Common Misconceptions About Open Adoption

One way to understand open adoption is to explain what it is not. Open adoption is often confused with other types of relationships.

At the top of this list is co-parenting. Most people who equate open adoption with co-parenting believe co-parenting is not an effective way to raise children and often reach the same conclusion about open adoption. The misunderstanding results from confusion about the boundaries and roles in open adoption. In co-parenting, the parent figures have equal authority, roles, and access. In open adoption, birthparents do not have the same authority, roles, or access as the adoptive parents.

• First, birthparents have no authority over the adopted child. Birthparent involvement is based on good will and cooperation, not authority. Birthparents clearly understand this, and this significantly reduces the likelihood of power struggles sometimes associated with co-parenting.
  
• Second, there is little confusion between the role of adoptive mother and father and the role of open-adoption birthparents because the roles are very distinct. While the adoptive parents carry out the role of the near-deity called "Mom," and "Dad", the birthparent is akin to special adult friend, or a "special aunt or uncle".
  
• Third, there is the matter of access. Detractors of open adoption like depicting a birthparent as someone lurking in the attic, monitoring every conversation through the heat ducts, and waiting for the most inopportune time to make a dramatic and disapproving appearance. This is hardly the case. Birthparents commonly schedule visits, which may consist of dinner and a stroll through the park. Critics routinely overlook the fact that birthfamilies, just like adoptive families, want a measure of emotional distance. Many of them set aside the prospect of adoption in their extended family because it struck them as "a little too much and a little too close".

Some people suggest open adoption is nothing more than "glorified baby sitting". They complain, "you do all the hard work, pay all the bills for 21 years, and then they leave you." Sounds like parenting to me. Without realizing it they offer a powerful tribute to the importance of biology. They are suggesting that the biological connection is so powerful that it can easily cancel two decades of daily interaction. If biology is that powerful, it is wiser to work with it than to try to thwart it. Furthermore, if an enduring relationship with the adoptee cannot be forged by twenty years of family life, something is seriously awry.

An especially frightening misunderstanding is that there is not room for privacy in open adoption; that it requires total exposure of those who participate in it. This is where "common sense" makes a splendid entrance. Certainly, open adoption features a spirit of candor and transparency, but the sharing is purposeful and kept within the limits of common courtesy and decency. There is much each family needs to know about the other family if they are to enter a relationship intelligently and if they are to serve the adoptee well over time. On the other hand, there is much that does not need to be known. Healthy open adoption relationships feature reasonable and mutually respected boundaries.

The misunderstandings we have considered so far are typically associated with people who are especially wary of open adoption. There is another misunderstanding, less common than the others, held by some proponents of open adoption. It is the idea that open adoption is an almost perfect solution to the problems of untimely pregnancy and infertility. This is hardly the case. Open adoption does not "solve" or "fix" either circumstance. Furthermore, some people are simply not cut out for participation in open adoption. Prospective adoptive parents, for instance, with pronounced needs for predictability, control, or privacy will not find open adoption attractive. Quite to the contrary, they tend to experience open adoption as unrelenting terror, and it is better for everyone that they not become involved.

It is important that open adoption not be "over-sold". It can work beautifully, but it certainly does not erase the original pain. If people get the idea that open adoption relieves all the pain, they are certain to be disappointed. Open adoption is painful and it is far from perfect. It does not provide happy endings for every predicament, and in some circumstances, there may be better alternatives. It is fair to say, however, that at least some of the time for some of the people, open adoption offers substantial potential.

Material used from Catholic Human Service of Michigan: James Gritter