Graduate Program

Family and Consumer Studies

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Semester of Degree Completion

2009

Thesis Director

Lisa Taylor

Thesis Committee Member

Richard Wilkinson

Thesis Committee Member

Lucy Campanis

Abstract

In private adoptions in the United States, a general trend towards more openness and contact post-adoption has been documented in the research over the last 20 years. In contrast, there has been very little research on openness in foster care adoptions. This study sought to begin to fill this void in the research by examining the level of openness in foster care adoptions and exploring how agencies facilitate and support openness in adoptions. A 20-question survey was administered to adoptive parents over the internet, covering the level of openness in their adoption, their satisfaction with the level of contact and knowledge in their adoption and the services that their agency did or did not offer. Three hundred adoptive parents in 38 states completed the survey. The results showed that more adoptive parents rated their adoption as "open" than "closed" and the majority had some post adoption contact with their child's birth parent(s). Overall, adoptive parents were very satisfied with the level of openness in their adoption and the amount of contact with the birth parents, but were less satisfied with the amount of knowledge they had of the birth parents. Agencies, on the whole, did not provide many services that encouraged or facilitated openness and when they did, they were not found to have an impact on the level of openness in the adoptions under consideration. One notable exception to this was the finding that families whose agency provided a meeting with the birth parent prior to the adoption to discuss openness were significantly more likely to have more openness in their adoption. The results of this study provide a baseline for future research on the complexities of post adoption openness and contact in foster care adoptions. The study also has implications for child welfare agencies and professionals as they support adoptive families in maintaining their children's connections to their first family.

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