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I've been wondering about this. We switched to domestic adoption partly because we were interested in a more open adoption. We felt it was best for children to know about their birth family and be able to have any questions answered directly. We are pretty open in regards to what possible issues we are willing to accept in an adoption situation. We've always said that we are pretty workable about the parameters of open adoption, depending on the relationship and circumstances. We aren't being evasive in saying this...it truly does depend on these things. We recently had to let a pbmom know that we couldn't work with her because we felt that we wanted two very different things. We had concerns about future contact with her because of her volatile nature, mental illnesses, some domestic violence history, and addiction issues. While she's working on these things...we also are very aware of long term possibilities. So we proposed what we were comfortable with. We weren't willing to commit to visits based on some of these things...however we still were willing to leave the possibility of visits open (with some specific boundaries clearly listed). In this case she was envisioning adoption as more of an extended family type of situation. While we may feel that would be great in certain situations...we didn't feel like that would be a good idea in this case. I have a hard time coming up with scenarios where exchange of photos and updates from either side would not be a good idea...even if it meant that it had to be through a 3rd party. I'm just wondering...in the era of promoting fully open adoption...when do people feel that open adoption is NOT in the best interest of the child and/or should not be considered?
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Each situation is different, it reallt depends on how the bio-parents handle the adoption, what led to adoption, , etc. For example, most foster care (not all) situations would lean towards a closed adoption with no pictures or updates. People who are dealing with bio-parents with criminal activities and jail may not want them to have current information, particularly if they are violent.
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We have a situation with one bparent with a mental illness and another that is incarcerated due to fairly severe criminal activity. We have been able to maintain what we feel is very positive contact with both sides of the family. Did it take time? Yes. Did we start with an intermediary? Yes. Did it feel silly after a while? Yes. Our boys bparents and family, despite their issues, love the boys. They have been able to provide a sense of security to the boys that I could not provide. I feel that contact, particularly with bdad, has been VERY good for us. I wish bmom was more consistent, but even our limited contact with her has allowed us to keep in contact with the boys' siblings, to know when new babies are coming and to do the best we can to establish relationships. I will say however that distance has been a help in these circumstances and with the kids comfort level. We are on the West Coast of Canada, our boys first family all lives in Missouri. As well, we never have forced the KIDS to have contact. For many years (at least 5) the contact was exclusively between the adults and the kids did not want direct contact themselves. They were VERY fascinated with the letters we received, pictures etc but their trust had been broken and took a long time to earn back. I give bdad ALOT of credit for working very hard and being extremely consistent and understanding in his contact with us and slowly that earned the boys' trust (to a degree) back. They now talk on the phone.
Our youngest sons bfather is a drug dealer who has a very violent hstory. We have no urge to have any type of contact with him. I have sent pictures to his mother who has never responded. I have also talked with her on the phone. I am actually relieved she doesnt seem to want contact because to be quite homest, they are a complete and total mess over there and I am not sure it is healthy for our family. But I did try. The birthmother of our boys ( they share the same bmother) Is a career criminal and drug addict, but she isn't what I would deem dangerous. If when she gets out of jail, we decide she will be dangerous, or at the least, a bad influence, we will not allow contact. For the time being, I write her every week and send pictures twice a month. Not because I want to~ Because trust me, I don't~ but because it will be important for the boys one day.( what makes it harder is that birthmom is my sister in law) If there is ever ANY element of danger, then to us, openess is not an option. Our first priority is the safety and well being of our children.
We were involved in a couple of situations that were supposed to be open adoptions but once I found out more about them I declined and in one the agency endded up placing the baby in another state to avoid contact with the birth family. That sitaution involved a situation where the birthmom was incarcerated and her sister had the baby and decided taht she could no longer parent (she was raising three children with serious special needs) but wanted an open adoption. It sounded good in theory. Well when we met with the foster family we discoved that the birthmom was out of jail and living with her drug dealing gangbanger boyfriend who was threatening the foster family. The second was a situation involving domestic abuse. The birthmom was in a shelter hiding from birthfather who was opposed to the adoption. He could not fight it offically because that would mean that he could have been arrested on the several warrants for trying to kill her. He was threatening to kill anyone who adopted the baby and since he had two convictions for attempted murder we tok it seriously. We ONLY would have done a mediated adoption because we did not want to take the chance of him finding us. Besides that we were open to all the other situations we ran into. lisa
I'm only aware of three situations where closed was preferred. One involved bmom who did not want any openness. She had abused substances during the pregnancy. Aparents suspected she did not want to 'face' what she had done to the baby inside her. Because of state law, aparents had her identifying information and she was given theirs. She told them she was destroying the info she had lest her daughter find it. She gave permission to be contacted ONLY in case of medical emergency. Child is now almost 5 and has not heard a word from bmom. Interestingly though they've had contact from the daughter, now 19 or so YOA, who saw their newspaper ad for a second child adoption and called to see if maybe the toddler in the paper was her biological half-sibling. It was, they've exchanged phone calls and pictures. In another situation bmom was a 13 YO victim of incest. For her behavioral health and for safety reasons involving her family, bfamily insisted on zero contact and have held to that for years. Last one was a bmom who hid her pregnancy from her strictly religious family. No contact, though the familly has a website up with pictures on it that they update regularly in hopes that bmom will visit and see. Regina
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Kim, A fully open adoption integrated/extended family relationship is not OK when the people involved are not all in complete agreement. Honestly, for these relationships to work, you've got to like and respect each other. If you don't, it will break down. Ours is a fully open integrated family adoption. Other than in places like here, there is no distinction between Ryan's Aunt T and Aunt K and Nonni and Mom-Mom. They're all relatives. His birth parents are Bema and Beda, names he gave them at 18 months. Simply put, we're a family. To someone on the street who observed us they would not think one iota differently. We like each other, enjoy each other's company, respect each other and trust each other. It's not always easy (what family relationship is?). Sometimes it's more difficult than we'd like. We're all committed though to what we're doing. DH and I started out wanting this kind of relationship. We're a military family, so we're used to making our family wherever we are, and I come from a merry band of people mostly related by DNA. We were told that what we were hoping for was likely not to happen so don't be disappointed if there was less. Our son's bparents were told the same BTW. So I think it's not OK if you're not comfortable with it. If deep in your heart you wouldn't introduce your child's bfamily as part of your family to anyone you meet. Because that's what full integration demands for your child to understand that all in the family are equal. JMHO Regina