When you have made the choice to place your baby up for adoption, you must decide if the entire process will be open or closed. In an open adoption, birth parents have contact with the baby and the adoptive parents, while in a closed adoption, there is no contact between the birth parents and the adoptive parents and baby. In a closed adoption, identities often remain unknown. Deciding between the two can be a difficult choice. The best thing to do is to weigh the consequences of each option and decide what might be best in your situation.
What to Consider in a Closed Adoption
If you choose a closed adoption, you will have no contact with the baby or with the birth parents. You won’t know their identity, and they won’t know yours. This can help with a sense of closure, and you may feel you can now move on with your life and put this experience behind you. In a closed adoption, you won’t be provided with news or updated pictures of the baby. While some birth parents are just fine with this, you need to make sure that you are completely comfortable with not knowing anything about your baby after the process is over. A closed adoption can give the birth parents a feeling of privacy. When considering your options, you need to consider how you see your life after the birth of the baby. Do you see the baby as being part of your life? If the answer is no, then you might want to consider a closed adoption.
What to Consider in an Open Adoption
In an open adoption, the birth parents and adoptive parents have direct interaction. The birth parents will get to spend time with and know the baby. The birth parents will also have the opportunity to have a healthy relationship and will have the joy of watching their baby grow up. It may give the birth parents peace of mind knowing that their baby is living with a family who loves and provides for them. Having interaction may ease the feelings of guilt or anxiety that often come with placing a baby for adoption.
It often eases the minds of birth parents knowing how their baby is doing in every life. They may want to know that the baby is safe, happy and cared for.
Take into consideration that with an open adoption, while the birth parents have direct involvement in the baby’s life, they still have no parental rights. Ask yourself if you can emotionally deal with watching someone else raise the baby that you gave birth to. Guardian Angel Adoptions say this may be difficult for some people to handle. Are you comfortable watching a baby that you gave birth to call another person “Mommy” or “Daddy”? Are you going to be able to handle watching another couple make important life decisions, such as deciding what school to send the child to, and disciplinary decisions? This could be a difficult situation for some people to be in. Birth parents have to remember that in an open adoption, they have no legal rights to interfere with the parental decisions, and they have to accept the fact that decisions may be made that they may not agree with. All of these issues must be taken into consideration when choosing an open adoption.
If you are in the position of deciding whether to pursue an open or closed adoption, speak with the professionals at an adoption agency that helps with unplanned pregnancies. They can give you information regarding each type of adoption, and they will listen to your concerns and answer any questions that you have.