Family Issues: Adoptive Families

One or two?

Adoption is a lot harder than it looks — especially lately when the media has glamorized international adoptions by celebrities and stars who have lots of resources. They make it look fun and easy. The reality is raising any child is hard work. Raising a child who’s medical, social, emotional, and other histories you don’t know about can leave you and your family with all kinds of surprises along the way — some of them extremely challenging.

Adopting one child is a wonderful and challenging way to build a family, but adopting two children at once, is twice the wonder and twice the challenge. Like you would if you were having a biological child, prepare yourself with as many resources as possible when adopting one child — and even more, when adopting two children together.

Open or closed?

Open adoption is adoption between adopting parents and parents who are giving up a child for adoption, where the information flow and relationships remain open, as opposed to closed adoption where once the baby is transferred to the adopting parents, all information flow and communication between parent/s giving up child and adopting parents and child, end.

Many people adopting opt for closed adoption because they have fear and shame about their adoption. This fear and shame stems from feelings of failure at not being able to conceive and birth their own child. In addition, the fear and shame contribute to feelings of loss of control, and in order to stave off control issues, parents want to cut out biological parents/s and deny their part in the child so that they can pretend that the child is theirs without anyone else’s involvement.

I advocate open adoption for several reasons:

1. Closed adoption is not natural. Children come from somewhere, and to deny their origin is to denigrate the child. It is healthier for children to know where they came from in a natural way, and to feel loved and accepted and trust their parents to tell them the truth about life.

2. Medical history. It is important for parents and a grown child to be able to know about their medical and genetic history for the benefit of their own health and their future children’s health. Open adoption allows information flow.

3. It’s okay to ask for help. In life, a message that is valuable is: It’s okay to ask for help. Parents who are pregnant and don’t want to be, can ask for help in placing a child for adoption. Parents who can’t have a child can ask for help in having one placed in their home. This is an important message for children to receive. If they have a problem, they don’t have to be victims. They can look to resources in the world — even from people they don’t know.