I’ve had preliminary conversations with more potential adoptive couples than I could count.  They text, call, or email and ask me, “Can we sit down?  We have some questions….”.

It’s one of the favorite parts of my job – to watch families find the bravery to step up and, as a friend often says, “Put their ‘yes’ on the table.”

In those conversations, there are a few standard topics….how the process works, what they can expect in the way of financial challenges, and that sort of thing.  The one thing that is almost guaranteed to be asked about, however, is one of openness between the bio family and the adoptive family.

Why Open Adoption?

Almost everyone from both sides of the equation – biological and adoptive – is a at least a little nervous about this and often in the dark about what open adoption means.  Open adoption does not mean a birth mom has an open invitation to walk in your door – in fact, face to face meetings may or may not happen.  Those things are all discussed in advance to minimize disappointment later.  It may mean some exchange of photos and facts through letters handled by the agency.  It may mean a private blog updated quarterly for a birth mom to investigate when she feels up to it.

As an adoptive dad, we have both closed and semi open adoptions in our family.  I can tell you that some degree of openness has been a significant blessing to our family.  Why?

We have more medical information.

In any adoption, you’ll get a snapshot of the medical condition of your child’s birth mother, but in a closed adoption, questions may arise later that you are unable to answer.   With our semi open arrangement, we are able to ask questions about family health that may have never occurred to us at the time of birth.   This information helps us care for our child.

We have some family lore.

Every family has a few stories that they like to pass down – how Grandpa came to the new world, the time that an uncle won a big award, or even about where a family lived geographically or what they did for work.  As your adopted child grows older and they wonder about their biological family history, a few of these stories go a long way. Especially when the option is a shrug and “We’ll never know, Honey…”.

We have some assurances to offer.

Your child will eventually ask “What happened to my birth mom?”.   To be able to speak with authority – even in generalities – about how she was cared for by the agency and some of the things she went on to overcome will help your child come to peace and settle the fears that perhaps their birth mom was not treated well.  To be able to say that she went on to attend college, to work or even to marry and have a family is to show your child that in spite of their birth mom’s sacrifice, her life was not over at the moment of their adoption.

Adoption can be scary.  I remember the first time we put our yes on the table. It felt like I laid my heart out for anyone to crush.  We decided that we couldn’t let fear be the determining factor for our choices.

Here we are, ten years later.  My heart is intact.  Yours will be too.

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Don’t miss THE ZOE PODCAST – short, bite-sized discussions about how adoption works based on the questions we’re asked the most.