In the 1950’s single mothers had few choices if they became pregnant. Often, they were whisked off to houses where they were made to sign their infants away never knowing who the parents were given time to see their infants.
Did you know?
This causes a surge of adopted children to return years later searching for their birth mothers or insisting on their rights to their clinical and medical history. There are still many out there hunting, looking for their roots and have some sense of individuality of where they came from and who they are.
Open adoption attempts to restrict those issues that shut adoption brought on by permitting the birth mother to meet and socialize with the prospective adoptive parents before and after the birth. Some families are dedicated to maintaining the birth mother involved, in which case, the open adoption becomes a new family arrangement that strives to place the needs of their child first.
Open Adoption Families
Although open adoption only suggests that the birth mother and the adoptive parents exchange information on themselves, it may result in other structures where the birth mother is more concerned. It’s known, however, that the birth mother has relinquished all parental and legal rights to the adoptive family. Thus, the fear that a birth mother will attempt to recover a child is minimal.
Some families like to invite the birth mother to special events like Christenings. Others have the relatives of the child visit with the birth mother. It all is a personal choice and isn’t required in open adoptions.
Take note
- Children can ask a birth mother directly why they had been put up for adoption.
- The adoptive parents and kids can gain access to medical records and genetic information which allows them to keep decent health records.
- Birth mothers have the choice to take part in the adoption preparation, even having to choose who the adoptive parents will be.
- The birth mother can be ensured she’s made a fantastic decision putting her child up for adoption.
- The adoptive parents can be screened to fulfill legal requirements.
- The birth mother can get help in the adoptive parents before and after the baby is born.
- The birth mother can ask information or continuing contact in the shape of letters, pictures of her kid, and/or telephone calls.
- The kid can meet birth relatives also and thus set a larger support system wider than their adoptive family.
- The kid knows where they came from and may even be subjected to their culture and heritage through the birth parents.
- It helps the child to have the ability to process losses related to adoption without making it a lifelong pursuit for truth.
Good to know
Open adoption was widespread in the 1920’s with social agencies not being involved too much. This led to fears that birth parents were advertising their children and putting them in unsuitable homes or selling them outright. The laws for closed adoptions and agency interventions did not come around until the 1940’s and 1950’s. Many decades later, the fallout from closed adoptions became evident by many adopted children looking for their birth parents or their medical and genetic history.
Lawyers really started back the movement to open adoptions by giving an independent agency that would be certain that the laws were followed in adoption proceedings and speeding up the adoption procedure. In a number of these instances because it had been done in an attorney’s office that the parents and birth mother did get to know each other. But, they had high failure rates due to the psychological and social issues of adoption.
Final note
By then, the societal norms had softened and single moms no longer have been thought of as a shameful secret. Many began keeping their kids and fewer kids actually were published for adoption. This caused agencies to alter in order to meet up with the problem by moms that their children were being placed in good homes and could be treated nicely. If they didn’t change, fewer adoptions were processed. So, open adoption is becoming more and more the standard. It’s a fantastic way to lessen the losses of their child, the birth parent, and the infertile adoptive parents and will provide benefits for all.