitation rights.
Eventually, March 6, 2008 stopping by the Hickman's home unannounced
and uninvited. "It always had to be our house—remember,
they didn't want their neighbors to know,"
recalls Hickman. The constant interference
from the birth family became too much of an
emotional strain for the Hickmans and the
adoption disrupted. The grandparents later
decided to adopt the baby.
"I still worry that the grandparents' attitude
about their biracial granddaughter will
affect her as she grows up," says Hickman,
"but things just couldn't go on the way
they were. The tension around our home began
to take its toll on our marriage."
Kathleen and John Hickman decided not to
give up and pursued open adoption again. This
time they were going to stand firm in the
amount of contact they wanted. Unfortunately
they had another unhappy experience. This
time it was not the birthmother who set the
terms of future contact—it was the social
worker. "She told us that the adoption had
to be completely open, with the birthmother
having continual contact with us, or she wouldn't
let it go through," says Hickman. "None of
us could believe it. I thought `open adoption'
meant that it was our decision."
Hickman has found she is not alone among
people who have tried open adoption and failed.
She has met many other couples in similar
situations. They thought they could handle
something they were not comfortable with because
they had no other options.
Conclusion
It is clear that the secrecy that has been
the hallmark of adoption throughout its history
is giving way to a new openness. Research
that will track the effects of such adoptions
is underway, and some has been completed already.
One recent study of birthmothers and adoptive
parents who participated in open adoption
found that open adoption is often substantially
beneficial for the birthmothers. They feel
more comfortable having input into their children's
futures.
Adoptive parents, too, are coming to believe
that open adoption is a "more humane way of
dealing with the birthmother," according to
a survey of parents who have participated
in open adoption. When adoptive parents were
asked about how they personally felt about
open adoption, most were positive in their
reaction. Some had completely open adoptions
in which the birthmother actively participated
in the child's life. Others remained in contact
with the birthmother through letters and photos.
A few of the respondents were uncomfortable
with even a yearly letter. For the most part,
the adoptive parents were happy with their
decision, but acknowledged that they had no
other options if they wanted to adopt a healthy
baby.
Most experts believe that before becoming
involved in an open adoption, prospective
adoptive parents should make clear how much
contact they wish to have with the birthmother.
All parties involved should draft a contract
stating the terms of future contact. Recent
court decisions have ruled that contracts
of this sort are legally binding documents,
so the terms need to be clearly thought out.
The jury is still out on the effect of open
adoption on adopted children. Today, the first
children to experience it are entering adolescence.
As they move into adulthood, researchers studying
them will learn more about how this new kind
of adoption has impacted their lives and influenced
their family relationships.
In the meantime, the definition of open adoption
continues to evolve as those who participate
in it fine-tune the concept to meet their
changing needs. It remains a controversial
issue that promises to keep challenging traditional
thinking about the ideal way to adopt a child.
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For more information, contact the Child
Welfare Information Gateway (formerly the
National Adoption Information Clearinghouse) at info@childwelfare.gov.
