The Impact of Open Adoption on Birth Parents

What Birth Parents Experience

Placing a child for adoption is not an easy thing to do, not at the time of placement nor years later. How do birth parents get through the experience, and how does it affect them in later life?

Coping with Grief - All birth parents must deal with grief. Many are sad about not being able to raise or have a relationship with their child. Some have said that they eventually adjusted to the loss of the child, but that the pain and grief lasted a very long time. Others have said that life was never the same after placing the child. Often birth parents’ whole lives are affected.

If the adoption was arranged confidentially, there may be many questions; the child’s name, is the child’s life with the adoptive family a happy one and is the child loved and treated well? They may wonder if the adoptive parents ever told the child she was adopted. They may wonder how adoptive parents spoke about them. They may question what it would have been like to have raised their child. Unanswered questions such as these can be very difficult to deal with.

Most people at some time in their lives experience grief when they are separated from a loved one. However, in adoption, there are no standard grieving processes or approved rituals to help birth parents cope with loss, such as with a funeral. Birth parents’ grief is distinct from most other types of grief, because it is not always socially acceptable to talk about it.

Unresolved grief can cause problems in a number of areas. It can affect romantic relationships, parent-child relationships, the ability to work effectively, and a person’s feelings of happiness and usefulness. Trouble in their life, could be related to not having fully grieved for the child placed for adoption.

For most birth parents it takes time to move past the initial grief of placing a child for adoption. Some realize they need professional help to deal with the emotions that accompany the loss. Others feel fairly positive from the beginning about the adoption decision and accept that the decision brought with it certain consequences.

However, just about all birth parents wonder how their son or daughter is doing, especially when the child has reached the age for important events such as starting school, graduating from school, getting married, or becoming a parent. Some women who have placed a child for adoption are known to have become angry, either at their parents, their partner, the adoption agency, or “society”. They then act out, steal, lie, stay out late, quit school, or get involved with a bad crowd.

Others turn their anger inward and became depressed. They decide that they are absolutely worthless. They believe the people who say they are no good. They may turn to drugs, alcohol, or drive carelessly. Some birth mothers get stuck in this phase for a long time, moving from denial to anger to depression over and over again.

Birth mothers who get out of this cycle of emotions usually do so by doing one or more of the following things, all of which are positive methods for dealing with grief and accepting the loss of their child:

• going to counseling;• talking with supportive family members or friends;• attending birth parents support group meetings;• writing their feelings down in a story or poem;• writing letters, even if they are not sent to their child;• reading books to share birth parents experiences;• holding a private ceremony each year on their child’s birthday;• communicating through newsletters, magazines, and on-line information services that concentrate specifically on birth parents issues can be helpful and comforting.

(Written by Debra G. Smith, director of National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, USA, 1995)