In response to my blog yesterday about reasons that adoptive parents resist adoption, a reader posted the following comment:

The fear of being pushed into the role of a co-parent, or of a babysitter is not about insecurity. Having the birthparents hovering about is very similar to the predicament that step-parents face. A non custodial parent that knows their position is, or ought... more

2. I don’t want to feel like the babysitter. I want to be the parent.

Whether or not the adoption is open, the adoptive parents ARE the parents. They are the ones who are legally responsible for every aspect of raising the child. They are the ones who do the day-to-day parenting. They are the ones with the parent-child relationship. None of this changes whether the adoption is open or closed.

That being said, if you are an adoptive parent, your reality is that your child has birthparents.... more

I confess that, as a hopeful adoptive mother, I was intimidated by the thought of having any openness at all in our adoption. I have since come to appreciate the value of openness in adoption. What changed my mind was educating myself about open adoption. This is why I want to spend some time on this topic.

Why do some hopeful adoptive parents fear open adoption in the first place? Here are some of the reasons that I have heard:

Before we launch into the various facets of open adoption, let’s start by talking about what one is. Imagine that you have a continuum of adoption openness. On the far left, you have a completely closed adoption. The adoptive parents have absolutely no information about the birthfamily. It is like the child appeared at the adoption agency, bringing along no history whatsoever. On the far right of the continuum, you have a completely open adoption where the birthfamily is actively involved in the... more

As you can see from the past couple of blogs, open adoptions are forging new frontiers that the English language has not yet adequately labeled. As open adoptions become more common, we will need to develop terminology that respectfully captures these new types of relationships.

For those of you who are hoping to adopt, some of these discussions might sound a bit confusing. I had never even heard of an open adoption when I started the adoption process. All that I knew about adoption came from watching TV... more