In recent decades, adoption practice has shifted to favoring "openness" in adoption. Some pre-adoptive parents, and even some birth parents, are apprehensive about open adoption, but emotionally, it makes sense. Adoptive parents, however, must have final authority on safety and reasonableness.
1
Adoption May Be Different Than You Think
Adoption is a service, true. A service performed by agencies, social workers, and attorneys for birth parents and adoptive parents. But adoption is not a service for your family like an oil change is a service for your car. Many of us love our cars; but if their break-downs get too expensive, we move on.
When kids get “expensive,” good parents don’t just “move on.” They respond out of love, seeking not only to remedy the problem, but also to teach the child how to handle that problem alone in the future.
2
Frustration is Normal
It can be tempting to view adoption as an oil change for the family. Infertility treatments can be exhausting (financially, physically, and emotionally), and tired pre-adoptive parents don’t want any more hassles, they just want their child. They want a child put in the tank of their family. Understandable, yes. But that’s just not the way reality works. (If possible, a couple who has grown impatient with infertility treatments might be wise to wait a bit before charging into adoption.)
3
Curiosity is Normal, Too
An adopted child had other parents. That may be uncomfortable — even scary — for adoptive parents, but it’s a fact, and they are better off facing it squarely than trying to live in denial. That child is going to wonder about those other parents. Not out of any effort to reject the adoptive parents (though even THAT is normal for teenagers), but out of ordinary, understandable curiosity. Many of us are fascinated by our genealogical history. Many are not, but either way, these are normal emotions, and they don’t seek rejection, just more information.
4
Open Adoption Recognizes That, Like All Human Relationships, Adoption is about Love
Adoption cannot erase biology. Open adoption understands this. Open adoption affirms the adopted child’s normal curiosity. And adoptive parents who feel secure in their role as parents will sense that if they support the child’s normal curiosity, it will actually make the child respect the adoptive parents more: In supporting the child’s interest in biological parents, they show that they understand the child, and the child will appreciate this. But if they try to squelch their child’s normal curiosity about biological parents, the child will resent this. The child may hide an interest in biological parents out of fear of hurting adoptive parents, but the interest doesn’t go away; it just goes underground.
In short, adoptive parents cannot keep their adopted child from feeling love and affinity for the biological parents who gave that child life. Open adoption seeks to give that love and affinity a reasonable role in the child’s life.
5
What You KNOW Can Be Managed. It's What You Don't Know, or Fear, That Can Haunt You
You've heard it said that known evils are better than unknown ones. If adoptive parents know one or both of their child's birth parents, this knowledge usually calms any worries that the biological parents might interfere with the adoptive family or erode their authority as parents.
Click "Next" below for Steps 6 through 9.
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