One of the most important aspects of the survey was identifying common issues that get in the way of openness. This graph looks at the top five issues among all respondents (it's actually six because there was a tie).

What these issues tell us as a support site:

• Our members need help learning how to communicate and listen effectively. Perhaps we need to start reviewing books that speak to this or interview experts who can help? For agencies and adoption professionals, communication workshops might be a great addition to their services.
• Speaking of communication, our members need specific help in sharing their emotions, learning to set boundaries and asking for more from each other.
• I'll talk more about the "lack of support from extended family" in the next post but clearly this is something post-adoption services needs to address.
• We also need to think of ways we can support folks after the visits -- learning how to cope with the upswing in grief, pain or guilt. Openness can sometimes make the hard parts of adoption undeniable.

Now to break down the issues by respondents:

• The top two issues for first parents was having to hide feelings and being afraid to ask for more contact.
• The top two issues for adoptive parents was differences in communication styles and difficulty in setting boundaries.

The participants of this survey were certainly a specialized group as evidenced by how respondents answered the question "who initiates contact?".

Here's how the results broke down:

78% of the first families responding say they do. (66% say the adoptive family does.)
84% of the adoptive families responding say they do. (59% say the first family does.)

Clearly the people who chose to respond to the survey and who are likely to participate on the board are people who are proactive about building and maintaining their open adoption relationships.

The next question was whether or not respondents felt satisfied with their level of contact. Here are the results:

As you can see, many of the respondents want more contact. Exact numbers: First parents 41% and adoptive parents 39%.

When asked if they felt their child's other family was satisfied with the level of contact the results looked like this:

Yes.  43% (first parents: 55% adoptive parents: 42%)
No, they want more contact. 14% (first parents: 9% adoptive parents: 14%)
No, they want less contact.  2%  (first parents: 7% adoptive parents: >1%)
I don't know. 40% (first parents: 29% adoptive parents: 43%)

The number appears to be higher in adoptive parents because there were a higher number of adoptive parents answering whose children have no contact with their first families, including parents who adopted internationally.

What struck me is that people generally assume that their child's other family is content although a large number of respondents on both sides who answered this survey want more contact.

Of course, people who answered aren't representative of the adoption community. They are people who are identifying themselves as wanting some measure of support around openness, which means they value those relationships on some level -- even if they are frustrated or struggling. But this does give me hope that as families learn why openness is a good thing for adoptees (as the research is showing), they will look to make more contact.

The lesson I'm learning here is that it may be worth it for families to reach out to their children's other family members, especially with information about why openness matters.

Most of the respondents had direct contact with their child's other families. For adoptive families this was 69% and for first families this was 77%. (13% of adoptive parents and 14% of first parents answering the survey have no contact at all.) Types of contact broke down like this:

I was a little surprised by how many families are meeting each other in a neutral location. I also took note that a number of families are having direct contact but aren't having visits. For OpenAdoptionSupport.com, that means I need to think on ways to help families maintain what are essentially long-distant relationships (even if they may live near each other). I am hoping to find site contributors who are currently living in these kinds of open adoptions.

One of the questions I asked was, "How long have you been part of the adoption triad?" The answers varied according to where the respondent was in the triad. Adoptees, as I said, were generally responding as adults (out of 22 people who identified as adopted persons, 15 said they had been part of the adoption triad for greater than 21 years). Adoptive parents tended to be "younger" in their adoption experiences than first parents. The breakdown looked like this:

First parents
Less than a year 7%
Between a year and five years 31%
Between six and ten years 36%
Between eleven and fifteen years 9%
Between sixteen and twenty-one years 9%
Greater than twenty-one years 7%

Adoptive parents
Less than a year 19%
Between a year and five years 58%
Between six and ten years 16%
Between eleven and fifteen years 3%
Between sixteen and twenty-one years 3%
Greater than twenty-one years 1%

The questions submitted through the Ask a question feature reflect these differences. Adoptive parents tend to be working on establishing their relationships with their children's first parents while first parents are often asking about how to revisit those relationships further down the road.

I was a little surprised by how low the "less than a year" number is on both sides. Perhaps it's a reflection that openness can get more complicated as our children begin to ask more of us and of their family relationships.