SUNDAY: An experiment called open adoption

MONDAY: Negotiating the difficulties of a delicate pact

LIVE CHAT: Reporter Sonia Nazario, Kendall McArthur, Patti Dick and Dorrie McArthur took readers' questions about open adoption in a live chat Aug. 6. Read the transcript here.

Interviews and a journal:
This story is drawn from more than 195 hours of interviews with Kendall McArthur; her adoptive parents, Dorothea and David McArthur; her birth mother, Patti Dick; Patti's husband, George Dick; Kendall's half-siblings, Bryhannah Fife and Jed Pool; her birth father, Leo Tremblay; her fiance, Devin Coury; and her friend, Donna Simons. Most of the quotations are taken from a 700-page adoption journal in which Dorothea McArthur contemporaneously recorded dialogue, intending to write an adoption book. Both Kendall and Patti said Dorothea accurately recorded their quotes, if not always their intentions.

Records:
Documentation for this story includes hospital birth records, adoption applications, court records, Kendall's academic and psychological evaluations, her report cards and Patti's Army records. Information is also drawn from letters between Kendall and Patti and between Dorothea and Patti, as well as from records in a shoe box that Patti kept of belongings relating to Kendall's adoption. Additional material is based upon 15 studies and books about adoption. The survey showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans have encountered adoptions in their families or with friends was conducted in 2002 by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.

Adoption experts:
Other information is drawn from interviews and consultations with Sharon Roszia, program manager at the Kinship Center in Santa Ana, who introduced Dorothea McArthur to the idea of open adoption and provided her and Patti with adoption counseling. It also is based upon consultations with other experts, including Suzanne Arms, author of the adoption book "To Love and Let Go" and a close friend of Dorothea; Eileen Mayers Pasztor, a child welfare professor at Cal State Long Beach; Brenda Romanchik, a birth mother advocate and director of Insight: Open Adoption Resources and Support; Fred Riley, commissioner of Latter-day Saints Family Services; Heidi Cox, executive vice president and general counsel of the Gladney Center for Adoption, an early opponent of open adoption; Jim Gritter, child welfare supervisor of Catholic Human Services in Traverse City, Mich., an early proponent of open adoption and author of several books about open adoption; Kathleen Silber, associate executive director of the Independent Adoption Center; Thomas Atwood, president and chief executive of the National Council for Adoption; and Susan Smith, program and project director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.

Reporter Sonia Nazario can be contacted at sonia.nazario@latimes.com.