Openness

Enrich your word power! I wasn’t even aware that “openness” was a word before we started to explore adoption. Yet, if we decide to adopt in the U.S. then we’ll have to think a good deal about this new word: “openness”.

If you don’t know (and I didn’t), basically openness describes how much and what kind of information is shared between the adoptive family and the child’s biological parents or grandparents. In a totally closed adoption, no information is shared…everything is in locked files that only Ethan Hunt could crack open (Mission: Impossible). Most adoptions today have “some” degree of openness (there’s that word again). But the question is: “how much is right”. The answer is: “it depends”. Ambiguous to be certain. Scary? Maybe.

From Child Welfare Information Gateway, for your reading pleasure, here’s a description of openness.

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What is open adoption?

Open, or fully disclosed, adoptions allow adoptive parents, and often the adopted child, to interact directly with birth parents. Open adoption falls at one end of an openness communication continuum that allows family members to interact in ways that feel most comfortable to them. In semi-open or mediated adoptions, information is relayed through a mediator (e.g., an agency caseworker or attorney) rather than through direct contact between the birth and adoptive families. In confidential adoptions, no identifying information is exchanged.

In open adoptions, communication may include letters, e-mails, telephone calls, or visits. The frequency of contact ranges from every few years to several times a month or more, depending on the needs and wishes of all involved. The goals of open adoption are:

• To minimize the child’s loss of relationships.
• To maintain and celebrate the adopted child’s connections with all the important people in his or her life.
• To allow children to resolve losses with truth, rather than with fantasy.

The recent movement toward open adoption has taken place in the context of larger social change. Birth parents are now empowered to make choices: there is less stigma in raising children alone and greater access to abortion and birth control. Also, the societal movement toward less secrecy and the prizing of diversity, including a variety of family structures, has allowed for a greater acceptance of open adoption.