Ep 7: Advantages & Disadvantages of Open Vs. Closed Adoption

Show Notes Episode 7: Advantages & Disadvantages of Open Vs. Closed Adoption In this Episode Heather discusses: Open vs Closed Adoption Advantages and disadvantages of open adoption Advantages and disadvantages of closed adoption A peek into our open adoption arrangement Adoption terms Links Mentioned: fortheloveofadoption.com Hi, friends. Welcome back to the For the Love of Adoption Show, Episode Seven. Last week, we talked about open versus closed adoption. And we started looking at some of the differences between them and some of the advantages and disadvantages. If you have not listened to that episode, yet, this is part two. So, I would suggest going back and listening to that first. We are going to continue the conversation today talking about more advantages and disadvantages to everyone in the adoption. So first of all, I want to talk about the advantages of open adoption to the birth parents. So, advantages for the birth parents include an increased ability to deal with grief and loss. There can be a real comfort in knowing how the child is doing. So, when an open adoption is established, and that was the birth parents' or birth mom's wish, that's usually the main reason. It just gives them comfort in knowing how the child is doing. It can give them a sense of control over the decision-making and placement since they get to actually meet and ultimately decide on the adoptive parents, this can give them peace about their decision. It can give them the potential for more involvement in the child's life and the potential to develop a healthy relationship with the child as they grow. Just overall, open adoption can help make the decision to place their child for adoption easier. There's also advantages of open adoption to adoptive parents. This includes the ability to pray for the birth parents by name with your children, or even pray with them. The potential for the relationship with the birth family, more understanding of your child's history, increased empathy for the birth parents, and practically easier access to medical information and records you might need. And then advantages to the adopted child with open adoption, direct access to the birth parents history. The need to search for birth parents is eliminated. You can identify questions that are more easily answered such as who do I look like or why was I placed. And, it can ease feelings of abandonment since the birth parent is still reachable and it helps lessen fantasies like they know the birth parents are real. And it increases their circle of supportive adults in their life. It increases the likelihood of biological family relationships. And in transracial adoption, it gives them exposure to racial and ethnic heritage and that is a really big deal. Now let's talk about some disadvantages of open adoption. So disadvantages of open adoption to birth parents is a potential disappointment if the adoptive family cannot meet all the expectations or needs, or they choose not to later or maybe they have to move. They don't send the pictures like they said they would or the visits. So basically, if for whatever reason the adoptive parents don't continue the contact, that can be a disadvantage of open adoption because you've started that and then it's broken. Disadvantages to adoptive parents in open adoption could be potential pressure to accept openness or not be able to adopt especially with open adoption becoming more prominent. And then potential difficulty with unstable birth parents could be another one. Disadvantages for adopted children. Potential feelings of rejection if the contact stops. Another disadvantage of open adoption for adopted children could be a difficulty explaining the relationship to their peers, and a potential for playing the families against each other. Now, I want to talk about advantages and disadvantages of closed adoption to each person. Advantages of closed adoption to birth parents could be the privacy. Some feel that this provides a sense of closure and the ability to move on with their life. That's probably why our friend's birth mom chose to have a closed adoption, and probably much more. But that's probably one of the reasons. With closed adoption, an advantage to adoptive parents can be no danger or birth parent interference. Advantages of closed adoption to adoptive children can be protection from unstable birth parents. Okay, now let's look at disadvantages of closed adoption for everyone. So disadvantages of closed adoption for birth parents is less grief resolution, due to a lack of information about the child's well-being. They can't send an email and find out how they're doing. And that can be hard. Disadvantages in closed adoption for adoptive parents can be less empathy for the birth parents, no access to additional medical information about the birth family, and less control because the agency may control the information. So if you want to just find out something and you don't have contact, you can't just send an email or make a phone call and find out you may have to try to get information from the agency, and depending on confidentiality, you may not be able to get that information. Disadvantages of closed adoption to the adopted children are possible adolescent identity confusion because they're unable to compare physical and emotional traits to their birth families, limited access to information that others take for granted, and a potential preoccupation with adoption issues because so much is unknown. If you are in the process of adoption or thinking about adoption, but maybe you're a little bit overwhelmed with all there is to learn specifically some of the adoption terms, that you just don't know what they all mean, I get it. I remember learning so much when we were going through the process. And just knowing some of the terms would have gone so far, to just helping me feel more educated and understanding what people were talking about at the agency, and just in any conversations around adoption. So, because of that, I have created a free download of adoption definitions. This is a two-page quick Glossary of the most common terms you will come across while going through the adoption process. This can go a long way in just helping you feel more educated when talking to others about adoption. You can find this in my resource library by going to fortheloveofadoption.com. Scroll to the bottom of the homepage, and you'll see the link for the resource library there where you are going to be able to get this PDF but also many others that can help you along with your adoption journey. I know what's going to help you feel more educated go grab that today. So open and closed and its options obviously are very different. And although there are some advantages and disadvantages to each type, again, open adoption has gained a lot of momentum in recent years. And it seems to be the healthier option when given the choice. However, it is important that you decide what level of contact you're okay with this can grow over time, but the level of openness can vary greatly. And in no way should you step into something that you are not prepared to step into or commit to something that you're not truly committed to. So just to give you a little look into our open adoption arrangement. When we first started pursuing adoption, we really thought we were only interested in closed adoption. Honestly, honestly, the idea of open adoption was extremely uncomfortable and scary even to us at the time. However, our agency informed us that more and more adoptions were at least semi-open. And many birth parents specifically request that adoptive parents are open to at least some level of contact. So many times again, birth parents just want to know that the child is doing well. And they want this reassurance of that throughout the child's life. When you really think about the fact that a birth parent who chooses to place their child for adoption, is making the hardest decision they'll probably ever make, you can understand why they'd want this small return. Our agreement after we gave it a lot of thought, we decided it might not be a bad idea to change our preferences to open if we could help decide how much openness we were okay with. We defined aspects we were comfortable with such as exchanging first names and setting up a private email account where we could send updates regularly. And some things we just weren't comfortable with and that included exchanging personal information, such as last names and addresses But now with our daughter being five and our son, almost four, we have shared last names and phone numbers. And we are now completely fine with that. The relationship just had to grow and get to the point where we were comfortable with that. And we saw that it was healthy and good. So again, our daughter's five, our son's almost four. And now that we have the relationship with their birth mom that we do, we really cannot imagine it being any other way. And we don't want it any other way. It's proven to be a great, amazing comfort and advantage. In addition, she would never, ever have reached out to us and asked us to adopt a second time, if we had not had an open adoption. And if she hadn't been comfortable with us and had a way to contact us directly. I truly, truly believe that because of our willingness to have an open adoption, and because of us living up to what we said we would and staying in contact with her, we have our son, I do not believe we would have him otherwise. Also, she's always telling us how happy she is that she chose us and that she could not be happier with her decision. That means more as an adoptive parent than I can express. That's huge. I want her to be happy with the decision she made, and to have an open adoption with her. And to know that that's how she feels it means so much. Because of our openness agreement with her, we were invited to attend the ultrasound where we learned that our baby boy would be a boy. And without it, we would not have had that opportunity. So now, you can never predict what the future will bring and whether the contact will remain steady. You just can't. Much of that depends on the birth parent. And many times, the birth parents may end up distancing themselves if they just feel it gets too hard. Or maybe life just gets in the way. Maybe they have to move. So many things can happen. But we want our children to know their whole story. We're not going to hold back part of their whole story when we have the opportunity to share it with them. At this time, we have an open invitation for her to let us know if she'd like to get together. When she wants to arrange something as soon as it works with our schedules, we do it. In addition, we send her regular updates and pictures via text message. We believe that the healthiest decision for our children is that they know their whole story as much as possible. We have told them from the beginning that she is their birth mom. And as much as they can understand that for their age, they do. This is going to help them be able to put the puzzle pieces together. We will do whatever we can to make that possible. And honestly, as they get older, it will ultimately be up to them to decide if they want to have a relationship with their biological family assuming the family is open to that. In the meantime, we will speak to our children about their birth mom in love. We will have visits with her for as long as she wants and as long as we're able to. And we will make sure that they know that she made the hardest decision of her life out of love. She made the hardest decision of her life out of love. We want them to know their whole story. And she is such a huge part of that. We do not feel right taking that from them for as long as they can have a healthy relationship with her. We are thankful for open adoption. We're thankful for her. And this is what's worked best for our family. Thanks so much for listening in today. And did you know that I offer a full library of free resources to help you along on your adoption journey, and I'm always adding more. This includes downloads of grant recommendations, adoption fundraising ideas, an agency questionnaire, a hospital checklist, and much more. You can find that by going to ForTheLoveOfAdoption.com and scrolling to the bottom of the homepage. And if you have an idea for something you'd love to see added to this library, please send me a message and let me know. I'm always looking for ways to help you on your adoption journey. If you enjoy Instagram, be sure to find me there @fortheloveofadoption, where I love to hang out and share live videos and plenty of adoption tips. I'm always excited to support you in your adoption journey. See you next time.