Risks and Benefits of Open Adoption

Open adoption has both strong critics and staunch supporters. Most of the criticism and support is based on the philosophical or legal rights of members of the adoption triangle, but empirical evidence to support either position is sparse. This article reviews the arguments for and against openness, and the empirical evidence that supports or refutes these arguments. Research to date indicates that birthmothers commonly view open adoption positively. However, teenage birthmothers often are not developmentally ready to assess the long-term consequences of openness, and may be overdependent on the adoptive parents and immature in their contacts. Adoptive parents are generally favorable toward openness, but many feel that they were pressured to accept it in order to obtain a child. Many adoptive parents state that they are uncertain about what the future may hold in open adoption. The effect of open adoption on the children is least understood at present and demands further long-term research. The choice of open adoption should be made in the course of comprehensive counseling of birthparents and adoptive parents by trained professionals. Continued contact should exist only if ongoing support through postadoption services is extended to all parties, with particular attention to the interests of the children. doption A practice in the United States has undergone a dramatic evolution in the past 30 years and continues to change radically. On one hand, postponed childbearing among two-career couples, changes in participation of women in the labor force, and a rising incidence of infertility have led to an increase in the number of couples and individuals seeking to adopt babies. On the other hand, birth control and abortion practices and societal acceptance of single motherhood have contributed to a sharp decrease in the number of healthy infants available for adoption. At the same time, the push to find permanent homes for foster children has resulted in an increased number of adoptable children with histories of maltreatment. (See the articles by Sokoloff and Stolley in this journal issue.) These changes in the adoption population have been accompanied by concomitant shifts in adoption practice. One of the most controversial shifts is the introduction of open adoption as standard practice among many adoption agencies and attorneys. Marianne Berry, Ph.D., A.C.S.W., is assistant professor at the School of Social Work, University of Texas at Arlington. This article is an expanded, revised, and updated version of a paper published by the author as “The effects of open adoption on biological and adoptive parents and the children: The arguments and the evidence,” Child Welfare (1991) 70:63751. The California Longrange Adoption Study research findings reported in this article were supported in part by a grant to the Child Welfare Research Center, University of California at Berkeley, from the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau. The Future of Children ADOPTION Vol. 3 • No. 1 Spring 1993 126 THE FUTURE OF CHILDREN SPRING 1993 Definition of Open Adoption Open adoption refers to the sharing of information and/or contacts between the adoptive and biological parents of an adopted child, before and/or after the placement of the child, and perhaps continuing for the life of the child. Open adoption is in direct opposition to the traditional confidential adoption practices of the recent past, where birthparents often did not know the identity of the adoptive parents and could not maintain any contact with the child or the adoptive family after placement. Until very recently, adopted children when reaching adulthood had no way of finding their biological parents. Today adoption professionals are generally supportive of giving adoptees access to records holding details of their genealogical and biological past and information necessary to pursue reunion with their biological parents if they have made known their availability for contact. As the number of infants in adoption has decreased over the past three decades, the influence and control of birthparents in the adoption process has increased dramatically. This push for open records and adoptees’ rights to information has been joined by a call for increased openness from the beginning of the placement, allowing birthparents to have continuing access to their child from the time the child is placed for adoption throughout the child’s life. The call for continuing access is based on two distinct developments in adoption practice. First, many professionals have expressed a concern about adoptees’ heightened identity confusion in adolescence arising from the secrecy attached to information about the past and have advocated openness as a way of ameliorating this confusion. Second, continuing contact is more common because the decreasing availability of adoptable infants has bolstered the involvement of the birthmother in adoption decision making and practice. As the number of infants in adoption has decreased over the past three decades, the influence and control of birthparents in the adoption process has increased dramatically. In independent adoptions, which have flourished in the recent past, attorneys and agencies have strengthened the role of the birthmother in the adoption process, allowing her to participate in the selection of the adoptive parents and supporting requests that she be allowed continuing access to the adopted child. Thus, there is great variation in open adoption today. Adoptions can be open prior to placement, for a set period of time after placement, or for the duration of the child’s life. Openness can involve a sharing of identifiable or nonidentifiable information during the preplacement period, a meeting of both sets of parents, and agreements concerning ongoing contact and/or sharing of information after adoption. Biological and adoptive parents are asked to specify at the beginning of the adoptive process how open they wish that adoption to be. Sorich and Siebert recommend matching adoptive and biological families partly on the basis of their choice of open, semiopen, or closed adoption. Although some have proposed frameworks to determine the extent of openness and categories of open adoptions, researchers are finding that these frameworks must be very fluid, fluctuating along a continuum of openness. Adoptive family relationships, like all family relationships, are constantly changing, and open arrangements will evolve and develop as the child and the families grow. Open adoption arrangements are informally practiced in the United States, and there is usually no legal contract filed with the court for an open adoption. This process has both strong critics and staunch supporters. Most of the criticism and support is based on the philosophical or legal rights of members of the adoption triangle, and empirical evidence to support either position is sparse. This article first describes the arguments for and against openness and then reviews empirical research that supports or refutes these hypotheses. Postulated Benefits of Open Adoption Open Adoption May Preclude Adoptive Parents’ Maladaptive Beliefs Traditional, or closed, adoptions, where little or no information about the biologiRisks and Benefits of Open Adoption 127 cal parents is shared with the adoptive family, are said to create many problems by their secrecy. They decrease adoptive parents’ sense of control over the adoption because the agency controls the flow of information. Problems in the adoption itself can be blamed on genetics or on the biological parents’ unknown lineage, and secrecy contributes to the denial by adoptive families that they are in any way different from biological families. Openness precludes the secrecy that encourages these maladaptive beliefs. Adoptive parents’ understanding of, and positive relationship with, birthparents should increase empathy toward the birthparents of the adopted child and reduce denial of the child’s biological heritage. Open Adoption May Diminish Birthmothers’ Separation Grief Counselors to birthmothers have postulated that these women experience extended loss and grief following the placement of children for adoption. Open adoption gives biological parents more control over the adoption decision by providing information about the adoptive parents who will be receiving their child. Having this information enables the birthparents to imagine or visualize the family environment in which their child will live and may relieve some of the guilt and uncertainty that accompany relinquishing a child. The counseling process throughout the preparations for open adoption is thought to facilitate the biological parents’ grieving and their decision making about the adoption itself. Also, the ability to have some continuing knowledge about a relinquished child may encourage birthparents to choose adoption, thereby increasing the number of children available and decreasing the wait for an adoptable child. In a very general way, therefore, openness may benefit prospective adoptive parents by increasing the pool of adoptable infants. Open Adoption May Prevent the Adoptees’ Identity Confusion Professionals have long postulated that confidential adoptions contribute to greater identity confusion for adoptees in adolescence. In addition, a 1973 study of 70 adults who were searching for their birthparents found a correlation between search and low self-esteem (although the research could not determine whether searching was a result of low selfesteem or whether low self-esteem was a result of the need to search). Adoptees are also reported to be high users of mental health services, particularly in adolescence, for emotional disturbance and identity problems. Adoption professionals further hypothesize that the secrecy resulting from altered birth certificates and sealed adoption records contributes to adoptees’ curiosity and confusion about their past and that a negative image of the birthparent, which persists because of secrecy, may 128 THE FUTURE OF CHILDREN SPRING 1993 interfere with a positive identity formation in the adoptee. Open adoption precludes the adoptees’ need to search for their biological parents in adolescence, a process termed “outreach” by Spencer. Outreach has been characterized as an adaptive effort to complete the chain that stretches from the present into the remote past, either as a Lack of information about heritage has been linked to problems with both individual adjustment and adoptive family problems. chological changes and wrestle with identity. Berman and Bufferd propose that the adoptee in a confidential adoption does not have the “biological reference points” that her nonadopted peer has and is unable to compare her physical development and maturation with that of her biological mother. Open adoption may also benefit adoptees by increasing their circle of supportive adults. Hajal and Rosenberg apply the concept of “metafamily” from the remarriage literature to the open adoption families. The adopted child in this circumstance has a larger-than-average extended family, resulting in a variety of relationships. Adopted children who are in direct contact with biological parents throughout childhood may indeed treat them as aunts or uncles or other extended family members. move toward healing the early pain of separation or as a result of the adoptee’s need for “an internal sense of human conPostulated Risks of Open nectedness.“ Lack of information about Adoption heritage has been linked to problems with both individual adjustment and adoptive Open Adoption May Aggravate family problems. Adoptive Parents’ Insecurity Some professionals believe that early openness will prevent psychological maladjustment. If children have access to their birthparents, they can obtain answers to questions about their identity or their biological roots as those questions arise, rather than in retrospect once they reach adulthood. If biological parents are known and available, they may not be idealized or villainized by the child, but seen as real people who are a part of the child’s past and present. For children who are adopted when older and who know and remember their birthparents, continuing contact with their birthparents may be especially appropriate. The relationship between older adopted children and their adoptive parents has been compared to that of stepfamilies. They are individuals with a past history in another family and the ideas and beliefs about family life that history has spawned. If adoptive parents avoid dealing with their children’s history, they are denying those children a part of their identity. Open adoptions that acknowledge an older child’s history and preadoptive genealogy should therefore support a more complete identity development. Adjustment issues are particularly salient for adoptees in adolescence, as they experience numerous physical and psyMany childless adoptive parents begin adoption with doubts about their ability to parent, to which is added concern about the permanence of adoption. Berman and Bufferd state that adoptive parents, as a normal part of family development, face the question of their entitlement to the adopted child during the first stages of an adoptive placement. Open adoption may exacerbate uncertainty. Hajal and Rosenberg characterize the early stages of adoption as a time of “uncertainty and insecurity . . . mourning the loss of their wish for a biological family.“ Wondering whether the biological parents will change their mind can inhibit healthy bonding with the newly adopted child. Open Adoption May Prolong Separation Grief and Lead to Overdependence in Birthparents Cocozzelli warns that the potential benefits of open adoption may persuade some adolescent mothers who would not otherwise have done so to relinquish a child. Those mothers who relinquish in the expectation of continued contact may risk prolonged uncertainty and grief. Indeed, adoption professionals who work with biological mothers caution that open adoptions which include continued contact prevent closure on the biological mother’s loss in having given up the child and may Risks and Benefits of Open Adoption 129 interfere with the developmental task of grieving for the relinquished child. The attachment between a biological mother and the adopted child as a result of ongoing contact may create ambivalence and confusion for the biological mother instead of easing her guilty feelings. This The biggest risk of open adoption postulated by most adoption professionals is that it will interfere with the process of bonding between adoptive