Opening a Closed Adoption
In her book,
How To Open An Adoption, author and therapist Patricia Martinez Dorner highlights several reasons why open adoption might benefit all parties. These include honesty, open lines of communication to discuss problems or concerns the child may have, and diminishing fear and mistrust between birth and adoptive parents.
What is open adoption?Brenda Romanchik of
Insight: Open Adoption writes:
"[A truly open adoption is one where] the adopted child has the potential of developing a one-on-one relationship with his or her birthfamily."It sounds good, but...It sounds good, it sounds enlightened, and it sounds child-centered, which is what adoption is supposed to be. However, many don't choose open adoption, and others don't have that option. Some adoptions are closed by mutual agreement of the birth and adoptive parents; some because birth parents' rights have been involuntarily terminated by the court and/or they are considered to present some danger to the child; and others because those seeking to adopt, like journalist Danny Glover, perceive open adoption as a mandate, rather than a matter of choice. Glover writes in the account of his own adoption experience:
"The idea of having an adoption agency dictate that we allow a birth mother, whether fit or not, to be an active player in our child's life was enough to make us consider international adoption, despite the higher costs."By whatever manner families arrived at closed adoptions, many are showing an interest in changing that, and establishing contact among all three parties - birth parent(s), adoptee, and adoptive parent(s)....
opening the adoption. Ms. Dorner has been assisting families to do just this for the past seventeen years, and she's not alone.
A few of the reasons families consider opening an adoption are:
- Increasing awareness of the benefits as more and more families choose this option and talk about it.
- Availability of information dispelling the myths about open adoption, from counselors and adoptive parents.
- Study results, such as the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project, which underscore the benefits of openness for all parties to the adoption.
- Individual family situations where openness is believed to be in the child's best interest.
In order to gain a greater understanding of what it means to open an adoption, we invited the birth and adoptive mothers of two boys to come chat. This was a special needs adoption, closed for seven years. Both women spoke openly of the reasons behind the adoption, and their fears as they moved closer to the first meeting.
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