mta
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Adoption with a GREX twist...
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Sep 6 04:13 UTC 1996 |
Tuesday, September 3, 1996
Adoption Secrecy Gives Way to a New Openness
Family: Records were usually sealed. But now adoptees, in
increasing numbers, have close ties with birth parents.
By MARLENE CIMONS, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON--Becca Price <ed: GREX login beccap>
and her husband, Christopher Clayton, decided that they wanted
to see a movie. As parents typically do when planning a
Saturday night out, they arranged for a baby sitter.
But Thea Grimes-Tenney, <ed: GREX login thea>the woman
who sat with David, 5, and Tori, 4, was anything but typical.
She is the children's biological mother.
The Claytons and Grimes-Tenney, who live near each
other in the Ann Arbor, Mich., area, have added an unusual
twist to the idea of the "extended family."
Theirs includes the Claytons and their two children through
adoption--and the woman who gave birth to them. "Thea is
their birth mother, and I am their mommy," Price said.
Adoption policies have undergone a stunning
transformation from the not-so-distant past, when records
were sealed and children's biological roots were shrouded in
secrecy.
In increasing numbers, those adopted today not only know
the identity of their birth parents but, with their adoptive
parents' blessing, often maintain a relationship with them. The
majority of domestic adoptions, experts in the field say, now
feature some degree of openness.
The extent of the openness varies greatly. At the low end,
the birth and adoptive parents merely know one another's first
names and exchange information through a third party. At the
high end, it is the sort of arrangement maintained by the
Claytons and Grimes-Tenney, the "family Thanksgiving dinner"
model, as one adoption agency director calls it. In this
category, she said, "the West Coast is probably 5 to 10 years
ahead of the East Coast."
The term "openness" is, "unfortunately, a scare word that
sounds like some crazy thing . . . like 'open marriage,' " said
Bruce M. Rappaport, executive director of the Independent
Adoption Center, an agency based in Pleasant Hill, Calif.
"For years, we tried to call it 'normalized' adoption
because it means approaching adoption the same way you do
the regular part of your life," he said. "Open adoption makes
adoption normal. As in the rest of our society, secrecy and
shame are avoided unless absolutely necessary."
The trend "is not so far apart from the communal living"
embraced by many cultures and "fits what other societies do,
where there is no nuclear family," said Yale University
child-development specialist Edward Zigler.
Before secrecy laws, many of which date to the 1940s,
"most adoptions were done within people's own families or
with someone close by in the church or community,"
Rappaport said. "Everyone did know everyone else, and they
were, in fact, open adoptions, although they weren't called
that."
The new wave of openness began after adults who had
been adopted as children initiated searches and legal battles,
seeking to find the missing pieces of their lives. Experts now
recognize that adopted children are often vulnerable to
emotional and psychological damage if they grow up denied
this information.
"Adoptees came out of the closet, just like many other
groups in society--gays, single parents--that didn't fit into the
'50s, and said they weren't going to suffer in silence anymore,"
an agency director said.
Also, the growing incidence of special-needs adoptions,
which typically involve the placement of older children "who
know where they come from," showed that "the sky didn't fall
in," said Ann Sullivan, adoption program director for the Child
Welfare League of America.
"Initially, I had some great concerns about the concept of
open adoption. I was very uncomfortable with it," Sullivan said.
"But now I'm very supportive."
Experts recommend extensive counseling in advance so
that the limits of the arrangements are well defined. No matter
how well the ground is prepared, however, there can be
tremors along the way.
"It's like getting a set of in-laws," Sullivan said. "Some of us
love our in-laws, and others grit their teeth and communicate
only at Christmas."
Grimes-Tenney, the birth mother of David and Tori, admits
to a few rough spots in her relationship with Price and Clayton.
"We're making this up as we go along," Grimes-Tenney
said. "There haven't been a whole lot of things we've rabidly
disagreed on, but I'd be lying if I said it was easy. There's no
road map for something like this."
Grimes-Tenney grew up in what she describes as a
dysfunctional single-parent home. She said she strongly
believed that her children should be raised by two parents. She
wanted to stay connected to them but acknowledged: "I knew
I was not the stuff that mommies are made of."
Her solution was to keep in touch with David and Tori
even after they were placed in a two-parent family when they
were babies. The children call their birth mother "Thea."
"They both know they couldn't grow inside of me and so
they grew inside of Thea," Price said. "It's interesting too,
because when David wants to boss Tori around, he'll say:
'Well, I came out of Thea first.' "
It's not an easy arrangement for the children to follow. To
help them understand it, Price said, they were told this story:
"Once upon a time there was Thea, who was going to have
a baby but didn't have a family for the baby. There was a
mommy and a daddy who had a family but didn't have children
for their family."
The Claytons and Grimes-Tenney acknowledge that their
arrangement represents the most extreme degree of openness.
Others are more comfortable when there is more distance
between the adoptive parents and the biological parents.
"Being geographically thousands of miles away works for
us, but I think the dynamics would be the same if we were
closer," said Chris Keene, an actor from Santa Monica. He
and his wife, Susan, a city planner, bring their 20-month-old
son, James, to Dekalb, Ill., occasionally to see his birth mother.
"At first I was a little freaked by the idea of open adoption,
but that was based on ignorance," Keene said. "It works for
us."
Although experts agree that secrecy is bad for the children,
no one can yet know whether open adoption will stand the test
of time. "The history is too short to know completely how well
all of these arrangements are going to work," Sullivan said.
"It's complicated, and it's too new," Zigler said. "We didn't
know for 50 years the great harm that closed adoption was
doing. There is no research, and that's what we need. It solves
the 'Who am I?' problem, but does it introduce a new cost of
ambiguity? Where do my affections lie?
"With exactly the right people, the right child and the right
circumstances, this might work. But I tend to be cautious about
these kinds of social changes, because we don't have a
research base."
Nevertheless, Sullivan is convinced that, despite anxiety on
the part of adults, children for the most part seem to do just
fine.
"The kids are real clear who the parent is," she said. "It's
who gets up with them at night, who makes sure the teeth are
brushed and gets them off to school."
To be sure, not all such arrangements have been
trouble-free.
One family, for example, agreed in advance to weekly
visits from the birth mother. Then, without notice, the mother
and father moved the family to another state and failed to
disclose the location or even their phone number. The birth
mother has not seen the child, or even photographs, for more
than a year.
"This kind of thing does happen," an agency official
involved in the case said. "It's not uncommon. However, it's
not the majority of cases, not if you have a family that's worked
through all the issues."
Much rarer, experts say, is the nightmare that spooks many
potential adoptive parents: the prospect that the birth parents
will change their mind and want the children back.
"In talking to birth mothers, I find they truly believe they
made a well-thought-out decision that they could not parent,
and the last thing they would want to do is cause a disruption,"
Sullivan said.
Brenda Romanchik, a birth mother who relinquished her
son, Matthew, after he was born 12 years ago, maintains a
relationship with him even though he lives in another city.
"People always think that once you're on your feet, you're
going to want this child back," said Romanchik, who edits a
national newsletter for birth parents.
"I can speak for a vast majority of birth mothers. The
reason most choose adoption is not because they think it will
be the best thing for them but because it will be the best thing
for the child. With that in mind, to go back five years later and
try to get the child back is ridiculous. They are not going to do
that."
But even ongoing involvement can be viewed as
threatening unless the roles of all parties are clearly defined.
Adoptive parents "have exactly the same kinds of ties as
biological parents," Zigler said. "In fact, the psychological ties
are even stronger."
"At first the thought of having my children's 'real' mother
looking over my shoulder really scared me," Price said.
Some parents worry that their adopted children, during
their turbulent adolescent years, might reject them and flee to
their birth parents.
"One woman said to me, 'What if my child runs away to
her birth mother as a teenager?' " Sullivan said. "Well, does
that mean if she doesn't know her birth mother, she won't run
away? Wouldn't it be better that she runs to someone she
knows rather than be on the street?"
These are commonly shared sentiments, but "birth parents
are not to be feared," said Toni LeBel of Bethesda, Md., who
often visits her twin sons' birth mother on Maryland's Eastern
Shore. Rather, she said: "Children can never have too many
people to love them."
But it is essential, experts say, that birth parents let go of
the parenting role when dealing with the children.
"He's still my son, because I gave birth to him, but that
doesn't mean I'm his parent," Romanchik said of Matthew. "I
don't parent him in any way. He tries to get me to allow him to
do things all the time, but I don't allow it at all. I'll say: 'You
have to ask your mom.' And that reinforces to him who his
parents are."
That lesson, however, can be painful to the birth parents.
Romanchik, who became pregnant with Matthew as an
unmarried college student, said she would cringe "when he'd
call for 'Mom' and it wasn't me.
"
Romanchik eventually married, and she and her husband
are now raising their two children, ages 4 years and 8 months.
Yet she cannot help but remember the child who is not there.
For birth parents, she said, there is "an incredible loss that
doesn't go away. You mourn the child who will never be,
because you weren't the one to parent him. Once, at the end of
a vacation, Matthew said to me: 'You know, Brenda, if I grew
up in your family, I would be an entirely different person,
wouldn't I?' "
Copyright Los Angeles Times
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