Open adoption Totally Explained

Everything about Open Adoption totally explained

Open adoption is a form of adoption in which the adoptive parents, and often the adopted child, interact directly with birth parents. Family members interact in ways that feel most comfortable to them. Communication may include letters, emails, telephone calls, or visits. The frequency of contact is negotiated and can range from every few years to several times a month or more. Contact often changes as a child grows and has more questions about his or her adoption or as families’ needs change. Direct access to birth parents and history has advantages of answering identity questions ("Who do I look like? Why was I placed?") and lessening fantasies (birth parents are "real"). There are also disadvantages. There is no clean break for assimilation into family, which some feel is necessary. In some jurisdictions, the birth and adoptive parents may enter into a binding agreement concerning visitation, exchange of information, or other interaction regarding the child. Far more common are informal agreements, which may change over time as each set of parents' lives progress. As legal guardians, the adoptive parents are responsible for implementing contact arrangements in the child's best interests and hold final decision-making authority.

Access to birth records

In nearly all US States, adoption records are sealed and withheld from public inspection after the adoption is finalized. Most States have instituted procedures by which parties to an adoption may obtain nonidentifying and identifying information from an adoption record while still protecting the interests of all parties. Nonidentifying information includes the date and place of the adoptee's birth; age, race, ethnicity, religion, medical history, physical description, education, occupation of the birth parents; reason for placing the child for adoption; and the existence of other children born to each birth parent.
   All States allow an adoptive parents to nonidentifying information of an adoptee who is still a minor. Nearly all States allow the adoptee upon reaching adulthood to nonidentifying information about birth relatives. Approximately 27 States allow birth parents access to nonidentifying information. In addition, many States give such access to adult birth siblings.
   Identifying information is any data that may lead to the positive identification of an adoptee, birth parents, or other birth relatives. Nearly all States permit the release of identifying information when the person whose information is sought has consented to the release. Many States ask birth parents to specify at the time of consent or relinquishment whether they're willing to have their identity disclosed to the adoptee when he or she's age 18 or 21.5. If consent isn't on file, the information may not be released without a court order documenting good cause to release the information. A person seeking a court order must be able to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that there's a compelling reason for disclosure that outweighs maintaining the confidentiality of a party to an adoption. In Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, Kansas, New Hampshire, and Oregon, there's no requirement to document good cause in order to access their birth certificates. Some groups, such as Bastard Nation, One Voice, and Origins USA, campaign for adoptees' automatic access to birth certificates in other US states.
   At age 18, people adopted in the United Kingdom are automatically entitled to their birth certificates and may access their adoption records.

Other degrees of openness

An adoption where the adoptive and birth parents don't become aware of each others' identities and where only medical and historical information is given to the adoptive parents is known as a closed adoption. In a semi-open adoption, the birth parents may meet the adoptive parents one or several times and then have no more physical contact. Non-identifying letters and pictures may be exchanged directly or via a third party, such as an adoption agency, throughout the years.

History of openness in adoption

Closed adoptions began in the late 19th century and remained popular until the early 1980s. They protected birth mothers and adoptive parents from the social stigma that surrounded adoption at the time. Birth mothers who pursued adoption were often viewed as social outcasts by society. Many adoptive parents were also seen as outcasts due to their inability to bear their own children. This led to the popularity of closed adoptions, which protected the identities of both birth and adoptive parents.
   By the 1980s, as the social stigmas had decreased and benefits of openness became better understood, openness in adoption became much more common.
   Although open adoptions are thought to be a relatively new phenomenon, in fact most adoptions in the United States were open until the twentieth century. Until the 1930's, most adoptive parents and birth parents had contact at least during the adoption process. In many cases, adoption was seen as a social support: young children were adopted out not only to help their parents (by reducing the number of children they'd to support) but also to help another family by providing an apprentice.
   Adoptions became closed when social pressures mandated that families preserve the myth that they were formed biologically. One researcher has referred to these families, that made every attempt to match the child physically to their adoptive families, as 'as if' families.

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