Gretchen Miller Wrobel

Many Faces of Openness in Adoption: Perspectives of Adopted Adolescents and Their Parents

ABSTRACT Parents and adolescents (mean age, 15.7 years) from 177 adoptive families participating in the second wave of the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project were interviewed about their post-adoption contact arrangements. The sample included families with no contact, stopped contact, contact without meetings, and contact with face-to-face meetings between the adolescent and birth mother. Openness arrangements were dynamic, and different openness arrangements were associated with different experiences and feelings. Adoptive families with contact reported having higher levels of satisfaction about their openness arrangements, experiencing more positive feelings about the birth mother, and possessing more factual and personal knowledge about the birth mother than did families without contact. Adolescents and adoptive mothers in the contact with meetings group reported the greatest satisfaction with their openness arrangements; those with no contact or stopped contact reported the least satisfaction with their arrangements. Participants having no contact were more likely to want the intensity of contact to increase in the future rather than stay the same. Many participants already having contact wanted it to increase in the future. Fewer than 1 percent of all participants wanted to see the intensity of contact decrease.

Adolescent Search for Birthparents: Who Moves Forward?.

The decision to search for birthparents is one that all adopted persons consider. The focus of this study is to describe, for a group of adopted adolescents, who chooses to search and who does not and to explore how search behavior is related to the functioning of the adolescents’adoptive families and adolescents’psychological adjustment. Participants in the study included 93 adolescents whose contact with birthparents ranged from no contact or information about birthparents to those who had some information but no direct contact with birthparents. Adolescents who indicated no desire to search for their birthparents and those who indicated a desire to search or had searched were included in the study. Older adolescents who experienced some openness in their adoption, were the least satisfied with that adoptive openness, and were preoccupied with their adoptive status were most likely to search. Search behavior was not related to family functioning or adolescent problem behavior.

Adoptees’ curiosity and information-seeking about birth parents in emerging adulthood Context, motivation, and behavior

The Adoption Curiosity Pathway (ACP) model was used to test the potential mediating effect of curiosity on adoption information-seeking in a sample of 143 emerging adult adoptees (mean age = 25.0 years) who were adopted as infants within the United States by parents of the same race. Adoptees were interviewed about their intentions and actions taken to gather new information about their birth mothers and fathers. As expected, level of curiosity was positively associated with information-seeking behavior. Moreover, level of curiosity was influenced by adoptees’ perceptions of barriers and facilitators toward information-seeking. In fact, curiosity partially mediated the impact of internal and external barriers on information-seeking about birth mothers. Curiosity fully mediated the impact of external barriers and partially mediated external facilitators on birth father information-seeking. This study provides important support for the ACP, which describes context, motivation, and behavior relating to seeking new adoption-related information.

Adoptees’ Contact With Birth Relatives in Emerging Adulthood

While openness in adoption has become more common in the United States, little research has examined contact between birth and adoptive families as adoptees become adults. Using quantitative and qualitative data from 167 emerging adult adoptees, factors characterizing contact (e.g., type, frequency, with whom), satisfaction with contact, and the influences of transitional events and significant relationships were explored. Among these variables, satisfaction with contact with birth parents in emerging adulthood was significantly associated with greater openness levels. Four qualitative case studies, representing increasing openness levels with increasing satisfaction, provided illustrations of variability in emerging adult adoptees’ experiences of contact with birth parents. Overall, with regard to openness in adoption, emerging adulthood represents a transitional period marked by substantial individual variation.

Trajectories of birth family contact in domestic adoptions.

Emotional distance regulation theory (Broderick, 1993; Grotevant, 2009) guided this examination of the changes in family structure and process in adoptive kinship networks experiencing different arrangements of contact between birth and adoptive family members. Group-based trajectory modeling was used to reveal four trajectories of postadoption contact experienced between adoptive and birth family members in adoptive kinship networks of same-race, domestic infant adoptions. Data were drawn from the Minnesota Texas Adoption Research Project, a study of 190 adoptive families and 169 birth mothers followed across four longitudinal waves (middle childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, young adulthood). Three aspects of the birth family adoptive family relationship measured at four times were used to create the groups: frequency of contact between the adopted person and birth mother, satisfaction of the adopted person with the openness arrangements, and number of adoptive and birth family members involved in the contact. Four trajectory groups emerged: no contact (41.6% of sample), stopped contact (13.7%), limited contact (26.3%), and extended contact (18.4%). Group membership was validated by coders who matched interview transcripts with group descriptions at levels significantly above chance. Knowledge of trajectories will assist professionals providing postadoption services.

Minding the (Information) Gap: What Do Emerging Adult Adoptees Want to Know About Their Birth Parents?

Abstract The formation of an adoption information gap was examined for a group of 169 emerging adults (M = 25.0 years) who were adopted as infants. Participants completed interviews and questionnaires at adolescence and emerging adulthood (late teens to 20s). The Adoption Curiosity Pathway model guided research questions about formation of an adoption information gap, which exists when there is a difference between what an adopted person knows and what he or she desires to know regarding his or her adoption. In addition, specific issues were identified about which emerging adults were curious. Differences in these specific issues were examined across gender and openness arrangement with birth parents at emerging adulthood. The most frequently sought information was medical and health history. Logistic regression analyses revealed that the formation of an adoption information gap, which contains the specific items of curiosity, was more likely for those who were less satisfied with the amount of openness with birth parents during both adolescence and emerging adulthood. Implications for practice are presented.