Open Adoption: Adoptive Parents' Experiences of Birth Family Contact and Talking to Their Child about Adoption

Abstract

The trend towards more open adoption presents adopters with unique parenting challenges associated with satisfying the child's curiosity about their origins and maintaining relationships with birth family through contact. This article by Mandi MacDonald and Dominic McSherry focuses on the experiences of 20 sets of adoptive parents who were interviewed as part of the Northern Ireland Care Pathways and Outcomes Study. Interviews were analysed following the principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The article explores adoptive parents' experience of talking to their child about adoption and of post-adoption contact with members of the birth family. Adopters discussed adoption sensitively with their child but were concerned that difficult and complex family histories would present a risk to the child's self-esteem and emotional well-being. All forms of contact proved emotionally and practically burdensome; however, adopters were committed to making it work for the child's benefit and were open to increased contact should the child wish it in the future. There was little relationship with birth family outside of formal contact. The study reveals the need for a mechanism to facilitate communication with birth families if adopters are to be able to respond to the child's changing need for contact and information.

My Child’s Journey Home: Perspectives of Adult Family Members on the Separation and Reunification of the “Disappeared” Children of El Salvador

“…For example, work in Ireland has shown that reunification causes adoptive parents to struggle with feeling uncertainty about their parental role and has also shown that adoptive parents strongly influence the success of reunification. 47 Additionally, studies on reunification due to immigration have shown that biological parents struggle with forging relationships with children who often view their parents as strangers. 48…”

The Ambivalence of Adoption: Adoptive Families’ Stories

“…Birth family are often missed and mourned in this difficult way. In adoption commentary it is widely recognised that 'birth parents … often occupy a significant place in the thoughts and emotions of adoptive parents and adopted children … regardless of the form or extent of contact the family had with birth relatives' (McDonald, 2016: 52, see also Fravel et al, 2000;MacDonald and McSherry, 2011). Writing about post-war adoption practices, where secrecy surrounded the process and foreclosed mourning for birth and adoptive families and their children, lost attachments 'sustained a ghostly and enduring presence within the adoptive family' (Sales, 2012: 72).…”

Adoptive family experiences of post‐adoption contact in an Internet era

“…The debate surrounding the risks and benefits of more traditional methods of post‐adoption contact is still ongoing (Triseliotis ), and the use of technology as a contact method must be included in this debate to ensure empirical evidence is collated on the impact of this development on adoptive and birth families. The lessons already learned through wider research about openness and contact in adoption to date point to the need to consider a variety of individual, family and structural factors when planning and sustaining contact for each adopted child to decide whether contact is suitable and in which form (MacDonald & McSherry ). The emergence of virtual contact is another factor to consider in the maintenance of a child's dual connection.…”