Psychology Commons^™

Many Faces Of Openness In Adoption: Perspectives Of Adopted Adolescents And Their Parents, Harold D. Grotevant, Gretchen Miller Wrobel, Lynn Von Korff, Brooke Skinner, Jane Newell, Sarah Friese, Ruth G. Mcroy

Rudd Publications

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 …