November 13, 2013

Open Adoption — Taking a Look at the Pros

There are so many different types of adoption, and which makes you the most comfortable is up to you and your family and the type of process you want to have. But because open adoption today doesn’t mean quite what it used to, we’d like to share some of the benefits of open adoption — for you, your children and their birth parents.

The more love, the better. Every child deserves all the love they can have, and with two different types of parents in their life, one of the benefits of an open, or semi-open adoption is that your child gets to experience the love of their birth family as well as the love of you and your partner. Conversely, it gives your child’s birth parents the opportunity to give love to them as well, which is an incredibly healing experience for a birth parent. Even in the best of circumstances, it is so common for adopted children to experience feelings of abandonment. Giving them contact with people who love them so much that they wanted them to have the best life possible can help ease those feelings, while giving them a stronger sense of family and self.

Roots. We all want to know where we come from, and that is a downside of closed adoptions. A child may grow up not knowing anything about their roots, medical history, family stories or what their lineage is. Contact with the birth family helps fill some of these holes, and provide answers to questions they undoubtedly will have.

Confidence! Adoption is nothing to be ashamed of. Not as an adoptive parent, not as a birth parent, and certainly not as an adopted child. Sharing with them as many details about their adoption as you can shows a level of support and confidence that is invaluable when passed down to your child. Open or closed — no part of an adoption should ever make a child feel ashamed, like they were “given up” or that they have ever, in any way, been unwanted.

Support. When your child finds out that they are adopted there is going to be a whole other world that they have questions about — whether they are in an open adoption or not. Connecting them to their birth family shows is an important extension of support, in that it gives them resources to fill in the details of their life and access to people who can provide answers to important questions. It also shows your support of your child and their adoption journey — that you are willing to do anything you can to give them the most fulfilled life as an adoptee possible.

Now, of course, none of these points are meant to say that you are forever damaging your child if you choose a closed adoption — that is not at all what we mean! Adoptions come in all shapes and sizes, and there are birth parents who do not want an open adoption, just as there are adoptive parents who would prefer a closed process. But if it is an option for your family, we do believe in sharing its healing properties and promoting as much communication and honesty as we can.

We always love to hear from you and your personal experiences. What has your open adoption been like? What do you feel are the benefits or downfalls of your arrangement?