Families with different levels of contact offer glimpses into their relationships with birth parents during their first year home.
Should You Friend Your Child’s Birth Mother?
Facebook has dramatically changed the way information is exchanged in adoption. Experts and parents offer advice on navigating social media.
“From Our Hearts”: Letters to Our Child’s Birth Parents
Writing about the little things in letters to our daughter’s birth parents often tells a bigger, warmer story in the end.
What Should We Include In Our Contact Agreement?
We’ve been selected by a birth mom who is due in two months. Our attorney advised us to draw up a contact agreement prior to the birth. What should we include?
Q&A: Bryan and Angela Tucker of Closure
After a lifetime of wondering who? and why?, an adoptee set out to find some answers. The award-winning documentary that follows her birth family search has already sparked thousands of dialogues.
How Should New Parents Navigate the Hospital Experience?
Our open adoption expert explains how prospective adoptive parents can best navigate the emotional time spent at the hospital with the birth mother before bringing their new child home.
Is Open Adoption Right for Your Family?
A legal guide to open adoptions and open-adoption agreements.
“Intimate Strangers”
She was going to have a child but couldn’t keep it, I wanted a child desperately but couldn’t have one. She was the mother at birth; I was the mother right after. It sounds simple, but it wasn’t.
Visiting with Birth Parents
When we adopted our son three years ago, our relationship with his birth mother was semi-open (letters, phone calls). Since then it has grown more open, and we’re discussing a visit. Any advice?
“Seeing My Daughter’s ‘Happily Ever After'”
My daughter, Rubie, has the kind of life I’d dreamed of for her, and is where she belongs. I only wish I had known that sooner.
The Birth Parent Perspective
A major study reveals that open adoption works well for everyone involved. Hear what families say is good about the process — and what could be better.
“Pulling Back in Open Adoption”
After a bump in the relationship with our daughter’s birth mother, we’re learning lessons about love, patience, and acceptance.
Adoptees on Open Adoption: “I Have All My Pieces”
Teen and young adult adoptees who grew up in fully open adoptions talk about their relationships with their birth parents and adoptive parents and the many benefits openness has brought them.
Ask AF: Explaining the Birth Mother Relationship
My husband and I have a friendly relationship with the birth mother of our 3-year-old daughter. We talk on the phone, exchange letters regularly, and visit a few times a year.
What Can We Learn from Our Kids’ DNA?
As genetic testing makes its way into the adoption world, our families discover its promise — and its limitations.
Understanding Open Adoption
Among experts who study it and families who practice it, open adoption varies widely. Here’s a look at open adoption today.
A Meeting of the Open Minds
Two adoptive moms and a birth mother candidly discuss the adoption match, birth siblings, contact agreements, and more.
Ask AF: Explaining Biological Siblings to an Adoptive Sibling
We have an eight-year-old biological child and a six-month-old we adopted as a newborn. Our younger son has several biological siblings—and I’m wondering how to explain this to my older son.
A Durable Relationship with Your Child’s Birth Parents
Over the years, an open adoption arrangement may need to evolve to accommodate the changing needs of everyone involved — above all, the child.
“Moving Past a Miscommunication in Our Open Adoption”
14 years into our open adoption, we’ve learned that conflicts can occur, as in any family. Here’s how we moved past one sticky situation when our son’s birth mother sent him a check in the mail.