abstract:Open adoption is a form of adoption in which the biological and adoptive families have access to varying degrees of each other's personal information and have an option of contact. In Open Adoption, the adoptive parents hold all the rights as the legal parents, yet the individuals of the biological and adoptive families may exercise the option to open the contact in varying forms: from just sending mail and/or photos, to face-to-face visits between birth and adoptive families.
The Adoption Institute surveyed professionals at 100 adoption agencies across the U.S. in 2009 and 2010 and found prospective adoptive parents and expectant parents needed significant help to understand openadoption and develop arrangements that worked.
When openadoption started gaining traction in the late 1980s and early 1990s, critics argued it would confuse children about their identity and hurt their self-esteem, and that it would make birth mothers grieve longer as they continued to see the children.