the open adoption roundtable

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It's designed to showcase the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. Click here to link to what other bloggers are writing about this topic. This is my first contribution to the OA Roundtable, feels so good to be a part of the community!

This month's OA Roundtable topic is on privacy and open adoption. The question posed is:

Where do you draw the lines--on your blog and in your personal life--and why? What, if anything, don't you tell?

I thought the question was interesting and something that I am currently working through in my personal life, more so than my blog, given that we just adopted baby T. How much of his story do I share with others? What do people need to know versus want to know?

I’ve read on blogs how some adoptive parents regret sharing as much information in the beginning as they did. And once it’s out there you can’t take it back. But yet at the same time I think there is room for sharing some of the story. To keep everything to ourselves creates more suspicion and mystery about adoption than needed. And as it is, there are already too many adoption related myths that we need to work to debunk. I feel that if I’m too secretive I’m not allowing some of those opportunities to be an educator for adoption reform to come into my life.

Some of the questions we’ve received since having T are interesting. But more often than not people want to know how old his birthmom is. It’s as if people are trying to validate her placing her child for adoption based on her age. If she is a teenager then it may be viewed more positively than if she is older. What many people don’t realize is that generally speaking teenagers decide to parent whereas many older mom’s decide on adoption depending on their specific situations*. This seems so odd to many people. But when you really stop to think about it there is some logic to this. Often teenagers have support from family to raise a child whereas a woman in her 20’s may be left to do it on her own with no or very little support from anyone. And with age comes a bit of wisdom and the realization of what parenthood really involves. I also think that with age there is an ability to look beyond ourselves at the bigger picture in life, the ability to take a hard look at our life situation and make certain decisions based on where we’re at. So we have shared J’s age, as she is older, and with the disclosing of that information we feel that we are able to work at debunking some of the myths surrounding first moms.

I guess ultimately we need to determine what part of the overall story is ours and what part is T’s. The parts that are his alone need to remain private until he can decide what he shares and to whom. It’s hardest to keep things private when friends and family ask because we want to involve them in our lives but in the end this is not about us. This is about baby T. We need to pay attention now, early on, to what we say and don’t say as this is the foundation we are laying and building upon.

*I realize that this is a generalization and each and every situation is different and unique.