Today our toddler son overheard my husband talking with our daughter's first mom on the phone and so just had to call his birth mom, too. He told her about the egg hunt at church that morning and she told him she loved him, then he went about the rest of his day.

Sometimes I come across parents who are willing to send letters and pictures to their kids' first parents from the start, but want to hold off on direct contact until their child is "old enough" to understand the relationship. Sometimes that means 6 or 7 years old, sometimes 4 or so. They argue that contact before then wouldn't mean anything--the child isn't old enough to even remember. Why bother?

I've struggled to understand this line of thinking, because when I see something like my two-year old phoning his first mom, I see the building blocks of a real relationship. He won't remember this brief conversation twenty years from now. He probably won't even remember it a month from now. But in a few years when those long-term memories start to form, he will be drawing on these early years. He'll have the head start of familiarity. And at the most basic level he'll already know that his first parents are part of the constellation of people who make up his family. Why pass that up?

Originally posted at Production, Not Reproduction

There is a single copy of my son's original birth certificate in the fire-safe box in my office. Because both of his first parents continue to be part of his life he also has access to whatever information they will share with him about his origins.

For awhile I thought that was enough. I thought that the openness in our adoption negated his personal need for open records. If he had his first parents in his life in the flesh, why would he need to see their names on a piece of paper? Open records would just give him access to information that he already had, and while I supported open records in principle I was grateful my little guy didn't need them. I thought it was ridiculous that the state sealed those records, but ultimately unimportant.

Then I started thinking about his life as an adult. And I thought about trying to nurture openness in his adoption. And I realized open records were actually very important.

At the most basic level, I believe my son has a civil right to the legal record of his birth. As an adult he should be able to contact the State of California and receive copies of both of his birth certificates--original and amended. The fact that he cannot is simple discrimination. He shouldn't have to rely on my fire-safe box or on his first parents' willingness to share information with him. There is already quite a bit of informal privilege denied adopted persons. But this denial is codified into state law. And, as an adoptive parent, that pisses me off.

I also began to see how sealing records works against those of us advocating for open adoption. They are simply an outdated and unwarranted part of adoption. Closed records arose in most states within my parents' lifetime. (Closed records--available to no one--are distinguished from confidential records, which are available to involved parties but not the general public.) They were premised on the idea that adopted children needed to be protected from the wayward parents who conceived them and the stigma of illegitimacy. First parents needed to hide their shameful secret from prying eyes. Adoptive parents needed to be able to pretend they were a biological family. Sealing birth records provided a legal framework for all these purposes.

Maintaining closed records perpetuates those stigmas and, in doing so, works against open adoption. Closed records play into the fiction that there is something shameful in adoptees' pasts, something which needs to be hidden away for everyone's protection. They reinforce the idea that first parents should disappear into the shadows after relinquishment if they know what's best for them and their child. They suggest to adoptive parents that the only way to be their child's real parent is to see themselves as replacements for the biological parents. Those are baneful ideas in open adoption.

Keeping records closed perpetuates the myth that open adoption is a fringe movement, flirting with the potentially dangerous idea of not cutting adoptees off from their families of origin. Closed records and the system built around them are why so many people ask, "Isn't it confusing?" and "Doesn't it make you nervous?" when they hear about open adoption. Because they've picked up the notion that the only way adoption can really work is to erase one family completely and create another in its place, shrouded in secrecy and anonymity.

So I advocate for open records for two reasons: because adult adoptees are being denied their rights and because I care about open adoption. The openness in my son's adoption doesn't change the fact that the State of California still treats him as a second-class citizen. And there are far too many others--including his first mom, also an adoptee--who have neither the openness nor the access. That is wholly unfair.

(Originally posted here.)

For our son's first birthday, I made him a little book titled "Who Loves [You]?" It's full of pictures of him with the people who make up our family--grandparents, godfather, aunts and uncles, and his first families. I wanted a way to make their faces familiar to him, even though we don't see many of them very often.

We were reading it last night before bed, flipping through the pages and having him identify different people. When we got to his first mom's page he got so excited. "K___! K___! K___!" he sang, pointing at her picture.

Something clicked for him during K's visit last month. He's still too young (at two) to truly understand family relationships--that Nana is Mommy's mommy and that sort of thing. But he gets that K is special because she is family. He welcomed her into his select inner circle over that weekend (perks include extra hugs, reading books in your lap, sharing favorite toys, and hearing your name repeated over and over).

I was glad to see it and to see her respond to him and know that it had happened on his timing. It made me think that maybe we're on the right track.

(Originally posted here.)

Probably the question I'm asked most about open adoption (maybe second-most, after "What is it like?") is why we do it. I usually say that we think it's the healthiest, most ethical approach to adoption. Which is true. But last week a friend pressed a little further on the "why"--why so open, why so adamant.

I thought about everything I've learned and pondered so far about identity, loss, relinquishment, the adoption industry, adoptive parenting, child development, etc. And I realized it all distills down to one thing for me: open adoption deals with reality. It's reality that Puppy has two distinct family trees. That other people can call him their son. That one of the most joyful times in my life was one of the crappiest in his first parents'. That Puppy lost something when he was placed. Those things are real whether I want to confront them or not.

In defending the fact that adoptive families are as legitimate as non-adoptive families, sometimes people fall into pretending we're just like non-adoptive families. But we're not, and the process which formed us continues to influence our life together. I'd much rather deal with that reality than waste time tiptoeing around the truth with clichés and secrecy. Why would I ever pretend Puppy grew in my heart? Or that a legal process ends emotional ties? Or that first parents just move on? Open adoption confronts those kinds of things. Sometimes that's tough on me, but it's the openness that helps me deal with that.

So that's my new sound bite: open adoption deals with reality.

(Originally posted at Production, Not Reproduction)