Here’s information from Adoption STAR’s Adoptive Parent Education Manual that discusses some important realities about openness in adoption.
“While open adoption gives birthparents and adoptive parents much more control of the adoption process, the greatest benefactor of an open adoption is most often the child. Through open adoption, the child has access to the same information about their origins that non-adopted children take for granted. They know the names of their biological parents, their nationality, their health history, and their hometowns. But they have more than just the cold facts. Children placed in open adoption understand that they are adopted and know the details surrounding their adoptions. As they grow up, family and friends discuss the adoption openly and approvingly.
Open adoption cannot solve all the problems of an adopted child. Open adoption does bring the child’s birthparents into the adoptive family as relatives, but not all family relationships work out. Nor does open adoption mean all the issues of being adopted disappear, or that the normal problems of parenting are eliminated. The joys and struggles are the same.
However, open adoption is most often a win-win-win situation. Birthparents generally emerge from the process knowing they could never have fulfilled their adoption plans without having chosen, met and grown to care about the adoptive parents. And they always know how the child is doing. Couples and individuals that have desired to become parents are finally able to fulfill their parenting dreams. Best of all, the adopted child grows up knowing about both the sorrow and joy that went into their adoption plan…and the love that ALL their parents have for them.”