What if my adopted child meets his birth family and he loves them more than me?
This is a fear that many perspective adoptive parents might have when pursuing an open adoption. Open adoption is when the adoptive and birth parents keep in contact or establish a relationship. The extent of the relationship will depend on the parties involved, but after the adoption is finalized, many adoptive and birth parents keep in touch through email, phone and in some cases, visits.
Erik Bergman, an adoptive parent and board member of the Washington and Oregon state-based Open Adoptions and Family Services, Inc. says, “Open adoption is NOT co-parenting. The adoptive parents are the parents.”
Bergman says that adoptive parents should not worry that their children might love their birth parents more as most children recognize that the people who take care of them, tuck them into bed at night and help them when they fall down and scrape their knee, are in fact their parents. Mostly, adoptive kids perceive the birth parents as part of their extended family.
In Bergman’s case, his two adoptive daughters keep in touch with their birth father and meet with him once a year around Christmas. Neither of the girls feels their birth father is the primary parent – they cherish the relationship with the birth father, but consider Bergman and his wife as their parents.
Open adoption is very important for the birth parents as well – as many want to choose the adoptive family to make sure they are kind, loving people. “I felt if they (adoptive parents) could accept me, they could accept my child,” says Lorissa Yoder, a birth mother based in Texas. Yoder, who now receives emails and photos of the baby she gave up for adoption, says that while adoption was certainly not her first choice, she was happy that the baby went home with a nice family.
Bergman says that adoptive children need to understand their history, where they come from – which is why open adoptions are so important. “When my daughters see their birth father, they start to understand why they laugh the way they do, why they are tall, and other traits,” Begman says.
“I would not agree to an adoption that was not open,” Bergman says. “Open adoption ensures the child grows up without mystery or shame about their genetic heritage.”
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