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Every adoption, and certainly every open adoption, has its challenges. Sometimes it is a challenge adjusting to the idea of growing your family larger than you had ever expected. Sometimes it is the challenges that come from every adoption, mainly the idea of adjusting to a new child in the family. And sometimes those challenges come from extended family.
Not many people are comfortable with the idea of adoption in general. Our society is obsessed with the idea that “blood makes a family”, and the stereotypes that we all know and love that are associated with adoption and adoptive families certainly bear that out. Open adoption is even harder in a lot of ways. The mere idea that someone could have, and openly acknowledge, having more than one mother and father in the life of their child; that they could be comfortable with that, and not feel threatened (well, not often anyway) – unthinkable. As the adults involved in an open adoption, we’ve had a belly full of “well-meaning” comments from family. As you know, I am writing this from the perspective of an adoptive parent. I have seen, from observation, that birth parents/birth families have some of the same things to deal with in a different way.
“I cannot understand why somebody would want contact with a child after they gave it away.” “Aren’t you afraid they’ll come back and take her away from you?” “School Girl will be confused! She won’t know who her real parents are. This is a really bad idea.” There have been a lot more, but those are representative samples. If you are currently a part of an open adoption, on either side, I am certain you have heard many, many more comments just like those.
As you can see, many comments like that from otherwise, um, supportive family members are based on ignorance and fear. The best way to combat that is just through exposure. Most people have no idea what an open adoption is; it might be a good idea to go over the basics of what an open adoption is not with reluctant family members. We know already that open adoption is not some sort of “baby sharing” arrangement, that it is not a threat to the role of either set of parents; that it is supposed to be what is best for the adopted child.
One book that we found that explains adoption in general very well is Adoption is a Family Affair by Patricia Johnson. When we were matched but before we were actually placed, we bought this book for our extended family. My parents looked at it briefly; my husband’s parents (from what we were told) never looked at it at all. Which just goes to show…you can try your best, but people will take in information only when they are ready.
My parents have come to accept M and her parents role in our daughter’s life. They have seen that nothing awful has happened. The sky has not yet fallen. Our daughter is safe and loved, by many people. We are not quite as close to my husband’s family, both geographically and otherwise, so I am not certain how they feel. All that we want, all that we can hope for, is that nobody is deliberately hurtful or cruel toward our family. Ultimately, whether or not any extended family member chooses to accept the makeup of a given family is entirely on them.
