Open adoption (an independent adoption that allows for an ongoing relationship among the birth family, the adoptive family, and the adoptee), happens in many different ways.  Ours happened through word of mouth – a lesbian friend whom we’d known casually for a long time intervened on our behalf.  Whenever we’d see her at an event, we’d wind up talking her ears off about our desire to have a family.

“When my lesbian co-worker told me that she was trying to arrange an open adoption for her teenage niece’s baby, she first told me about a heterosexual couple in Florida,” our friend recalled.  “I don’t usually speak up, and certainly don’t step in with my opinion -- but for some reason I did. I told her that she should consider a lesbian couple.  Then I suggested you.  She said to call her if you wanted to pursue this.”

We called the lesbian aunt right away. Although the birth parents came from a very small rural mid-western town (that didn’t even have a stop-light), we happily discovered that both of them had “out” lesbian aunts and were comfortable with prospect of choosing lesbian parents. 

The aunt described the situation.  The birth mom was coming to California to have the baby, was about 8 months pregnant, and wanted to choose the adoptive parents.  She would need financial help with her medical expenses.  The birth dad, her high school boyfriend, was aware of the situation and was willing to waive his parental rights.   Though the birth mom had not had any prenatal care (she had successfully hidden her pregnancy from her family), she was a clean living, healthy young woman.  The birth dad was on the football team and he, like the birth mom, was a good student and planning to go to college.

The aunt asked us to write a letter to her niece introducing ourselves.  Before I tell you what we wrote, let me tell you what I learned from how this adoption opportunity occurred.

If you’re interested in pursuing an open adoption, be sure to be OPEN– that is, put your desire to adopt out there as best you can.   Talk to relatives, friends, co-workers -- do what’s comfortable for you, but I’m convinced that the more people you talk to, the better you increase your chances of finding a situation that could work for you.  Find yourself a knowledgeable and preferably gay or lesbian attorney (you will need one as you go through the process) and learn what the adoption laws in your state allow you to do.  For example, some states allow you to “advertise,” others do not.

Regardless, you need put down in writing who you are, why you want to parent, and why you want to pursue an open adoption. Birth parents often base their initial decision to pursue the adoption process with you based on how you present yourself and your family.

We have friends who hired a lawyer in California who helped facilitate their open adoption by getting their “brochure” out to prospective birth mothers.  We were asked to write a letter and send some photos.  My partner and I each wrote a couple paragraphs describing ourselves.  Then together, we wrote about our relationship and our desire for a family:

“We want to have children for many reasons.  We love kids.  They inspire, motivate, teach, amaze, and amuse us.   We believe that children are a wonderful gift and we believe that we have a lot to give back to children.  We would love to bring a child into our home and be able to have a very close relationship where we could make a positive impact on the child.  We believe that every individual is unique and that a parent’s job is to help the child discover who he or she is and to fully support that person’s growth into his or her full potential.   We will provide the child lots of love, time, attention, comfort, support, play, laughter, guidance, intellectual and creative stimulation, a great education, and a wonderful extended community of family and friends. 

We believe in open adoption.  We believe that it is important that a child know that he or she is adopted when the child is developmentally able to understand that.  We believe that every child should know about  his or her birth parents and birth family.   We would like the child to have pictures of his or her birth parents and we would be very happy to send pictures to the birth parents.   We would welcome the ongoing involvement of your aunt and hope that she will be one of many supportive adults in the child’s life.  We will be open to opportunities for the child to meet his or her birth parents at the appropriate times.   We expect that this could be emotionally difficult to everyone involved.   We are committed to putting the child’s best interest before anything in making difficult decisions and we would hope that would be a shared priority.” 

Next post I’ll talk more about what Open Adoption has meant for our family.

There are many resources on Open Adoption on the Internet. Here are a few good places to start:

http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Adoption&CONTENTID=18337&TEMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm
Human Rights Campaign Foundation – Open Adoption page

http://www.adoptionopen.com/gay_adoption.html
A well organized page of resources and support information.  This is part of the http://www.adoptionopen.com/ site, which is also very helpful.

http://www.openadopt.org/reading/ 
A good list of books about open adoption.