"No one ever told me grief felt so much like fear."

- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

When a child is placed for adoption, the obvious loss to birthparents is the ability to parent their child and be a daily presence in their life. Several of our first mom bloggers here, have talked about their feelings of loss connected to missing the day to day involvement of parenting their placed child. Obviously it is difficult to not to be the one to parent your child. Being around from time to time to sort of see what you're missing, must be comparable to salt in an “open” wound at times.

Open adoption is generally thought of as a way to limit the loss for the adopted child, and in some ways for the birthparents. While in many ways openness and contact does just that, most people do not consider that there are truly additional losses for birthparents who are involved in ongoing visits and contact, versus those who are in closed adoptions. This loss really seems to lie in the altered ability for birthparents to process their grief concerning the loss of the child through adoption.

One of the biggest things I have come to understand, via the birthfamilies of my own children, is that open adoption might actually be harder from the grief standpoint. Every one of them seems to suffer from a sort of limbo, or unresolved sense of grief and loss, and our openness definitely plays a role. The loss of the child is never a complete or final loss, because visits are happening, and a relationship is maintained. The stages one normally goes through when grieving a loss can be harder to process when it is not what one normally views as “loss,” *definite and complete. Despite this I see that most birthparents still feel openness and contact holds some benefits for them, and many more for their child, than would a closed adoption.

When an adoption is closed, in some ways the birthparents can go farther in the stages of the grieving process, because there is more finality in the present loss of their child. They don’t have contact or visits, so many report feeling more like a death has occurred, and the loss is therefore processed in a like manner. I think that parents whose child is abducted and never found must follow a similar pattern of grieving with what also qualifies as an ambiguous loss.

When an adoption is open, with ongoing contact, it may be harder to completely grieve what can on the surface appear to be a more limited loss. Even in a closed arrangement, the grieving stages might not ever progress beyond a certain point, because the child is still living, somewhere out in the world. The possibility for them to return to some amount of contact with the birthparent must always be on that birthparents mind through out their grieving/healing process. Often when a reunion then occurs, there is additional grief to sort through, if their child did not lead the life a birthparent was envisioning, or if that child does not in fact wish to reunite.

I am reminded of a recent article, where a mother had believed that her child was growing and living her life with her adoptive parents, only to learn over twenty years later that the child had died as an infant. The images of the life she fantasized this child was having, thinking she was alive, must be making the grieving of the now concrete loss of her child, even more difficult. I had to wonder about the confusion this birthmother now feels. Trying to push out of her mind the images she had created, of how her child might have been living, must be hard. Was this somehow easier though, than working through the stages of grief and loss would have been if her child was living, the adoption had been open, and she knew about her life?

Adoptive families should do their learning about the stages of grief, and how birthparents may not follow the traditional course for grieving. Having an open adoption is not a solution to a quick or uncomplicated grieving process for birthparents. Open adoption changes the face of grief, mixes it up, and bends it to different and unexpected patterns. Sometimes the grieving a birthmother may do in an open adoption may be more difficult because the loss is even less final in a basic sense. As adoptive parents you will also bear witness to that process in a more intimate way.


*Definite >adjective, Clearly stated or decided; not vague or doubtful. Complete >adjective, Having run its full course; finished. To the greatest extent or degree; total.

And His Birthmom Misses All The “Fun” Stuff


Photo: Nathan Bean


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