by Corinna Craddock

Created on: April 17, 2009   Last Updated: June 13, 2009

Why choose an open adoption?

The last thing that adoptive parents want to do is to make a decision that will negatively impact an adopted child's life.

In electing to keep an adoption closed to the birth parent, however, the adoptive parent may unintentionally become the cause of lifelong pain for which their is no remedy. In trying to keep the child from the biological parent, the adoptive parents risk fracturing the bond they create. The adoptive bond is jeapordized, when resentment and longing for roots, crack the cement of a loving foundation.

Young people do not reach the age of legal maturity and then suddenly get hit with the need to connect with lost parents. The need to be a part of where they came from, more often, manifests itself in the throws of puberty. This is when the world can exaggerate itself into life-threatening emotions and self-esteem issues.

If the circumstances surrounding a child's adoption included drug use by the birth parent(s), then the value that the birth parent has to offer in the life of the child may change dramatically over time. Likewise, children who become separated from their family of origin, due to a domestically violent situation, can expect that the biological parent will one day overcome the obstacles that dismantled the family.

When people are able to get their lives together after experiencing trauma and hardship, human spirit is received and returned as a force capable of motivating human good. A firm foothold in the climb up from rock bottom is the miracle foundation of self-actualization.

Open adoption can be a miracle. For the majority of young people, self-actualization involves a positive connection with biological parents, if not both than at least one. This is for the best outcome in psychological development.

Some biological mothers get clean, change their lives, and want to meet the children they failed. But open adoption should not be a decision made to help a child's addicted mom keep from feeling guilty. Open adoption should be available to children who need to see their biological parent, at a time when that parent would be a healthy addition to the child's life. One that could be psychologically unhealthy if denied.

Adopted children who have their self-actualization compromised by being denied the choice to know a biological parent will resent the many questions that become unanswerable.

A child should have every chance to access as many people who love him or her as possible. Open adoption is a decision to be made for the future well being of the adopted child, should it ever be appropriate and safe.

Children of open adoptions will embrace the adoptive parents as the ones who loved them enough to put their safety and happiness first. An adopted child will never grow to love their adoptive parents less because a biological parent is in the picture. It is no different than when grandparents step in to raise a child... that child never does stop missing mom or dad. Even when they were too young to remember mom or dad. It is an innate longing, that humans have, to know the one who gave them life.

Parents should choose open adoption and put aside imagined fears. The risk to the child, and to the adoptive bond, is much greater when the biological chapter is closed forever in a child's life.

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