Margie asked:

With the internet it?s certainly possible for adoptees and first families to find each other. But I struggle with whether or not it?s appropriate for adoptive parents to involve themselves in opening their adoptions. The goal - openness - is such a good thing, but it is really OK for me as an adoptive parent to launch the process?

If I don?t, though, over time the few clues there are may be lost.

That’s a good question. My feeling about it is this: Our job as parents is give our children access to the things we think that they need and that we think will benefit them. It’s not to make their decisions or force our values (ok, push our values but our kids are people with their own hearts and minds) but to give them access and exposure to the things we think matter and the option to choose those things.

If we believe that our adopted kids benefit from having access to their first families — if not the actual people themselves but to whatever information we can find — then it’s part of our job to work to build that option. We can’t make them take advantage of it or use the information or build the relationships but we can give them the opportunity to make a decision about it. So yeah, sometimes I think we need to take the initiative.

I know — it gets sticky. What does it mean to build that option? When are we over-stepping our kids’ boundaries? Or their first parents’ boundaries? I don’t think there’s one right answer because so much depends on the circumstances surrounding their adoptions but I do think it’s something we need to think about.

I think a lot about this in regards to Madison’s first grandparents (on her maternal side) and on her entire paternal first family. The issues are totally different just within our own adoption and I worry about messing with relationships between those first family members, too. It’s not just Madison’s relationships that are at stake; it’s everyone whose lives have been touched — knowingly or unknowingly — by her adoption. I’ve made different decisions with each person/family based on circumstances specific to that person/family but I revisit them all of the time. Sometimes I feel 100% great about how we’re handling it and other times I feel really uncertain. (I’ll add that when I do interviews with open adoption expert-types? I almost always bring up extended family issues and check in to get more feedback.)

My goal, though, is to make sure that if/when Madison steps out to build or strengthen those relationships that I haven’t harmed them. Maybe I haven’t been as proactive as she might want but I hope that given the circumstances, I haven’t gotten in the way she might want to take someday. And I am absolutely willing to be more proactive if that’s what she wants. (Because some of the hanging back has to do with other first family members and while my decisions are sometimes about honoring their wishes, when Madison is of age I know that my job will be to serve her wishes.)

AmFam has been talking about searching for L’s information/family and in that case doing nothing could be impeding L’s future options — there could be harm in doing nothing. (I don’t know — I trust AmFam on this one but I’ll say right now that I don’t know enough about Chinese adoption to speak intelligently about it.) Because China is growing so quickly, the information they could get now may not be there by the time L is old enough to want to search. If I were AmFam, I hope I’d be brave and savvy enough to do what they’re doing.

I know it must be a lot harder when kids are old enough to say no but the adoptive parents still feel their kids need access. I guess I’d have a hard time letting things lie given the way information can disappear or change. I think even then I’d be keeping my eye on things and trying to build inroads. Because I do know that developmentally kids sometimes want that info when they start having kids themselves and I’d want to do what I could to give them that option.

And maybe we have the right to search because it matters to us, too. I don’t know. I haven’t thought about that. What do other folks think? If your child wasn’t interested in meeting first family, do you have the right to search for yourself? If adoption does make us kin, is this true even if the child doesn’t choose to be the bridge? Is that overstepping boundaries that only the child has the right to cross? Are first and adoptive family members allowed to care about each other even if the child doesn’t want any part of reunion? (I hadn’t thought about this — I don’t think I have a firm this-way or that-way opinion. I think I feel all waffle-y and thinking I couldn’t say because I just haven’t lived that experience.)

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