Open Adoption

My wife and I have two beautiful children, both of which came to us through the miracle of adoption. What a blessing. What a joy. Still, though, it’s been quite the bumpy road to get to where we are now. One of the toughest things we’ve had to deal with was the feeling of guilt and debt. I mean, our children’s birth parents gave us the most wonderful gift—the gift of parenthood—which came through a big sacrifice on their part. Our adoptions are very open and we’ve communicated freely and often all along the journey, which means that we saw the heartbreak in their eyes when they made the hard decisions. Even though they had their minds made up and they had their… [more]

Open adoption is a funny thing. Where’s the rule book? How are supposed to know what is right and what is wrong when it comes to setting boundaries? After all, the person on your left will tell you that you should have no boundaries—that you should feel comfortable letting your child’s birth parents into every facet of your life. And the person to your right will tell you you’re damaging the well-being of your child’s development if you let the birth parents receive anything more than a random photograph in the mail every few years. So, what’s right? Where’s the rule book? The answer: There is no rule book, and only you can truly know what’s right for your own home. That sounds all… [more]

States across the nation are entertaining legislation that open up adoption records and give adoptees access to their original birth certificates. The laws that currently govern adoptee rights are decades old, dating back to the days when adoption itself was considered shameful by most and, thus, shrouded in secrecy. For as increasingly common as openness in adoptions is of late, such openness is a newer trend. Many, if not all, adult adoptees crave the knowledge and connection that comes with their original birth certificate. For many adoptees, the original birth certificate is the only means of tracing their genetic roots. But what happens when a birth parent doesn't want to be found? Just such a case recently hit the news, bringing to light… [more]

Well before my daughters reached the age of reason (which I mark as that Easter Sunday they refused to wear those adorable matching dresses) their adoptions were a regular part of the daily conversation in our kitchen, right up there with nail polish and ponies and the tooth fairy.  Lucky for us, in our community they were surrounded by children from all sorts of complex, un-matching, created families.  Many of their friends are also adopted.  They attended adopted family picnics at their elementary school.   Now in their twenties, they are in the vanguard of the new generation of adoptees who have grown up with openness-in which adoption is definitely NOT a family secret. Both girls came into my life as infants, both… [more]

I love sociology. That’s what I majored in when I was in college (although my career has nothing to do with sociology now). There was a famous experiment by Milgram that just fascinated me. The volunteer sat in front of a switchboard and he was told to shock the other person every time a wrong answer was given. The person giving the answers to questions was out of sight—on the other side of a wall. After a while, the guy getting shocked started to complain about the pain, as if it was damaging his heart. Then when the volunteer looks to quit the experiment, some guy in a lab coat comes in and tells him he has to continue. So even though… [more]

“Kick, kick, kick!” I said, holding my little girl in the water. Back when I was a teenager, I spent a summer up on a lifeguard stand watching people splash and play. When I wasn’t up on my perch, I was down in the water giving swimming lessons. Being that I was one of the least experienced as well as the youngest of the swimming instructors, I was usually assigned to the younger age groups. When teaching kids how to swim, we started at the beginning- blowing bubbles and kicking from the side of the pool. The main goal with those seemingly simple activities was to get the kids accustomed to the water, breaking the fear of drowning by helping them get comfortable with water on their face, and learning how their… [more]

“I’m thinking about coming out there to go to school,” Bri said. Jammie could sense some hesitancy in her voice and knew exactly the reason why. “You don’t have to worry about us,” my wife, Jammie said. “We’re not going to try to pressure you or talk you into coming out here to see us any more often than you are comfortable. Adoption stories are not easily told in a single blog post. Adoption stories, just like any good novel, begin somewhere and take a long time to unfold. Unlike any novel, however, the story never stops- especially nowadays when the majority of adoptions are open adoptions. “It’s just that… I dunno,” Bri continued. “I’m thinking that the university out there would be a better fit for me than the one here where I… [more]

One of the most revealing conversations I’ve ever heard of regarding adoption took place between my brother and a young man who used to be our next door neighbor. My family lived in South Carolina when I was young, and, being a military family, we moved around a lot. Years later, when my brother was in the military, he found himself stationed back in South Carolina near where we lived years before. One day he packed his camera, loaded up his family, and drove to the neighborhood where we used to romp as kids. While he was out in front of our old house snapping off nostalgic pictures of the little brick building he hadn’t seen since he was 7 years old, the neighbor came out to spark up a conversation. “I… [more]

I read a lot of blog posts. I enjoy blog hopping, especially with different adoption blogs. I don’t always agree with what I read, so it’s nice to see the other side of people’s opinions, especially from people somewhere else in the adoption triad. I read one the other day that I just can’t seem to shake out of my head. It was from a birthmother who had placed a child for adoption a number of years earlier. Her adoption was a closed adoption and she sort of “moved on” after placement, I guess. I don’t really know. Something brought her interest back into the adoption world and when she went blog hopping, just like I like to do, she encountered the term “birthmother” for the first time. I’m not really… [more]

I was anything but excited my when my phone beeped to tell me I had a text message. It’s not that I didn’t like getting text messages from my wife- to the contrary. In fact, I was really looking forward to hearing updates about what was going on at the hospital, but her message rattled me a little bit. “The birthfather is here. Don’t worry, he’s really easy to talk to and you’ll like him,” her text said. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting him. Of course, he had a right to be at the hospital. After all, his daughter was the one being born that day. If anything, I was the one who didn’t have any right to be there. So I sat at work all morning that day thinking about the… [more]