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If you already have an open adoption, you have contact with your
minor child. Sometimes initial agreements about the amount of
contact can be changed. Perhaps you'd like to increase your visits
or receive more photos. These changes may or may not be possible,
but you can certainly try. Adoption professionals with experience in
this area may be able to help you reach a new agreement.
What if you find out new medical information later in life? Many
in the adoption field believe that it is definitely a responsibility
of all parties in adoption to share medical information. For
instance, if you or your partner develops breast cancer and you
placed a daughter, that daughter ought to know about it. Some kinds
of cancer run in families, and she ought to know so that she can be
screened for breast cancer as early as it is recommended. In an open
adoption, you can easily contact your daughter and her adoptive
family. In a confidential one, it may be more difficult, but you
should still try to do so through the adoption agency and/or the
attorney.
When Your Child is an Adult
Your child is an adult when he or she reaches age 18. If you've
been tempted to search all along, you may get an even stronger urge
once your child reaches adulthood. The thought that you could
approach your daughter or son as an adult is appealing. At this age,
he or she might be able to understand more fully what it was like
for you when you were faced with the placement decision.
In the past, it was assumed that birth parents would never search
for their adult adopted child, and certainly not their minor child.
After all, they were expected to forget that the birth and the
placement ever happened. But birth parents don't forget, and at
least nowadays some do search.
Voluntary Registries
One route to take, short of an all- out search, is to register
with voluntary registries for birth parents and adult adoptees. This
lets your child know that you would like to be "found." A registry
works like this: You leave the information about the birth of the
child along with your address and telephone number. You must keep
your address and telephone number current. You can register at any
time, even years after the child is born.
When your child is an adult, he or she can call or write this
registry. If what the child knows about his or her birth matches the
information the registry has about you, the registry will release
your current address and telephone number to the child, and you
could be contacted.
Birthmother, page 7
Resource: National Adoption Information
Clearinghouse
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