In the last couple of posts I’ve been musing about the communication agreement birth and adoptive parents sign in an open adoption—the contract that states how often they will exchange letters and pictures.

Here are links to the first two posts:

Part 1: Maintaining Your Open Adoption Communication Agreement

Part 2: Problems That Arise Between Birth/Adoptive Parents in Open Adoption


My question for the day:
Why do parents not adhere to the terms of the contract?

Here are two speculations, from the perspective of both adoptive and birth parents (readers, please chime in with your own theories):

The balance of power has shifted.
Adoptive parents wait months, and sometimes years, for a child. They feel secretly angry about the power birth parents wield:

• the power to choose who will raise their child.



• the power to meet (or not meet) with the prospective adoptive parents.



• the power to decide to parent (sometimes, birth parents decide to parent after they place their baby with a family).

When adoptive parents finally have the baby in their arms, they relish their newfound power and (consciously or subconsciously) try to put the birth parents out of their minds. In their excitement over the baby’s arrival, they (choose to) forget the grief the birth parents are experiencing. They assume that the birth parent(s) made their decision, so they must be happy with it. They must want to “move on.”

This sudden power shift messes with everyone’s minds. An adoptive parent could easily convince him or herself that the birth family is “better off” not hearing from them.

The Severed Connection

Many birth parents, on the other hand, yearn for a connection with their child, both immediately after the adoption and throughout their child’s life. Now relatively powerless to demand communication, birth parents sometimes slink away, feeling used, taken for granted, and unwanted. Waiting respectfully for the adoptive parents to make the first move, they give up when they don’t hear anything.

On the flip side, my friend who’s the director of an adoption agency says that some birth parents demand too much. They request a letter every year until their child turns 18.

I don’t see anything wrong with requesting a yearly letter; if I was a birth parent, I think I would treasure such a letter. I also realize that people’s lives change. People move away; they grow up; they begin new relationships. Should birth and adoptive parents belabor the contact if no one benefits from it—if it’s just a chore?

There are no pat answers to this question. My gut feeling is that if all parties in the adoption truly have the best interest of the child in mind, they will continue the contact as long as they think it will be beneficial to the child.

When children are young, they accept their adoption without question (until my kids were about 4 years old, they assumed all babies came from the adoption agency!). But as they mature, children begin to ask questions about their birth parents, about why they were placed for adoption, and about the relationship between their adoptive and birth parents. They deserve answers. And what better way to learn those answers than going directly to the source?

I’m not advocating passing the buck here. If you’re an adoptive parent, don’t respond to your child’s questions about his/her birth parent questions with, “I don’t know; you’ll have to ask your birth mom.”

Do your best to answer the questions, and admit that you don’t know the answers to some of the questions. If you have a cordial relationship with members of your child’s birth family, let them know (privately) that your child has questions. Ask whether you can get together (either on the phone, via-email, postal mail, or in person) to work through those questions.