Annotated Bibliography: Open Adoption

Great Essays
Martin Rammo
Mr. Brazzel
ENG 102 – Final Essay MLA
30 April 2016
Open Adoption
"You planted your garden; you have to live in it". Those were the words of Moriah Dialer, an unmarried 19 years old pregnant woman. She was a college dropout, working as a waitress in West Virginia. After getting pregnant, Moriah considered having an abortion. She didn't have any money, and her parents wouldn't pay for the procedure. Moriah and the baby's father talked about getting married, but soon realized it wasn't a good idea. They weren't in a good place, emotionally, to raise a child properly, because of a child from a previous relationship. She researched adoption online, and she talked to four couples who were considering adoption. Their interactions about
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Adoption can also be divided into three categories: open, closed, and semi- opened adoption. In the case of the closed adoption, there is no contact between the biological parents and the adopted kids, and in the case of the semi-opened adoption, the contact between the biological parents and the adopted children is present, but limited. Besides being divided into different categories, adoption also has a long …show more content…
Parents who adopt because of infertility have already been disappointed because of their inability to have a biological child. In addition, they may have dealt with repeated miscarriages.
There are many issues involved with open adoption. Breach of privacy rights in open adoption is one of the most common issues. The biggest fear for adoptive parents is related to the contact between the adoptee and her or his birth parents, that they will lose their child to the birth parents because the child will not love them as much as the birth parents. Some adoptive parents also worry that contact will be harmful to their child, that there will be the risk of a negative influence or of developing a negative self-image if the birthparent is an alcoholic or sexually promiscuous (Fisanick 11).
Feelings of regret about the adoption decision are another issue with open adoption. Birth parents may feel jealous towards the adoptive parents because they see their child growing up with another family. In some cases, losing a child to adoption is much more painful. Other birth parents, when interviewed, did express the wish to have the child back, and were suspicious about future contact with the child. These findings result in the need for continuing supervision in cases involving ongoing contact (McRoy, Harold, and White

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