The History of Open Adoption
Saturday May 26, 2007
My mother placed a child for adoption back in 1970. This, of course, was a closed adoption. My sisters and I did not know about this other sister until after my mother's death in 1992. Looking back I can now understand some of my mother's behavior, like crying for no reason or saying how placing a child for adoption is the hardest thing anyone could ever do.
Lucille Carroll has written an essay about adoption and the different levels of openness throughout history. Interesting read....__________________________
- The History of Open Adoption
- Open Adoption - A Definition
- Megan's Birthday Tree - A Story About Open Adoption - Children's Book Review
I have seen this slightly editorial article on this site several times before and always misinterpeted wrongly that she thought all adoptions should be “open adoptions”. Then I noticed this time in reading it that she had in her closing of her partial editorial that “both open and closed adoptions need to be legally allowed and respected by all”. So she wasn’t saying that she was against closed or semi-open adoptions. She was saying that if adoptive parents did chose to make an “Ongoing Contact Agreement” or a totally open adoption that the laws should make that post-adoption agreement legally bound and enforceable. Now that I see that the author says that semi-open and “closed adoptions need to be legally allowed and respected by all” also, I am in less of a state of shock.
Some adoptions wouldn’t be safe or in the best interest of the child if left open, especially in foster care adoptions.
My adoption is closed – only recently have we tried to locate our sons’ birth family. Our boys are approaching adulthood, one is already there, so find it a good time to search.
Thank you for your insight and re-reading of the piece.
Thank you Carrie for your kind and respectful reply to my comment. I know what you mean by your reply as my husband are in some unique hybrid position that you as professional probably have seen before. Our child’s birthparents had all their children removed, put in foster care, and after the 12 to 18 month period of judicial reviews their parental rights terminated several years ago. Subsequent children born to them since then have been taken 48 hours straight after birth at the hospital and the same process repeated. They did not want this last child to spend a day in foster care and wanted to be empowered to choose his parents themselves so they chose to place him for adoption through our church’s social services agency. The state’s child protective services was literally swarmed in there a few hours after birth all the way to physically walking with us to car and watching us buckle our newborn in and making sure we really drove off from the hospital. Due to HIPPA and basic social work client confidentiality we still barely have a clue why it was considered endangerment to these other minors and any future offspring to be with our child’s birthparents. Our child’s birthparents are too afraid to be judged to tell us anything. This kind of makes it hard to make an educated decision about a totally open adoption naturally. Plus we were made to promise, by the child protective services worker, that we wouldn’t see the birthparents again and told her that we lived too far away to do so anyways. We send pictures, video, e-mails, letters, cards, and talk by phone for now. As the adoption approaches finalization they are hinting they want more now.