Let’s be honest: most people who call us about open adoption have already googled it. And most of what they’ve googled has scared the daylights out of them.
Social media is full of contested stories, complicated dynamics, and cautionary tales. What you don’t see as often is the quiet, ordinary version of open adoption that most birth mothers describe years later: the one where it just… works.
Candice is one of those birth mothers. When she first came to Adoption & Beyond, she already knew what she wanted: a closed adoption. No contact. A clean break. She had her reasons, and they were good ones.
Three years later, she sees her daughter, Layla, four times a year. She was at Layla’s birthday party. She’s met the extended family. And when you ask her if she’d do it differently, she says no without hesitating.
Here’s what her story taught us about the things families most need to hear.
Open adoption is not co-parenting. (We cannot say this enough.)
This is the fear that comes up most often. The idea that choosing an open adoption means you’ll be in some kind of ongoing, negotiated, emotionally complicated relationship with another family forever. Shared holidays. Blurred roles. A child who doesn’t know which parent is ‘real’.
That’s not open adoption. That’s a misunderstanding of it that gets repeated a lot online.
Open adoption means some form of contact between the birth parent and the adoptive family after placement. What that looks like is entirely up to the people involved. It might be letters and photos twice a year. It might be a visit on the child’s birthday. It might grow into something warm and ongoing, the way Candice’s did. Adoptive parents are always parents. The birth parents’ role is meaningful but different, and everyone involved gets to help define what it looks like.
You don’t have to know what you want right now.
One of the things Candice’s caseworker, Julie, did was something really simple: she asked questions. Good ones. The kind that made Candice think about what her daughter might want someday, not just what felt safest to Candice in the moment.
She didn’t push Candice toward open adoption. She just invited her to stay curious about it a little longer before closing the door.
That’s the advice we give to almost every expecting mom we work with. You don’t have to decide everything right now. You don’t have to know exactly what you want the relationship to look like. You just have to be willing to sit with the question for a while before you answer it.
The thing nobody tells you about openness.
Candice will tell you that seeing Layla was hard at first. Of course it was. The emotions were complex, and some days they still are. But over time, what openness gave her was something she genuinely hadn’t expected: hope. Proof that Layla was loved and thriving and safe in the exact way Candice had always wanted for her.
That kind of reassurance is something a closed adoption simply cannot give you. And for a lot of birth mothers, that reassurance turns out to matter more than they thought it would.
‘I’m just really glad that this brought me a lot of hope,’ Candice said. ‘And that’s something I was really struggling with, seeing hope for my future.’
You get to define what this looks like for you.
There’s no single template for open adoption. Some birth mothers want frequent visits. Some want updates twice a year and nothing more. Some want to stay in contact primarily for the child’s benefit. All of those are valid. All of them can work beautifully.
The families that tend to struggle aren’t the ones who choose too much openness or too little. They’re the ones who made the decision without enough information, without enough honest conversation, without someone asking the right questions.
Candice had someone asking the right questions. And her story is proof of what’s possible when you do.
If you’re considering adoption and want to talk through what openness might look like for you, we’re here. Call or text (913) 271-3554
