Adopt: OPEN/ NO MORE SECRETS
Open Adoption: No More Secrets
by Sandra Lenington
The last ten years have seen a revolution taking place in the world of adoption. A new openness is replacing the traditional, closed system. Birth parents are choosing the families who will raise their children. Adoptive parents have answers for their children's tough questions about relinquishment. Children are growing up knowing they are loved by birth and adoptive parents.
While adoption is mentioned as far back as biblical times (Moses is a classic example.), it did not become enshrouded in secrecy until this century. As social work became a profession and agencies became the intermediaries in accepting and placing children, the feeling was that it would be better for everyone if records were sealed.
"The laws were meant to protect all sides of the 'adoption triangle' -birth parents, adoptive parents and children,"explains Bruce Rappaport, director of the Independent Adoption Center and a proponent of open adoption.
"Everyone had something to hide. The young, pregnant mother was seen as a sinner. The child had a red 'ILLEGITIMATE' typed across his birth certificate until the 1940s. The adoptive parents often had the stigma of infertility. The closed system was supposed to protect everyone.
"But secrecy did not work," states Kathleen Silber, now associate director of the Independent Adoption Center. Silber was one of the pioneers in the open adoption revolution. "I was handling adoptions and thinking that everyone lived happily ever after until, in the 1970s, the children began coming back. They were talking about the terrible void in their lives-not knowing their roots. There was also a need for medical information which was often not available. I knew then that something needed to change."
In 1977 Silber, then regional director of Lutheran Social Service of Texas, began having birth mothers write letters to their children, explaining the circumstances surrounding their birth and adoption. These letters expressed the love and concern of the birth mother. The adoptive couple also wrote letters which were given to the birth mother. Their letters shared the joy of parenting and the adoptive parents ' gratitude toward the birth mother. This practice evolved into face-to-face meetings, without exchanging identifying information.
"Today, at the Independent Adoption Center, we have couples and birth parents meeting, exchanging identifying information and maintaining ongoing relationships. Each adoption is different, and people work out the amount of contact that feels right. What often happens is a yearly exchange of pictures and letters and sometimes visits. Open adoption is not coparenting," stresses Silber. "The adoptive parents are mom and dad."
Jed Somit, an Oakland lawyer, is an enthusiastic advocate of open adoption. He notes that the change in the availability of healthy infants to adopt has placed the birth parents in a position of power. Now they are able to demand the kind of adoption that feels right to them. If they want to visit or to have knowledge of their child's well-being, there are adoptive parents who are willing to accept this openness .
"Interestingly," adds Somit, "this arrangement also gives power to the adopting couple, who have often had to put their lives into the hands of doctors, clinics and laboratories during infertility treatment. The adopting couple now has a say about what they would like in the way of an adoption. It is an agreement worked out between birth parent and adopting couple, with counseling and support available to both."
However, not everyone is happy with this new openness. Many fears are expressed by people who hear about open adoption for the first time.When we told my parents that we were planning to search for our two-year-old's birth mother, my mother exclaimed, "Are you crazy? She'll come and steal him away!" Other people fear that the children will be confused, although follow-up research does not support that fear.
We adopted our son in a traditional, closed, agency adoption in 1981. We had conflicting stories about his birth, and we did not know what we would tell him. I often found myself looking at young, blond-haired women, wondering if they might be Jamie's birth mother. I had a feeling there was a young woman somewhere, wondering about how her child was.
We were lucky. We had seen his birth mother's name, by accident, when our attorney filed the amended birth certificate. Her name, Mary Kay, was etched in my memory. It only took a few months for me to locate her, and I sent a simple letter explaining who we were and asking if she would like to have contact with us. She was so happy to hear how well her son was doing and how happy we were. After two years of corresponding by mail, we met Mary Kay in person. We spent a wonderful day together at the zoo. As she left us that evening, she said, "Now I know I made the right decision."
We have gone on to adopt two more children, and we have ongoing relationships with all our families. It is very much like having a large extended family.
We had begun publishing an adoption-support magazine in the late '80s. In the first issue we told our own story, and our birth mothers told their stories. By coincidence, a copy reached a social worker who used to work with a private agency. She wrote:
As I read your story (about finding Mary Kay) in AdoptNet, I was taken back in memory to a long winter's plane ride in a bumpy storm, with a tiny, baby boy strapped to my chest in a snugly pack, making his way to his new parents. My thoughts at the time, as this tiny child slept so peacefully next to me, were of his two mothers and how connected they would always be. One had given him life and sent him into the world healthy and full of promise. She gave him his looks, his personality, his predisposition for certain talents and temperament. The mom- yet-to-be was to give him his future, his values, his place in the world. I thought about how they were linked to each other, and that my job as a caseworker was to promote a respect they might have for each other.
At that time, adoption was just beginning to struggle to be open and meetings between parents were few within agencies. Many of us in the field have known instinctively that the secrecy we participated in was uncomfortable and felt disabling, and yet for years we were stuck in a system that perpetuated that philosophy as all they knew.
Things are different now, and the women in Mary Kay's position will never again have to give their child to an intermediary, but rather can plan from the beginning to know the child's future firsthand. I'm sure Mary Kay would have wanted to had she been given that choice. I'm sure of it, in fact, for the child I brought home was her son.
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click here for Mary Kay's story and our other birthmother stories.
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