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Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. This is episode 103. We're the Nelsons.

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I'm Lanette and I'm Shaun. In today's episode we answer the question, why open

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adoption? The day that this episode is being launched, Lanette and I will

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actually be speaking at the Utah Foster Care Annual Symposium and we get to

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really hype up openness in adoption. We are going to be leading a panel

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discussion with four incredible adoptees that will share their perspective and

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how openness played a part in their experiences. And so we're super

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excited. If you're one who learned about us at the conference that will be

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happening that day, we hope that this episode just adds to the experience

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that you had. Yes, so we're gonna start off by diving into what exactly open

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adoption is. So the first time that the term open adoption was used according to

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Merriam-Webster was in 1973. That's not that long ago. Not really, but there's

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this common misconception that open adoption is like the new way of doing

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adoption. That's right. But most adoptions involved some level of openness up

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through the early to mid 1900s. So what did that look like? So I mean it was

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usually like a family would help out with another family who needed help

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taking care of their child, right? Or there were sometimes like apprenticeships

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back in the early days of the United States where it wasn't really adoption

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but those sorts of situations where you knew where your biological family was,

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you knew what was going on. It didn't really become secretive until the early

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1900s or mid 1900s. Do we know why it became secretive? I mean I imagine

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there's a lot going on here, but there's this adoption worker named Georgia Tan

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and she was super sketch. Some really really bad stuff. She was a child

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trafficker and she would like kidnap children from poor families and then

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have rich families pay a lot of money to adopt them and it was child trafficking

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and kidnapping and super super sketchy. But things became a lot more secretive

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and I know that she played a part in that. Some of our adoption policies today

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remain from her and she was trying to protect herself, right? And like protect

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this scammy way of doing adoption and so that's one reason. I know there's others

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like the rise of international adoption, right? Like so many other things. I have

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one thing just to interject really quick. So I think you just said something that

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made me think about this but a lot of the adoption laws that exist right now

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were created with the benefit of the adoptive parent or the adoption agency

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as the focal point. Yeah. And today we really need to switch that so that it is

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a lot more adoptee focused. It should be entirely adoptee focused, right? That

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should always be our goal and our mission. Anyway I know that was a tangent

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but that's something that I feel passionately about. Yeah absolutely and

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just a quick additional tangent. So a lot of adoption records are closed or sealed,

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right? This is a big talking point right now helping adoptees have access to

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their original birth certificates and that was something that started during

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Georgia Tans era as well. So yeah just really important to advocate for these

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changes but open adoption is not new is the point. We're not gonna dive anymore

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into this. So the misconception was that open adoption is new however that was

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really the case almost all the time until the early 1900s but now since like

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the 1970s. I mean that's when it first began but yet it picked up more in like

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the late 80s early 90s that open adoption became more common and so the

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definition if you look it up in Merriam-Webster of open adoption is an

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adoption that involves contact between biological and adoptive parents and

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sometimes between biological parents and the adopted child. So it is a very very

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loose definition when we say super loose yeah when we say open adoption like

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amongst ourselves we're talking about a lot more openness definitely like the

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child having some kind of relationship or contact right but that is the

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dictionary definition. Yeah and I mean I'm reflecting back to and I know we've

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shared this on the podcast before but so the first time we really considered what

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open adoption was and what that would mean to us and without knowing and

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without the adoptee being the focus it's can be a really scary thought if you're

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if you're really thinking about your own prerogative and it's about you as an

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adoptive parent open adoption can sound pretty scary. Absolutely yeah and so one

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of the important things we need to do first I think is shift our mindset and

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think about the child not ourselves right we're thinking about what they

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need and how we can help. Yeah so we're gonna look at some academic research

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don't worry we're not gonna be boring but that will help us focus on the

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adoptee and look at two different aspects of adoption both structural and

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communicative open adoption or openness. Do you want to maybe briefly describe

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what both of those are? Yeah absolutely and also we'll have some references in

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our show notes if you want to look up any of these different studies some of

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them are older but they're really the groundwork that helps us understand open

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adoption as we know it today. So structural openness involves sharing

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biographical information so there can be in-person contact with biological

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family it can range from whatever I like it could be letters it could be visits

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it could be yeah there's some kind of yeah there's contact information is

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shared and there's some kind of contact. Some type of connection between adoptive

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parents and biological parents or adoptee and biological parents and that

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could be that could look different in different situations. Yep and then

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communicative openness that involves more of the transparency and open

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dialogue regarding adoption within the adoptive and maybe also biological

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relationships right so in the adoptive family there's a transparent open

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conversation you can ask questions like the adopted child is comfortable and

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free to raise questions it's not a taboo subject there's an open dialogue there

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and this could also translate over to relationships with birth family right

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like comfortable asking questions about biological family and adoption and yes

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yes yes. Great so we have structural openness and communicative

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openness and each adoptee is going to experience a variety or a kind of like

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it's on a kind of a continuum in both of those right to how much structural

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openness they have how much actual communication they have with their birth

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parents and communicative openness how much they're comfortable and able to

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talk about their feelings as an adoptee with their adoptive parents with their

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biological parents with others that respected people in the community so

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there's two there's two different sides. Yeah yeah so since the 1970s structural

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openness and adoption has become a lot more common especially in Western

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nations like the United States but how common is it that's a really hard

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question because there's not really straight data on that but the National

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Council for Adoption which is a nonprofit advocacy

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organization they collect some data about private adoptions from each state

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since it's not collected federally or other ways and according to them about

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half to two-thirds of domestic infant adoptions incorporate some degree of

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openness which is pretty low but then I've also found the number 90% and 95%

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for the amount of open adoptions but those come from adoption agencies I

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haven't been able to find a source for where they're getting that so it's

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really hard to say and remember and remembering that that openness may mean

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that adoptive parents have the name of a birth parent right right it might not be

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an actual contact yes yeah yeah yeah so it's really hard to say exactly how

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many adoptions are open but it's somewhere in that ballpark a very big

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ballpark to two-thirds of domestic adoptive or to 90% or 95 right but yeah

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that can just vary across this large continuum and then when we're looking at

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other kinds of adoption like international adoption or adoptions from

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the child welfare system like foster care it's generally lower so generally

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domestic infant adoptions are going to have higher rates of openness whereas

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international adoption and foster care adoptions are going to have lower

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amounts of openness yeah like structural openness yeah yeah and that's what we're

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talking about right now yeah because international adoptions we might not

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know any information right those can be tricky and then child welfare placements

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can be challenging as well because of different situations so let's jump into

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I mean there's a lot of like ins and outs of structural versus communicative

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openness let's dive into a little bit to why it actually matters why openness

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actually matters yeah so there's some research by Brzezinski from 2006 and

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Siegel and Smith from 2012 that indicates that open adoption is preferred

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over closed adoption because it promotes psychological well-being and adopted

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individuals so it's preferred for the sake of the adopted individual yeah and

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that it's better psychologically and so there's these different levels of

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openness that we keep talking about but research consistently supports that the

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practice of both the structural and communicative openness is beneficial to

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adoptive people so a study by Siegel in 2012 found that the knowledge of one's

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biological family no matter how often frequency is fosters a sense of

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belonging within the adoptive family that's huge yeah that is huge I mean

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with that there I mean there's so many complexities in the nature of adoption

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there are some risks to it right I mean yeah right it's just it's so

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challenging to talk about right because we don't want to be looking at these

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risks from adoptive parents perspectives we need to be looking at it from adoptive

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needs and how we can best serve our children right yeah yeah I recently read

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an article I guess it was more of a letter on a prominent adoption website

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from an adoptive parent to other adoptive parents talking about why

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openness is a bad thing or why you should maybe you should reconsider

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having openness and almost every one of his claims was focused on his own

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feelings and not any concern toward really his child which is tragic right

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but fortunately these risks that we do see sometimes in open adoption are

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really heavily outweighed by the positive factors that open adoption can

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offer it can mitigate so many of the challenges that adopted individuals can

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face and it offers more support to adoptees yeah and so it's really really

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worth taking seriously and fostering as much openness as you can and if you

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can't control the structural openness say that the birth parents of your child

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don't want contact you can still have an open dialogue and that's the

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communicative openness and that's really important yeah we'll dive into that a

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little bit more here in just a second but structural openness really I mean the

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definition of open adoption has changed a lot like we mentioned over the last

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several decades before the 2000s a lot of the research that discussed open

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adoption referred to only structural adoption which we can see now because

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like when I'm talking about open adoption I'm usually default thinking

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about structural openness right I think that's pretty common yeah so a

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structurally open adoption supports the adoptees direct contact and relationship

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with the bio the biological family members right and really really can

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range from just the biographical information to in-person and like really

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close types of contact with biological family yeah and some earlier studies of

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structural openness showed that adoptees are not confused by having open

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adoption it doesn't cause confusion it does not cause lower self-esteem and it

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actually increases self-esteem and causes a more whole sense of self yeah and I

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remember really early on again kind of as the naive new adoptive parent

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thinking well is she gonna call you mom and her birth mom mom like what if she

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used that terminology and I was a scary thing back then I was so worried about

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what how I was reacting to that but in you know we have four children that were

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adopted but I'm thinking of my daughter's experience in in reality she

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has two mothers right yeah and two fathers right and and in her reality what

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how she distinguishes what she calls us or them and it's up to her and what it

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what feels right to her obviously we have a culture in our home where we have

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different kind of norms what we refer to birth parents as versus versus mom and

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dad here at home but in reality like where she has two sets of parents we

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have different roles we have different responsibilities but we're parents yeah

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we've talked about how we need to have this mindset shift where we're focusing

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more on the adopted individual I think it's also important to focus more on the

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birth parents or the first parents because that's a key part in forming

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these relationships you know there are actually studies as well that show the

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adoptive parents demonstrate more empathy toward birth parents and toward

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their child and they also feel like they have more secure relationships with their

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child when they have that structurally open adoption and it's kind of a

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question to me of like which comes first right like does it does the openness

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bring more of that empathy and connection or does the empathy and

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connection bring more openness I imagine it's both like it's a cycle that feeds

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itself so structural we're gonna kind of transition into communicative here but

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they I mean they really do tie together and and as you were saying that I was

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kind of thinking about you know we have these relationships with birth families

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and one of the things that we talk about a lot on the podcast is how we talk

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about them in our homes and with other people and it's so vital and important

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that we see our children's birth families in the best light possible because our

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children relate part of their identity to those individuals their birth family

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and so that kind of well they come from them yeah it's part of them right and so

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that kind of brings us to this this thought of communicative adoption how we

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talk about adoption with an adoptee whether that's in our own homes or with

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other people that is communicative adoption how we're communicating about

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adoption yeah and that can really play such a big role some research shows I

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hesitate to say this because they're both so important structural and

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communicative openness are both so vital but research really does show that that

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communicative openness is so important and possibly a little bit more important

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than the structural openness because that conversation is so important in

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developing a healthy identity and strong sense of self well and even as you say

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that I think the more communicative openness we have in our home mm-hmm it

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will naturally lead to some level of structural or at least like

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encouragement of structural openness right like if it's not possible they're

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still like it's because you're building empathy right it's this connection and

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fostering like showing your child that you love all of them you love their

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birth family it's you're right I think it's kind of a chicken and the egg where

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they both are so important to each other so there is some really cool research

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from Kohler it's in 2002 that found that adolescent adoptees who felt like their

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family had more open communication with their birth family reported higher

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levels of trust toward their parents and felt less alienated from them and

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reported better overall family functioning which it's intuitive but

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it's so important yeah yeah yeah and then Brzezinski in 2005 found that a

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communicative openness may be a more important predictor of adoptees self

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esteem than structural kind of like you mentioned yeah that's really yeah what

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that's coming from so communicative openness is so important and it's

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something that adoptive parents you have complete control over right we really

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encourage structural openness I feel like it is so important but sometimes

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it's not possible sometimes we can't have the degree of openness that would

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like but we can always have communicative openness you can always have that open

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dialogue yeah and with with technology the way that it is today like our

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daughter's birth mother moved away like move states halfway across the country

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and we still have structural openness with with or between them and between us

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and her I mean Polo's been a great tool we also see her parents grandma and

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grandpa that live not too far from us so that structural openness is just really

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important to you there's so many ways that you can maintain that structural

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openness yeah yeah I just have to share this so our daughter recently had a

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birthday and we planned to go out to dinner for birthday and because of other

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circumstances friends weren't able to come with the eclipse actually people

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were traveling kind of funny but in the end it ended up being our immediate

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family the six of us limits parents and then two sets of unrelated biological

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one of our sons yeah biological grandparents but their grandparents to

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all the kids and then and then our daughter's birth mother's parents and so

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those grandparents that are her birth grandparents yeah so I was just sitting

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at this table and the waitress actually took a picture for us and I just looked

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at all of the support and love around that table and then we were missing a

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lot of people in our open adoption family Bush it's not really a tree but I

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just I just kind of sat there thinking like there there's so much love here

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for that girl and the rest then our three boys like it was it was just

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awesome it really is beautiful it's amazing to see because I feel like all

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parents feel inadequate at times or a lot of the time but that extra support

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it really benefits our children and it benefits us as parents and it's just

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amazing to see yeah so open adoption can really bless your family yeah so we we

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support and want to foster as much communicative adoption sorry

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communicative openness and structural openness for our adoptees sake now there

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are some practical things as adoptive parents that we have to do and know and

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think through and some of that deals with maybe some of the fears that we

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have around open adoption so we would like to consider a couple questions

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that we've heard and that we maybe we felt ourselves to some degree about

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openness openness and what it actually can look and feel like yeah so people

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often will ask how you can have a safe structurally open adoption if there's

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any substance use or exposure or maybe some mental health challenges with the

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birth family yeah I think this starts with some really clear communication up

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front just harkening back to that letter that I read from that from the adoptive

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father he said something like we found this because it was one of the top

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things when we were searching for open adoption on the internet like it was one

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of the very top it was crazy but he said it was the perfect match

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and then his reasons for it being perfect was that this particular

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expectant mother wasn't using drugs and didn't seem to have any emotional

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concerns and it there was no conversation about perfect match meaning

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I have a strong relationship with this person and know that they're going to be

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a part of my child's life forever and I know that we can navigate this together

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there was no there was nothing like that it was just again about the birth about

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the adoptive parent getting what quote-unquote he wanted in a child that

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wasn't exposed to drugs or potentially potentially having hereditary emotional

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issues and that hurt my heart hurt my heart so bad but substance exposure is a

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real challenge in adoption and honestly the science is kind of hard to access

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right because generally children who are exposed to substances and utero like

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stay with their biological family and it's really hard for researchers to know

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what is coming from environmental factors what's from exposure and utero

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and so that's really hard to know but we do have a few resources on open

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adoption open adoption project org from dr. Jeremy Stone who is an adoptive

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father and he did do some research into or at least presented some information

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for different types of substance use in utero and what potentially that could

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mean so if you're interested or have concerns about that go check that out on

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the website but going kind of kind of back sorry circling back to our question

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of like is it safe for the adoptee and what happens if it's not a safe

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situation all right so first of all I think it's important to consider a

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scenario where say that you decide it's not safe to have any contact at all and

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down the road your child has a genetic predisposal toward addiction and it's

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something you've never talked about they have never seen someone struggle with

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it and overcome it and it's going to be a lot harder I think without that

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background and it's some studies do show that these different addictions and

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challenges can be hereditary yeah so there's there's a level of communicative

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adoption that needs to sorry communicative openness that needs to

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happen around some of those issues where in a compassionate way right like we

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never talk smack about birth parents but but helping them understand that they

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may be pretty the predisposed to behaviors or health challenges right that

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are genetically passed down so that's one side but yeah and that they need to

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be extra cautious and vigilant yeah yeah but the structural side yeah we we have

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friends and we've been involved in these conversations where up front and this

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kind of where I tangent off to that birth father that adoptive father but

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upfront you need to be really clear in your communication about what type of

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openness you want what type of relationships you want there are some

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boundaries that you need to set and if you know that they have experience with

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you know with drug abuse or substance abuse then upfront saying we love you we

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want you to be part of our family when you're not clean we don't want you in

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our home yeah have these really direct conversations about what expectations

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are but also address it with compassion right like if this parent is having a

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hard time getting clean they can still send a video for your child it's okay

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and you can let them see this video of birth mom saying how much they love them

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or I don't know like you can find ways to still connect and support them and show

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them love and there is research that shows that connection is so important

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especially in helping people heal from addictions and so I think it's just so

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important to address this compassionately to remember to keep a

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child-centric and it's okay to have boundaries we need to have boundaries

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yeah we need to keep our kids safe but we can also balance this with love and

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compassion and we can find ways to make things yeah and I want to add a huge

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caveat here that this is one of the common questions that is asked about

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those that are struggling with addiction by no means are we saying that the

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majority or even a big portion of birth parents yes isn't yeah we're just

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addressing some common questions yeah and and so I would love to dispel that

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misconception so then there's also some struggles with social media that people

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have like how do we navigate social media connections with birth family like

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do we connect on social media do we interact how do we feel if they're

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posting pictures of our child it's their child too some people get upset if this

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if someone else refers to their child as my child you know it's both of your

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child so yeah these are conversations to have things to think about and a lot of

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these conversations need to happen before yeah before papers are signed it's

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important and if if it's already like if you've already sent papers it's not like

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it's too late you can still have these conversations but I think it's really

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important to have them before papers are signed if possible so that you can be

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sure this is a good fit so you can have everything out in the open it's it's just

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so important to keep things ethical and yeah and one thing I thought about this

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you know what we have a lot of connections with lots of birth family but

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with our youngest his his birth parents were connected on social media and we

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use like a Facebook messenger to have we have a smaller group with just Lena and

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I and them and we share fun updates and cute pictures and stuff like that but we

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also have a group that has you know her grandparents and mom and you know yeah

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way more and a lot more that we also include and share information and updates

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with and it's so fun because it's a great tool yeah and they just kind of

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pour on more love and kind of fawn over our kids which is really fun so fun

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yeah so one thing we've chatted about a little before in the past is that it can

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be really hard for birth parents to let you know when they might want more

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contact when they're feeling like like they need more right yeah and so we need

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to be sure that we're making it safe for them we want to treat them the way we

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would want to be treated if our roles were reversed right so this level of

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communicative openness that we have with with biological family members yes is

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really important and we want people to feel safe we want people to feel like

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they can share obviously respect is really important here but on both sides

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we want people to share their feelings and if we've created a scenario where

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that's not ideal then there's gonna be feelings of resentment and perhaps anger

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and frustration that will eventually come out in some way and so we I mean we

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need to do what we can to avoid that absolutely all right so hopefully by

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talking about some of these issues and similar issues we can help assuage some

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of these concerns and we can better understand how open adoption can help

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us through these challenges how it's not really a burden or like a hurdle to

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cross but how it can actually help us get through different struggles and

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adoption relationships yeah any other like frequently asked questions that

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we've heard that we might want to address yeah so we have heard quite a

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few people say that they felt pressured to have an open adoption because they

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were told or like assumed that they wouldn't be able to have a placement yep

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if they didn't say they're willing to have an open option and maybe some of

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that pressure is coming almost that pressure is coming from an adoption

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agency or but that's a great yeah and it's great that they're pushing open

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adoption but these people don't understand what open adoption is why it

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matters and so they're agreeing to it but not with their heart and not with

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this understanding yeah and so there's some research about this and it's wild

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this is from McDonald 2011 so the way in which open adoption education is

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presented seems to really impact how openness is practiced within an

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adoptive family so when adoptive parents choose to have higher structural

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openness because of an agency or a social worker prompting that rather than

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choosing it for the well-being of the child then they are significantly less

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likely to maintain that openness two years post placement so basically it's

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less likely that they're gonna stick to it if they don't like feel that for lack

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of a better word like conversion to open adoption yeah hence we're here and we

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feel really passionately about this we know for our like our children are in

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better places and we've talked with so many adoptees on the podcast that have

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benefited so much from both of these types of openness that it just kind of

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boggles my mind that it's not that is in some cases it's not even considered

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right it's really heartbreaking and I think we've talked quite a bit on the

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podcast over the last few months about structural and communicative openness

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but we realized we hadn't really done a deep dive into them and so that's part

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of where this episode was coming from also wanting to address some of these

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frequently asked questions but it's so important right that we are I feel like

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I'm quoting I've never watched the Bachelor of the Bachelorette guys

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except for a couple of episodes a long time ago and all I remember is they were

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always talking about being there for the right reasons this is such a stupid

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tangent but you need to adopt for the right reasons and I feel like I'm

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quoting that stupid show now yeah but right reasons right yeah okay we've

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talked about a lot of these but like adoption does not cure infertility you

375
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will still be infertile if that is the reason that you're adopting emotionally

376
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you have to deal with that then one does not solve the other right knowing that

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this child this human is connected biologically to other people and will

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most likely from all of the interactions that we've had have some level of

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curiosity questions concern about their origin story mm-hmm it will come back to

380
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that and it will the picture will be painted of what actually happened yeah

381
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and so if you do anything in this and ended up in an adoption process whether

382
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that's an infant or later on in a child's life it's coming if they're

383
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being adopted out of like the foster care or welfare system anything that is

384
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going to be painted badly of like you in the experience like you need to think

385
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:18,920
about your actions imagine that your child will have access to like everything

386
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that you've ever said or done and I don't know maybe they will maybe we'll

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have time travel in a few years but but no we want to make sure that we're

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practicing ethically we want to make sure that we won't have these

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00:32:31,280 --> 00:32:35,400
embarrassments and regrets about our ethical conduct and adoption because it

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really matters and that makes adopting a lot more work it is adoptive parents

391
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:47,040
it is and if you if you're wanting the easy way out and you're trying to say

392
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okay you should never be the easy way out yeah just so that you're pacifying

393
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caseworkers or an adoption agency that is not the right reason to do an open

394
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adoption but again we feel really passionately for the of a soapbox for

395
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the adoptees sake yeah that openness is the best mm-hmm and the research really

396
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:15,680
shows it as we've been talking about right like the open adoption is so

397
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important because it helps adoptees and that should be our entire entire purpose

398
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in our goal yeah all right well thank you so much for listening to us rant a

399
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:33,840
little bit we're a little soapboxy about this because we we really care and so

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our invitation to you no matter who you are in the adoption constellation is to

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00:33:39,280 --> 00:33:46,320
foster openness structural openness or communicative openness or the adoptee

402
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:54,040
sake right like we want to do both and as much as we can for the sake of our

403
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children yep absolutely all right well I think that's gonna wrap up this episode

404
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of the open adoption project but we'll be back in a couple of weeks with more

405
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:08,320
content and yeah we're really grateful you're here yeah listening to us soapbox

406
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:13,640
and we just want to remind you that Lanette recently published the openness

407
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guide for prospective adoptive parents and this really is kind of the what you

408
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:23,720
should know about open the open adoption as you're going into it the reason that

409
00:34:23,720 --> 00:34:26,920
we published this guy that Lanette I mean Lanette started this probably two

410
00:34:26,920 --> 00:34:33,240
plus years ago and the reason that we came out and published it now is that

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00:34:33,240 --> 00:34:38,960
so we can support the podcast moving forward right like it takes a lot of

412
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:44,840
time there's licenses and you know other fees that that go into producing the

413
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:51,240
content the people helping us out and so the proceeds that we get it goes right

414
00:34:51,240 --> 00:34:54,840
back to the podcast right back to the podcast and if it ever gets to the point

415
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:58,360
where there's more than the podcast needs it's going to go into further

416
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helping educate adoptive parents or future adoptive parents the adoption

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community at large so that we can foster the best situations for all of our

418
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adoptees in our lives yep absolutely all right well thank you so much for being

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here and we'll be back soon

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you