Brave said, “open adoption is not considered fringe — it’s the very much the mainstream of adoption. - both domestic and internation, frankly. I am hard pressed to think of an expert who doesn’t validate open adoption (and the varieties of)”

I’d say that semi-open is mainstream and that fully open adoptions aren’t truly embraced — they get a lot of talk but most adoption professionals still get little to no training about full openness. True, full openness gets lip service but it’s been my experience (and observation) that the pre-adoption services and post-adoption services do not actually do much to facilitate true openness so mostly what’s happening is talk but no action.

For example, at most adoption agencies prospective birth parents aren’t informed about the reasons behind openness. They are told, “It will be easier for you. You will get to have pictures and letters. You will have peace of mind.” They are not told that openness is to address the very real consequences of adoption for their child. They are not told how adopted children continue to need them whether or not they are present. For example:
Open adoption is about giving choices at this agency but at another agency, open adoption is rightfully considered part of a child-centered philosophy. (Please note this second agency also includes adoption services for adoptees, which is a tad uncommon at most agencies.) From talking to other domestically adopting folks, this former is more the norm than the latter.

The most passionate advocates for fully open adoptions acknowledge that adoption — even at it’s best — is a fundamental loss for children, which is not something that most prospective adoptive parents want to hear. People giving lip service to the idea of openness (or whose understanding of it is fairly shallow) believe that openness makes up for a lot of those losses. It’s an essential difference and one I didn’t recognize really until this week. (Hey, I’m a little slow.)

See, at our agency we were given one session about how open adoption is good for adoptive kids but Jessica wasn’t told anything about why openness was good. It was played as a plus for her. She would get to pick the parents. She would get pictures and (if she were lucky) visits. But no one said to her, “Madison will have certain loss if you place and only you can know if this loss is greater than the challenges the two of you may have if you parent.” We had a four hour training about dealing with adoption issues; the prospective birth parents, on the other hand, were given no information about adoption issues.

Sure the books, the web sites, the research — we hear about openness a lot. It gets normalized on 20/20 and in women’s magazines (”The greatest gift: How one woman’s unselfishness made me a mother”) but the number of professionals actually pushing this elemental understanding of openness (that it starts with ethical counseling of pregnant women who contact an adoption professional) seems to be pretty small. When I’m doing my research to find information and experts, it’s the same names coming up over and over again. Did I mention this before? Sharon Kaplan said that they put on trainings all the time. They have conferences all the time but very few agencies come to them and even fewer implement the recommendations the open adoption advocates share. And she said they have never had a facilitator or lawyer show up. I asked Brenda Romanchik about this and she said she’s had the same uphill struggle.

It’s interesting to me to hear that our public perception is that it’s more about openness and I think it’s true that it’s trending this way but it’s still very surface. That’s why I’m saying that as actual policy, it’s still pretty fringe.

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