Accompanying the LA Times two part article was a smaller article that not many (if any yet) have touched on regarding openness and adoptee loss. As a birth mother, I want to know about issues that adoptees have, will or can experience. When the idea of openness was sold to me, no one talked about adoptee's losses. The truth remains: even in fully open adoptions, some sense of loss remains. The questions that remain have to do with whether or not open adoption helps alleviate some of that loss.

I have beat myself up over the years because I was so uneducated about the potential and very real losses that adoptees can experience with relation to their adoption. While I know my resources for information gathering were limited at the time, I still have a hard time allowing myself to feel forgiveness for not fully understanding what my daughter would go through because of my own decisions and actions on her part. Since the placement, I have made it a goal to continuously inform myself on these issues.

The article itself mentions a study, of which I was previously unaware, that has been tracking 190 different adoptions (of varying degrees of openness) since the late 1970's and early 80's. The findings of this study when the adoptees hit adolescence is somewhat reassuring, even knowing that losses exist. It states that adoptees whose adoptions were open (in varying degrees) weren't confused about who their parents were (which I would assume could have the double meaning of not confusing birth with adoptive parents while still knowing from where they come) as well as feeling as though the relationship with their birth mother offered them further support in life.

Flipped to see how tweens and teens in closed adoption process this stuff, the findings were a bit different.

Among the adoptees in closed adoptions, the study found, half wanted their adoptions to stay closed, mostly because they felt that being adopted was not important and that contact with birth families might be negative. The other half wanted contact and felt hurt that their birth mothers had not sought them out.

As one adoptee from the open era that I love to discuss these heavy issues with always says, she can't comment on what it would be like to have a closed adoption because that wasn't her reality. Likewise, she would prefer if those from the closed era wouldn't attempt to speak for her (or other open adoption adoptees) regarding what life must be like in an open adoption. The findings for closed adoption teens and tweens makes sense: you want to stick with what you know. I'm sure that openness may seem scary or unnecessary to someone who hadn't lived that reality. (It was a scary concept for me before I entered into the relationship!)

However, Sharon Roszia, adoption author and professional, has something to say about the findings of that study with regard to adolescents in closed adoptions.

For these children, Roszia said, the issues simply remain submerged. These children deal with additional issues: Didn't my birth mother care enough to find me? Are the people I come from so terrible that I can't know them?

She clarifies her meaning with this deeply profound quote:

It is better to deal with reality than fantasy and fear. Better to know than not know.

As always, levels of openness will vary from family to family as different situations call for different outcomes. However, I really can't argue that simply knowing answers to tough questions could help alleviate that wonder, that fear. Knowing that your birth family is good or bad could put an end to years of idle wondering. I really hope to provide my daughter with the answers to her questions by being consistently available. I feel bad for buying into the myth that open adoptions would magically leave an adoptee without any sense of loss. I don't want her to wonder the "why" questions or fear the "if" questions. I simply want her to know.

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For more, read:

1. Open Adoption In Their Own Words.

2. Article Touches on Reality of Open Adoption.

3. Adoptee Wisdom.

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Photo Credit. LA Times Article Reference. Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project.