Open Adoption
Open adoption is an approach to adoption that emphasizes maintaining a voluntary and open connection between biological parents and adoptive parents, fostering a collaborative environment for the child's development. This model contrasts sharply with traditional closed adoptions, where biological parents are legally barred from any contact with their child, often creating emotional distress for both the birth parents and the adopted child. Open adoption allows for ongoing communication and updates about the child’s life, which can include sharing milestones and achievements, and in some cases, even participation in the birth process.
The rationale behind open adoption is that it can provide the child with a clearer sense of identity and belonging, as the child is raised in an environment characterized by honesty and transparency. While some psychologists caution that open adoptions may lead to confusion for the child and increased emotional challenges for the birth mother, many believe that a flexible approach that accommodates the needs and feelings of all parties involved can lead to healthier family dynamics. Overall, open adoption represents a shift towards more inclusive and supportive relationships in the complex landscape of adoption, aiming to benefit both the child and the families involved.
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Open Adoption
Few family dynamics are more complicated or more studied than the relationship between biological parents and adoptive parents. Conventional wisdom long held that to minimize trauma to an adopted child and to maintain the stability of the adoptive family, the child should have no contact with his or her biological family. Beginning in the 1980s, however, family psychologists pointed to significant data that indicated that such elaborate secrecy was damaging and that maintaining open communication between the two families might in fact help rather than hurt the child. Open adoption stresses voluntary connections between the families to create a stable identity and a healthy family environment for an adopted child.
Overview
Before the social upheaval of the 1960s that redefined family and sexual politics, single mothers bore a heavy social stigma and couples who were infertile were subject to speculation about their marriage. Thus, adoption agencies worked diligently to maintain closed adoptions, that is arrangements in which the biological parents, most often a single mother, were prevented legally from being a part of the child’s life. By sealing those records, the adoption system often created a feeling of displacement in the biological mother’s emotional life, a feeling of having abandoned her child. The system also impacted the adoptive family, creating a feeling of perpetually impending crisis should the birth parents decide to intrude, rendering problematic what constituted “real” parenting. Most profoundly, closed adoption created a sense of identity confusion when the child reached adulthood and could legally access his or her adoption records. The revelation of the adoptive information could trigger lifelong trust issues and impact the grown child’s ability to function in a healthy relationship.
In open adoption, however, both sets of parents work together, sometimes even before the birth. Although degrees of communication are arranged through attorneys to avoid misunderstandings, the principle behind open adoption is that the child is raised within an environment of honesty and openness. Indeed, in many open adoption arrangements, the adoptive parents share the birthing classes and participate in the delivery. Over the years, the adoptive family maintains open communication with the birth parents, sending photos and regular (most often annual) updates on the child’s progress, academic successes, and extracurricular achievements. The relationship between the adoptive and biological parents is necessarily fluid—communication levels and access levels are always in flux depending on how the child reacts and develops. But it is not unusual in open adoptions for biological parents to actually meet the child.
Some psychologists are leery of such arrangements, pointing out that open adoptions merely confuse the child for extended periods of time and make the job of the adoptive parents that much more taxing. It can even make the birth mother’s separation anxiety worse as she is perpetually caught near but not with the child she gave up for adoption. Most lawyers believe that some compromise is better, a kind of semi-open adoption that balances the psychological needs of all those involved and minimizes the corrosive effect of keeping secrets.
Bibliography
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Holden, Lori, and Crystal Hass. The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole. Lanham: Rowman, 2013. Print.
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