Adoption

Adoption is the legal act of permanently placing a child with a parent or parents other than the birthmother or birthfather. An adoption order has the effect of severing parental responsibilities and rights and transferring those responsibilities and rights to new adoptive parent(s). After the finalization of an adoption, there is no legal difference between adopted children and those born to the parents.

There are several kinds of adoption, which can be defined both by degree of openness (open or closed) and country of origin ( domestic or international adoption). Each of these has its own features and rules.

Beyond the initial placement of a child for adoption, there may be continuing issues including identity, search and reunion, language use, media, and cultural views of adoption.

Degrees of openness

Openness in adoption refers to the legal governance of birth records and the informal relationships between the parties involved.

National and state governments have enacted varying laws to provide adopted individuals access to their birth information. Some allow complete access while others seal all records in perpetuity. The different legal structures for adoption are referred to as either, “Open Record or Closed Record.”

Regardless, of the law, however, adoptions can and have been arranged to allow ongoing contact between the parties involved. The arrangements are referred to in popular culture as either “open, semi-open, or closed adoption.”

Open adoption

Open, or fully disclosed, adoptions allow adoptive parents, and often the adopted child, to interact directly with biological kin. Communication may include letters, emails, telephone calls, or visits. Direct access to the birthparents and history has advantages of answering identity questions ("Who do I look like? Why was I placed?") and lessening fantasies. There are also disadvantages such as no clean break for assimilation into family and the potential for feelings of rejection if contact stops, or for playing families against each other.

Arrangements regarding contact are typically informal. Even in an open adoption, legal rights of guardianship are terminated, and the adoptive parents become the legal parents. In some jurisdictions, the birth and adoptive parents may enter into a binding agreement concerning visitation, exchange of information, or other interaction regarding the child;however, informal agreements are much more common.

Another aspect of openness in adoption is access to unaltered birth certificates or other records. In some jurisdictions, access to records is automatic. For example, at age 18,