- my iParenting
- quick clicks
- iparenting adoption articles
- iparenting adoption q&a
- message boards
- research baby names
- prepare a birth plan
- content channels
- ip channel rss feeds
- read birth stories
- read parenting stories
- recommended books
- e-newsletters
- safety recalls
- ip diaries
- ip store
- mom of the month
- dad of the month
- editor's letter
- letters to the editor
 |
- e-newsletters
- Sign up to receive our free weekly e-newsletters
- award-winning products
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families.
Question: What psychological effects does a closed adoption have on the adoptee? Answer: In a closed adoption, the identity of the child's birth mother and other family information remains confidential and is not accessible to the child. In an open adoption, this information is accessible to the child. In the most open situation of all, the child, his adoptive family, and his birth family interact more or less freely. The findings of the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project suggest that an open adoption is a good thing for the adoptive family, the child, as well as the birth family. While many experts are strongly pushing for open adoption, there is still room for discussion of this understandably emotional issue. In helping people work through their psychological conflicts and problems, my wife and I must be sure to remind ourselves regularly of two facts: 1) that the human spirit is incredibly resilient, and 2) that every human being experiences some significant pain and/or dysfunction in his or her lifetime -- i.e., life provides each of us a fair degree of disappointment, no matter who we are. Unless we keep these things in mind, we can easily wind up emphasizing the wrong issues in therapy. We believe that human beings have a built-in desire to connect with their birth parents, and so it is natural for someone who is adopted to have a longing to know something about his biological parents, and to want to share this longing with trusted loved ones. If he was raised in a pretty healthy family, the adoptee will be able to express these longings, be heard and be understood. It is a normal human reaction for adoptive parents to feel a little threatened by their child's interest in his birth family, but not so much so that it gets in the way. When asked by their adopted son how they would feel if he started searching for his birth parents, a couple we know said, "We can see and feel how important this is to you, and we would have that same longing if we were in your position. Let us know if there are any ways that we can help you." A 55-year-old man with whom we worked had tried for many years to find his birth mother, but to no avail. He was clinically depressed and said that he felt "like a piece of his soul was missing." This sense of incompleteness can be the result of closed adoption, and can be experienced as depression, difficulty forming a clear identity, trust problems in intimate relationships, and unresolved grief. We must remember that many infants lose a parent to accidental death or disease, but continue to grow and flourish. They may have a big chunk of grieving -- a piece of abandonment work to do -- at some point later in life, but that is one of those painful things in life that we all must face sooner or later. The same is true with closed adoption.
|
