Blog 7

Open Vs. Closed adoption.

It was hard for me to choose a topic for the last paper so a friend suggested open Vs. closed adoption. When she was telling me about how she was in favor of closed adoption, I agreed with her. My dad and my aunt are both adopted in which they had limited information about their birth mothers and no contact with them either. I have ask my grandma (my dad's adopted mom) if she regretted anything about choosing closed adoption. She told me that she considers herself my dad's "real" mom and she thought my dad would not see it that way if it were open. Plus, back in 1960 when she adopted my dad, closed adoption was the only way of adoption through an agency.

So I decided to ask my dad how he felt about his adoption. He said that he still battles with thoughts of abandonment, rejection, and loss/grief of his "blood" relatives. He also told me he would not ever go looking for his birth mother because, as far as he's concern, his adopted mother is his only mother. Unfortunately for him that does not stop him from thinking about his birth mother and why she decided to give him up for adoption.

During my research to find evidence on how closed adoption is better than open, I discovered that most of those who are adopted have the same abandonment issues as my dad. The majority of these cases were closed adoptions and had not contact with their birth mother. The cases that were open had an overwhelming positive response on the birth mother, adopted mother, and the adoptee. Positive because the adoptee had contact with his or her birth mother. If at anytime the adoptee had questions about family and/or medical history or why he or she were given up for adoption, the adoptee could ask the birth mother directly. Thus decreasing and/or eliminating abandonment issues and since of loss.

With further research I want to focus my attention on the emotional status of adopted children and how open adoption is really the better choice. I want to further investigate how the adoptee feels about open Vs. closed adoption and the over all emotional effects from both. Studies how shown that adopted children go through more mental health counseling than non-adopted children. I want to know how many of those adopted children have closed or open adoption and what is the main reason they are seeking counseling?

Savannah Moore