Does anyone still choose closed?

When I placed my daughter I thought open was the way to go. They lied and told me so many things would happen which never did. Then after she found me I welcomed her with open arms and she became a nightmare! If I had it to do all over it would have been closed and everything sealed. Placing her was hard enough then to have it all come back to me as a total night mare just wasn't worth it. So if I was able to change that I would have went with closed. Trust me they come back wanting you to pay up what they perceive you owe. Just saying from my experience.

I'm new here, so don't know how to start a thread . . . But, I have been thinking about something and wonder what your thoughts about might be? I am a mother, grandmother, and court appointed guardian, which really isn't so far removed from fostering or adopting, given that mom, who has some mental disability, was not born to me, but is the mother of my grandchild. On the other side of that, during our 3-year-long (so far) ordeal with the birth and subsequent (serious) medical needs of that granddaughter, I ended up loosing two VERY LOVED 'grandchildren" who chose to call my husband and me their grandparents (and one may actually be our firstborn grandchild). It has been a heartbreaking situation, that I feel never had to be, if laws better served children, (and in our state and case, grandparents, too). How many of you would go along with the idea of mandatory paternity testing whenever a baby is born out of wedlock? This would assure that the mother could not name the wrong father, and that she did name all possible fathers so that a match would be found in the paternity testing. As a mother of sons, I resent that men are required to step up to that child support plate - unless the mother decides to keep them ignorant of the pregnancy, or of the "possibility" that they could be the father of her expected / newly born baby. It was that very sort of deception that prevented my son from knowing he might be a father until years later. It was deception that contributed to my family's loss of those children to state custody. Another thought: As part of attempting to seek custody or adoption of those children, hubby and I (our son was not able) were required to take foster / adoption classes. So is every foster or adoptive parent out there. And it does give us a better understanding of the poor children placed in such situations by no choice or fault of their own. Why shouldn't bio-parents - at least first time parents - and especially young, single mothers - also be required to take parenting classes prior to delivering their baby? Why can't they also learn the issues that face an abused or neglected child when there is no other choice but state intervention left for them? Do you think it could possibly reduce the number of children that end up in foster care? That it might help some young parents learn to take responsibility for placing their child's need ahead of their own selfishness? Maybe I'm pipe-dreaming for solutions. I'd like to know your thoughts, and any suggestions you might have for changes?

MBethT I hope I don't stop others from responding... I just wanted to help you figure this out...It took me forever to figure it out too, I don't remember how long but I was stumped...welcome the weekends are kind of quiet. You go to the Forum Categories bar above and choose the category - I'm choosing Adoptive Parents but you can pick any of the categories some are busier than others. (you can right click to open in a new window so you can follow the instructions below.) Adoptive Parents Click on that and then you see the subforums listed - I'm using the first one listed as an example below. General Adoptive Parent Support Click on that and then at the top left you will see a button that says "New Thread" (it's above the purple bar that says "Threads in Forum: Adoptive Parent Support"). Click on the "New Thread" and pick a title for your post and write what you want to say. Kind regards,Dickons

Thank you. A big help!!!

There's no way I would choose closed or semi open adoption. I would want to see my child grow up, even if it's a couple times a year. But if I were adopting a child I would want an open adoption, because I think that's good for the child. But you don't always get that in foster care. The parents can be way to screwed up.

It'd be a bit complicated, but I think that parents adopting from foster care should have to portion the court for a closed adoption, and that prospective foster adopt parents should be matched with children taking their attitudes towards open adoption into consideration. There's some birth parents who abandon their children, who never show for visits or court. Their kids can be placed with parents who want closed adoption. If a parent's rights were terminated because of inadequate housing, or otherwise failing to jump through hoops while being nitpicked to death, then their child should be adopted by parents who will place to keep it open. I lost rights to my children in the course of escaping from an abusive marriage. They were adopted by my ex's sister, who will not allow any contact. She claims I must have done something or they wouldn't have take my kids. I think that she wanted my kids all along, that it was convenient for her that her brother abused me, and that she wants the adoption closed because I remind her that her uterus doesn't work. I had troy ed to be nice to get when I was married to her brother, but she always treated me badly while doting on my kids and keeping scrapbooks of pictures of them, just the kids, not me or their father. Apparently, no one had called her on this. The laws need to change, for the good of the kids. If kinship placements can't be fair to the parent who isn't kin, then they need to choose between having some rules about openness, or have the child go to someone neutral.

There is no way I would try to change decisions made by any parent as to either "open" or "closed" adoption. That is for them to decide. This is only a sharing of my story on how it feels to be a part of a closed adoption.I would ask that regardless of how a child comes into a new family, some b-family history is known and can be shared with the child if the a-parents want to share.In my opinion, there are 2 sides of the adoption event that involve the adoptee.1.)What history regarding b-family is known and can be shared? The a-parents may know circumstance, even at best, they prefer not to share.2.) Does the adoptee want to search in the hopes of finding the b-parents?I am a male adoptee given up in the era of strictly closed adoptions. B-moms were told to give up their child, and go back home forgetting having given up a child.When the adoption secret was shared at 7, no family history was provided. It was as tho I came to the end of a road, there was a barrier, and no sign in terms of turn around, or directions to a different pathway.The result in my own case was an "outsider" looking in. Trying to find pieces to match to match someone that had given me life. There was nothing. It was not until almost 75 years later that I was able to get an adoption decree which spelled out both my b-name and identify b-mom. In the following years, it was as tho I was an alien accepted on the fringes of society, but never actually being an equal. It would have been extremely helpful to me as an adoptee to have had some family history. Just anything.I wish you the best

There is no way I would try to change decisions made by any parent as to either "open" or "closed" adoption. That is for them to decide. This is only a sharing of my story on how it feels to be a part of a closed adoption. I would ask that regardless of how a child comes into a new family, some b-family history is known and can be shared with the child if the a-parents want to share. In my opinion, there are 2 sides of the adoption event that involve the adoptee. 1.)What history regarding b-family is known and can be shared? The a-parents may know circumstance, even at best, they prefer not to share. 2.) Does the adoptee want to search in the hopes of finding the b-parents? I am a male adoptee given up in the era of strictly closed adoptions. B-moms were told to give up their child, and go back home forgetting having given up a child. When the adoption secret was shared at 7, no family history was provided. It was as tho I came to the end of a road, there was a barrier, and no sign in terms of turn around, or directions to a different pathway. The result in my own case was an "outsider" looking in. Trying to find pieces to match to someone that had given me life. There was nothing. It was not until almost 75 years later that I was able to get an adoption decree which spelled out both my b-name and identify b-mom. In the years prior to getting the adoption decree, I had nothing. It was as tho I was an alien accepted on the fringes of society, but never actually being an equal. It would have been extremely helpful to me as an adoptee to have had some family history. Just anything. I wish you the best

With a domestic adoption I see no issue with having it open if the parents are even remotely stable. It's really good for the kids, Takes all the mystery out of the adoption. I also think it helps the birth parents to know & see that their little one is doing well. However mine came from foster care & frankly their family is very unstable, often homeless & always begging for money. Not awful people just totally dysfunctional.

We are going with Semi-open. For us this means that we will send the birth mom letters and pictures once or twice a year. She would like more contact- a fully open adoption. However her previous abuse/neglect of the children, failure to follow any part of the parenting plan leads us to minimizing contact at this point. The oldest child has asked not to see birth mom. We are open to more contact down the road- right now this is the right choice for us. The birth father has expressed no interest in either child.

I think it depends on the situation. I adopted once from DFS (kinship) placement. First mom not stable but loves her kids. We do visits when she asks (which is rare) but I don't know the reasons for her lack of involvement. May be it's too painful, maybe she just didn't need to be. Either way we love her and give her as much as she wants. But always 100% supervised. 2nd adoption is extremely open. She's my favorite babysitter and the best person I could ever share a child with! (other than hubby of course!) we don't co-parent. She is very much not our daughters "mommy", but a mom none the less! She'll even watch both kids! :wings: I am forever grateful that my kids will never have to ask why did my first mom not want me (they'll know she did). Why wasn't I good enough (So good two mommies got them :love: ). I will never feel as if there is some rouge parent out there waiting until my kid is 18 to swing in and be the super fun parent :arrow: while I am trying to recover from the teen years! So for us it's each adoption for it's self :rolleyes: and we truly couldn't be happier.

...but it isn't. It all changed in the very beginning after DS was born and I requested too many pictures and too much contact and I suppose scared them away. Now I feel sort of duped and misled that we would be this happy (yet a little weird) little long distance family. Now looking back, I kinda think they were just telling me what they knew I wanted to hear in order to get my baby. As mean as that sounds, is was just SO EASY for them to push me aside the moment I acted inappropriately. And even now, 11 years later, when I attempt contact or conversation with them, I'm fearful and akward and afraid that whatever I say may cause me to lose the current amount of contact I do have. I never wanted to co-parent, I totally understood and respected the fact that I had given up all those rights when I signed those adoption papers, but I was TOLD he would know who I am, and that IT WOULD BE AN OPEN ADOPTION. If seeing a few pics of them on Facebook once or twice a month, and getting a curt response to a yearly heartfelt message hoping for more information on the situation and what they've told him and whether I might get to someday meet him counts as open adoption, than I guess that's what we have. So, in answer to the question, closed adoption is still there, it's just now called whatever is necessary to get the adoption to go through, because closed sounds so scary. But logically and in reality, closed is what my adoption is, sadly.

Chris25princess - I'm so sorry sweetie that your adoption is not what you hoped it would be. That's awful. Adoptions are tough and they should have stuck by the agreement. I'm an adoptive parent and no matter how tough the adoption gets you don't go back on your word. I think that's normal humanity. Your adoption isn't closed a closed adoption means you never know where your child is, their name, their parents name, you don't see them on Facebook you don't know where they are or if they're alive and for some First Mom's it's a reality so you do have some openness. So although yours isn't as open as they agreed and should have stuck to. Your current situation is what I'd call semi-open. Do you by chance live in a state where OA agreements are enforceable? I'm sorry you feel as if you need to live in fear. That's not how it should be. Sending hugs and I'm sooo sorry your going through this 11 years is a long time for this kind of hurt.

Thanks for your response. Through reading threads and finding support on this site, I have gained the courage to write my aparents a lengthy letter explaining my feelings. The problem is, the "open" agreement of ours was basically only a verbal one, and so now, 11 years later, it's sort of a grey area, they say that all they agreed to was "seeing how things went" and "playing it by ear" but I firmly remember feeling very confident that we would stay in constant contact. I remember being utterly shocked and hurt when that wasn't the case, and the worst part was, I was to blame for it, because I pressed too much for pictures and scared them with how emotional and needy I was in the beginning, so the contact just stopped. It wasn't even until years later that I got to be their friends on FB. But I'm hoping this letter I wrote to them will help them better understand how I'm feeling and point out (in a nice way) that I think I deserve to know more about him, and that no matter what was or wasn't agreed to in the first place, I deserve to know more than just the odd couple paragraphs every 3-4 years. I hope I clearly conveyed to them that I just want to be updated more and his development, and the kind of kid he is, that sort of thing. I want to know how much he knows about his adoption, and wonder if he'll ever maybe want to meet me. ( I would sooo love that) but I also made it clear that I don't mean to be pushy, I understand how my contacting them all of a sudden could be weird and I don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable. Now I just wait to see what they say. :)

I think it's great that your telling them your feelings. Trust me your son will want to meet you some day. It will happen. Let us know how it goes. I hope they open up more and make up for their ill deeds! Sending support!