The Importance of Open Adoption: An Adoptive Mother's Perspective
Adoption is how my husband and I have built our wonderful family. Over the past three years, we’ve adopted two beautiful girls, and both experiences have been incredibly rewarding. One thing that has become especially clear throughout our journey is the importance of the open relationships we’ve built with our daughters’ birth mothers.
Open adoption is an important part of how we hope to raise our girls. From the beginning, it was our goal to build meaningful relationships with both of their birth mothers. First and foremost, they are wonderful people whose selfless decisions helped make our family possible. We believe it’s important to honor who they are, the role they played in bringing our daughters into the world, and the lasting place they hold in our lives.
Beyond our gratitude, we also recognize that open adoption is about our daughters and their needs. As they grow, they will naturally develop questions about where they came from, who they are, and how their stories began. We want them to feel comfortable exploring those questions and to know that they never have to be afraid to ask. Having an ongoing relationship with their birth mothers gives them the opportunity to learn about their histories, connect with an important part of their identities, and develop a fuller understanding of themselves.
We believe one of the greatest benefits of open adoption is that it allows our daughters to grow up with a more complete understanding of their own stories. Rather than having to piece together information or wonder about the people and circumstances that came before them, they have the opportunity to build real relationships, ask questions, and develop connections over time. These relationships can also help reinforce an important message: they are deeply loved, and the people who helped bring them into our family will always be a meaningful part of their lives.
Open adoption has also taught us that love doesn’t have to be limited or divided. Our relationships with our daughters’ birth mothers don’t diminish our role as their parents; instead, they enrich our family in ways we might not have fully understood at the beginning of our journey. We can be grateful for the women who made our family possible while embracing our own role in raising, loving, and guiding our girls. We know that every adoption story is different, and openness can look different from one family to another. Relationships evolve, circumstances change, and the needs of children grow alongside them. For us, the goal is to continue nurturing these connections with honesty, respect, and care, always keeping our daughters’ best interests at heart.
Ultimately, we want our girls to grow up knowing that their stories are something to celebrate, that they can be curious about every part of who they are, and that they never have to choose between loving their birth mothers and loving us. Our family was built through adoption, but it continues to grow through the relationships and love we share with the people who are part of our daughters’ stories.
-A proud adoptive mother