Open adoptions have many facets, and open adoption relationships themselves come in a wide variety. There’s still much research to be done to understand what sort of relationships and communication styles are most healthy for everyone involved in an open adoption.
Colleen Warner Colaner, an Asst. Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Missouri, spoke with 19 adoption agencies in Kansas and Missouri (including American Adoptions) about open adoption. Her interviews led her to identify five areas of open adoption communication that would benefit from additional research:
- The scope of openness arrangements in relation to sustaining open adoption relationships and promoting healthy individuals and families
- Collaboration between adoptive and birth parents
- Adoptive parent support of open adoption relationship by communicating with the birth parent and about the birth parent to the adoptee
- Maintenance behaviors that keep adoptive and birth families in satisfying relationships with one another
- Regulating private information during birth and adoptive families’ interactions
(You can click on the link to see a PDF of Colaner’s findings, which break out each issue in more detail:
http://americanblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Open-Adoption-Report.pdf)
These issues form the basis of a large-scale, longitudinal survey that Colaner is launching with her research team. Below is the link to an online survey for adoptive parents.
If you’re an adoptive parent interested in participating, you must:
- have a child in an open adoption relationship – meaning that the birth parent is known and has some sort of contact with the adoptive family
- be over 18 years old
- have a child under the age of 18
The first 200 individuals to participate in the survey will receive a $15 Amazon gift card.
If you are interested in participating in the online survey, you can do so by contacting Colaner (colanerc@missouri.edu) for the link.
