by Heidi Peaster

Created on: January 22, 2010

In writing this, I must say that my husband and I have adopted six children, in addition to our three biological kids, and I was glad to have all of the birth parents stay in contact with the children.  One did, the others did not.

As far as open adoption goes, I only know from my own experience adopting from the foster care system, which took years.  Our children came into our home, for the most part, strictly as foster kids, not to be adopted.  It just worked out that way, mostly because the children were, by and large, special needs and the parents could not care for them.  These parents were sometimes happy that there was someone who they trusted to take their children, sometimes, they resisted the idea that they themselves couldn't.  But we still left the door open for them to contact us about their children and for us to evaluate if they could see the children from time to time.

Open adoption make the way exponentially  easier for the birth parent (s) .  No matter what we may think about the birth parent's life style, etc. they are the birth parent and most of the time, they care deeply for the welfare of their child.  If they are asked to hand over their child to some stranger in a process shrouded in secrecy, they may just not do it.  The ensuing experiment in parenting with a parent who cannot parent could very well be disastrous, if not deadly.  To give them the opportunity to see the adoptive parents face to face, to know that their child will have some knowledge of their heritage and that they will know how the child is growing, eases them into a better place from which they can make a decision with less fear.

On the child's side of it, open adoption puts an end to questions about why and how they came to be put up for adoption.  We have a set of siblings who know who their birth mother is.  As they have grown, they have gone from knowing her as a fun-loving, pretty lady who just happens to be their birth mother, to the reality that she has some real problems that kept her from being a functioning parent.  We were worried that she would let them down by breaking promises and disappointing them.  This she has done from time to time, but there was none of the devastation that we had feared.  They learned that she was flawed, and they realized that she had made the right decision in choosing to give them to us.  And they also know that their birth mother loves them in her

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