Absence and Ambivalence

This chapter addresses birth fathers—but often in the context of their absence. Many adoptive parents did not appear to view birth fathers as symbolically or relationally as “important” as birth mothers. For some, this tendency persisted throughout their children’s lives. Others, though, became increasingly curious about their children’s birth fathers. Still others did enact relationships with birth fathers over time, and in some cases these were important relationships to parents and children. This chapter discusses these different patterns, with attention to how and why birth fathers are often “invisible” in adoption narratives. It also explores how adoptive parents talk about birth fathers and how this varies depending on whether parents adopted privately and domestically versus through foster care, and how it varies over time.

Getting to Adoption

Chapter 1 explores the factors that influenced couples’ decision to pursue adoption, as well as their feelings, hopes, and fears surrounding adoption. Some couples—particularly heterosexual couples—recounted years of struggling to conceive, often with the help of painful, invasive, and expensive fertility drugs and treatments. Others described genetic or medical barriers to conceiving. This chapter also addresses the kinds of circumstances, beliefs, and experiences that fostered participants’ openness to adoption as a path to parenthood. For example, having family members who were adopted enabled a basic familiarity with adoption as a family-building route, making it less “foreign” than it was to some people—and served as evidence that biogenetic ties were not prerequisites for family membership and love.

Summing Up

This chapter offer parents guideposts and suggestions for effectively managing potential challenges and questions across the adoption family life cycle—especially those addressed in this book, and those related to openness and the birth family in particular. It also provides resources and guidelines for finding an adoption-competent therapist. These recommendations and guideposts are intended to reflect those issues that are considered “normative” adoption issues—those that are common to most adoptions, and which are not in and of themselves “problems.” Incorporated into this chapter are suggestions and insights from several adoption experts, including David Brodzinsky, a clinical psychologist and expert on open adoption.

Orienting to Open Adoption, Considering Contact, and Reflecting on Race

This chapter provides an in-depth look at the preadoption stage, outlining parents’ different approaches to open adoption. Some parents oriented to open adoption relatively easily, whereas others hesitated or immediately placed caveats on the level of openness they would consider with regard to birth parents. Adoption programming, exposure to other families in open adoption, and other experiences ultimately caused shifts in many participants’ views of openness. Some participants concluded that they would not actually be willing to pursue an adoption with expectant parents who were uninterested in some level of contact. In addition to considering participants’ desired level of contact with the birth family, this chapter also considers their openness regarding children’s race. Openness regarding contact and race are two of the most significant dimensions of prospective adopters’ decision making and in part determine what placements are possibilities for them. Finally, this chapter also considers parents’ openness with respect to a potential child’s prenatal drug and alcohol exposure.

Prologue—Setting the Stage

The prologue provides historical context for the book, detailing, for example, how adoption has changed over time, particularly with regard to structural openness (i.e., contact between birth and adoptive families) and communicative openness in adoption (i.e., how parents talk about adoption), two key concepts in the book. In addition to changes in openness, other major societal shifts have occurred over the past several decades that impact and intersect with adoption: namely, the rise in gay parenthood and the rise and expansion of the Internet in society. The prologue also introduces the research participants who were interviewed for the book: namely, lesbian, gay, and heterosexual couples who adopted through private domestic adoption or foster care, and who were interviewed at various points from preadoption to 8 years after they adopted. The prologue also addresses the major theoretical perspectives (family systems, life course, developmental) that frame the book.

Facebook as Facilitator or Foe

This chapter examines parents’ use of social media, such as Facebook, with respect to the birth family. Some adoptive parents engaged Facebook as a means of establishing or maintaining reciprocal contact with birth parents and other birth family members; thus, it was used to sustain relationships. Others engaged it “passively” (e.g., as a means of finding out details about the birth family). Still others did not desire or pursue such contact, often citing concerns about boundaries. The chapter also addresses parents’ ideas about their children’s future relationships with their birth family—relationships possibly facilitated by social media and maintained without parental oversight or monitoring.

Weaving a Family Narrative

This chapter addresses how adoptive parents think about nature versus nurture, and whether and how these ideas change across their children’s life course. It explores how parents talk about the complex issue of similarities and differences between themselves and their adopted children—both those that may be immediately visible (e.g., skin color, hair), even early on in parenting, and those that are not as apparent until later on (e.g., abilities and interests). It considers whether and how adoptive parents invoke birth parents to help children to understand, make sense of, accept, and/or experience pride in aspects of themselves that may not be mirrored in their adoptive parents. Furthermore, the chapter explores how parents anticipate, make sense of, and address challenges in the domains of mental health and physical health in the context of varying levels of contact with and knowledge of birth family.

Navigating Openness and Contact in Child Welfare Adoptions

Some children who are adopted via foster care have contact with their birth families (e.g., birth siblings), yet little research has addressed this. This chapter addresses the experiences of families who adopted their children through foster care, with attention to adoptive parents’ feelings and patterns regarding birth family contact. As this chapter details, many families involved in child welfare adoptions had complex feelings about openness. Some families had significant concerns that mitigated their willingness to pursue contact. Others were opposed to birth parent contact but, to varying degrees, were willing to pursue birth sibling contact. In some cases, contact was initiated but then halted temporarily or permanently because of the perceived risks and drawbacks associated with such contact. Yet amid a lack of contact, families often remained communicatively open with their children, and some did not rule out contact in the future.

Adoption Talk

This chapter traces how parents communicate about adoption with their children over time, with attention to how children’s developmental stage reflects and impacts parents’ approach to talking about adoption—and the topic of families more generally and the topic of race specifically. Many parents described an awareness of and commitment to communicative openness. However, not all parents believed that it was necessary to talk about adoption—possibly reflecting a desire to avoid talking about difference (Kirk, 1964) and their own concerns about the consequences of doing so. Among the themes discussed include adoption talk at various stages, the role of the child in shaping the nature of adoption talk, and the possibility for difficult but honest questions and conversations to unfold over time.

Imagining and Enacting Birth Family Contact Over Time

This chapter draws from interview data at multiple phases of the family life cycle (preadoption, 3 months postadoption, 5 years postadoption, and 8 years postadoption) to describe the diverse patterns of adoptive–birth family relationships that unfolded, from the perspective of parents who pursued private domestic adoptions. The chapter addresses the intersecting dimensions of structural and communicative openness, with attention to how they change over time. It outlines a typology of contact dynamics over time, such that couples were classified as embodying one of these patterns: (a) low enthusiasm for openness maintained, little contact; (b) increasing enthusiasm for openness, some contact; (c) increasing enthusiasm for openness, little contact; (d) high enthusiasm for openness maintained, some contact; (e) high enthusiasm for openness maintained, no contact; (f) decreasing enthusiasm for openness amid boundary challenges, contact terminated or reduced; and (g) enthusiasm for openness maintained amid boundary challenges, contact maintained.