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Open adoption; older child adoption; adoptive parents; birthparents; CHILDREN; PARENTS; PERCEPTIONS; INFANTS; ISSUES; IMPACT
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Open Adoption And Adolescence, Deborah Siegel
Open Adoption And Adolescence, Deborah Siegel
Deborah H Siegel
In open adoptions, birth and adoptive families exchange identifying information and have contact. Although most adoptions today include some form of openness, much of the public remains wary of this. The purpose of this study was to explore, longitudinally, adoptive parents' perceptions of their children's open adoptions. This article reports the findings of tape-recorded interviews with 31 adoptive parents who were first interviewed when their children were infants and toddlers, again 7 years later, and a third time when their children were adolescents. The study found adoptive parents were committed to maintaining contact with the birth family even when discomforts …