Most Birth Mothers Want Information About Their Children

During the next week, I’ll share each of the seven recommendations from the comprehensive study: “Safeguarding The Rights And Well-Being Of Birthparents In The Adoption Process,” conducted by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.

Recommendation 1: Establish legally enforceable post-adoption contact agreements in all states and permit adults who were adopted to regain access to their own records.

Birth mothers in closed adoptions say that living with the uncertainty of what became of their children is the most difficult factor they cope with.

Receiving information about their children is the most important thing that would help to bring them peace of mind.

That reality flies in the face of contemporary stereotypes of birth mothers as women who crave anonymity and oppose contact by the children they placed for adoption; rather, the desire to know about their offspring appears almost universal.

For example, one study of birth mothers in Britain, who ranged in age from 22 to 81, found that all but nine of the 262 respondents (about 3 percent) wanted basic information about their children. The same small number said they wanted to preserve the secrecy of their identities.

Many pregnant women today seek open adoptions that include written agreements for ongoing contact with the adoptive families.

State legislators frequently use birthmothers' supposed desire for privacy as a rationale for keeping birth records sealed when, in reality, only a tiny minority wants to stay closeted and the vast majority want information about or contact with the children they relinquished.

Source: “Safeguarding The Rights And Well-Being Of Birthparents In The Adoption Process” by Susan Livingston Smith, Program and Project Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, November 2006.

Related Posts:
Statistics About Infant Adoption and Adoption Practitioners

Statistics About Parents Who Place Their Children For Adoption
For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com, and check out my Exploring Adoption bookstore.

Comments

[Kim]

After going through the entire adoption process and now that it is has been a month since my son's birth and placement with us, I have a more experienced and enlightened picture then I did before. I would have totally agreed with the Evan D. Donaldson Institute's reccomendation before of the states having legally enforceable post-adoption agreements until I became more informed, was an actual parent, and truly realized that adoption is about the child and not the birthparents and adoptive parents. One of the problems with legally enforceable post-adoption agreements is that prospective adoptive parents really don't have enough information about the birthparents before placement of the child to make an informed educated decision about what to agree to in a post-adoption agreement. There is a lot more information required to be obtained on prospective adoptive parents. Prospective adoptive parents have to go through a physical exam, and psychiatric assesment. Prospective adoptive parents have a local, state, and federal FBI criminal background checks done on them at required intervals. Prospective adoptive parents have the physicality of their home, property, and neighborhood scrutinized. Prospective adoptive parents have to get references. There is more, but I will stop as you get the picture of the amount information collected on prospective adoptive parents and their immediate family before they can adopt domestically. On the other hand, due to HIPPA and professional client confidentiality you can not obtain information about birthparents, even sometimes with a release from the birthparents, to make an informed educated decision about post-adoption agreement issues like physical visitation for example. I strongly believe that adoptive parents should keep some contact with birth parents to ensure birthparents for their peace of minds that their child is doing well and happy and for the adoptee to have a sense of roots and history. With our son's birthparents we e-mail them letters and pictures. And we send them letters, cards, pictures, and baby videos through the regular mail. We talk weekly on the phone and are developing a growing friendship. Yet, legally enforceable post-adoption agreements prevent children's parents from changing the relationship when new information comes up about the birth parents that affect the welfare of the child or the adoptee is old enough to vocalize what type of relationship they want with their birthparents. In our case for example, we discovered a prior history of child abuse and babies put in foster care from birth, when the police and child protective services came to hospital and said there was a police hold on our son as well. With that information, despite our growing friendship with the birthparents, we can't expand the post-adoption agreement to physical visitation at this time for now.