‘Open’ Adoptions on Rise Despite Difficulties

Carl and Andrea Ito didn’t want to blow it by wearing the wrong clothes.

The couple had been trying to adopt an infant for two years. Now, for the first time, they were going to meet a pregnant woman who was considering giving up her baby to the Itos for adoption--if she liked them.

The Itos, nervous and excited, figured that even something as seemingly unimportant as their clothes might influence the woman’s decision. “We wanted to look nice, but not so dressy that we looked threatening,” said Andrea Ito. “It was like going to a job interview.”

In the end, Carl wore the new sweater he had recently gotten for his birthday. Andrea wore a casual but stylish outfit.

Nevertheless, the interview, which took place in June in the house where the pregnant woman was living, was tense at first.

“We sat there staring at each other for the first few moments,” Carl said. Then “we talked nonsense, the way you talk to someone you just met at a party.

“We didn’t mention anything about the pregnancy, because it seemed so awkward.”

Eventually, the interview went more smoothly. The Itos made friends with the woman and subsequently gave her money and even took her to dinner several times. But the adoption arrangements they had made with her through a lawyer fell apart when the woman decided to keep her child after it was born.

“It was devastating to us,” Andrea said.

Potential Difficulties

The Itos’ experience points up one of several potential difficulties in so-called “open” adoptions--adoptions in which prospective adoptive parents and a baby’s biological mother get to know each other, often before the child is born. Despite such difficulties, however, open adoptions are one of the biggest trends in the field of adoption.

Ninety percent of the nearly 500 adoptions in San Diego County this year will be open, according to Hawley Ridenour, chief of adoption for the county Department of Social Services. And open adoption was among the topics discussed in depth last week at the San Diego Adoption Forum, a conference at UC San Diego.

About 250 people, many of them young couples, attended the one-day forum. Vera and Jeff Taylor, both 23, came to familiarize themselves with the particulars of adoption. “We’re just learning--we don’t know anything about it,” said Vera Taylor. “We don’t know who to call or how much it costs.”

Tom Kramer, 37, an art supplies salesman in Escondido, said he and his wife, Barbara, 42, attended the forum “to find out if there are adoption agencies we don’t know about, or if there’s a way of quickening the process.” The couple spent five years and underwent extensive tests in the course of trying to have a child of their own, but “it just didn’t work out,” Tom Kramer said.

The forum also offered sessions on minority and single-parent adoptions and legal issues involved, among other topics.

The Itos, who work as computer programmers at Unisys in Clairemont, said they came to the forum looking for any scrap of information that might help them adopt a child. The couple--Carl is 27, Andrea, 31--have been tested and found to be infertile.

Along with others who attended the forum, they heard expert after expert note that there are far more people trying to adopt than there are infants to be adopted. In fact, the high demand for babies is a major reason behind the trend toward open adoptions, according to Maria Gillhespy, an adoptive mother and one of the organizers of the forum.

Assurances Sought

In recent years, birth mothers--biological mothers who give up their babies for adoption--have increasingly sought assurance that their offspring will be well cared for, Gillhespy said. And birth mothers often develop a desire to know how their children are doing years after they have been adopted.

Because there aren’t enough babies to go around, birth mothers have been successful in getting their demands accommodated through open adoptions, Gillhespy said. In an open adoption, a birth mother is given information about prospective adoptive parents, selects the ones she wants, and often meets them; after giving birth, she usually receives periodic “progress reports” about her child and in some cases is even allowed to visit the child regularly.

In addition to easing the distress most birth mothers feel at giving up their children, open adoptions also make it much simpler for adopted children to obtain information about their biological parents. But nearly everyone agrees that the arrangement often seems less than ideal to adoptive parents, and many prospective parents who attended the recent forum expressed reservations about open adoptions.

“It’s important for the child to (eventually) have contact with his or her (biological) mother,” said Vera Taylor. “I like the idea of open adoption from that aspect.

“But it’s a little scary, too. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable with visitation. I want the child I’m adopting to be my own, and I don’t want that much interaction with the birth mother.”

If prospective parents meet the birth mother before the adoption is final, they are also put in the awkward position of feeling that they must impress her favorably and worrying that if they somehow don’t “measure up,” the woman might decide to choose another couple. “You’re so nervous” at that first meeting, Andrea Ito said.

Standard Procedure

Tom Kramer joked that he has considered offering a birth mother “a new Porsche” for selecting him and his wife as parents. In a more serious vein, he added: “It’s important to let (the birth mother) see you as you are. I won’t put on a suit and tie to impress her. But I’m not going to pick my nose in front of her, either.”

Ridenour pointed out that the county’s standard procedure is to not introduce prospective parents and birth mothers until after the birth mother has selected a couple. “We don’t want to subject a couple to the emotional trauma of meeting the birth mother before they’ve been chosen,” he said.

The county’s system works this way: Couples who want to adopt fill out forms detailing their occupations, hobbies, where they live and why they want to adopt a child, and the birth mother makes her choice based on the forms. “But we ask every birth mother: ‘Do you want to meet the couple you choose?’ And we ask prospective parents if they want to meet the birth mother,” Ridenour added.

“We’ve had a few situations where the adoptive parents have been present at the birth. But most (birth mothers and adoptive parents) meet after the birth. Some have an instant rapport and go out to lunch.”

Still, by far the biggest fear prospective parents have about open adoptions is that even after they have met, befriended, and been selected by a birth mother, the birth mother will change her mind and decide to keep the child. It’s a twist that sometimes occurs, as the Itos know only too well.

(In adoptions arranged through public or private adoption agencies, the birth mother has the opportunity to change her mind after birth but normally relinquishes legal custody of the child to the agency within a few days of the birth. In independent adoptions, however--usually arranged through lawyers--a birth mother has six months to change her mind after signing a “consent to adopt” form, normally within a few days after giving birth.)

Mandatory Counseling

The Itos made independent adoption arrangements through a lawyer, but they eventually became convinced that the pregnant woman they were put in contact with never intended to give up her child and had simply conned them into supporting her through her pregnancy. “If someone genuinely changes her mind after the birth, that’s legit,” said Andrea Ito, even if it is a hard decision for everyone involved.

Ridenour, however, insisted that birth mothers rarely change their minds at the last minute when the county or private adoption agencies are involved, because counseling for birth mothers is mandatory in such cases. “If you’ve got a birth mother who has been counseled for three months” about the choices she has and what their implications are, “you basically know what she’s going to do” before the birth, he said.

“But one of the biggest concerns we have about independent adoptions is the lack of counseling.”

Despite their negative experience, the Itos see advantages as well as disadvantages to open adoptions.

“It’s reassuring to know the birth mother” in order to have access to the child’s medical history, Andrea Ito pointed out.

Her husband added, “It’s kind of neat getting to know what the birth mother is like, and learning about things she enjoys.”

“Then maybe you can look for those traits in your kid and try to support them,” agreed Andrea.

Gillhespy said she became best friends with the woman whose daughter she eventually adopted and that the bond the two women developed lessened her fear that the child’s biological mother would someday show up to claim her daughter.

“That’s a fear of any adoptive couple--that the birth mother will come and take the child away,” said Carl Ito. While he agreed that an open adoption helps to allay such fears, he also stressed that “it’s important to set the ground rules at the beginning. I wouldn’t give the birth mother our address . . . I don’t want her coming over and knocking on the door and surprising us.”

Necessary Distance

“We’d send the birth mother pictures of the child, at the very least,” Andrea interjected. “And it would be OK if she wants to hear or see the child occasionally. But there’s some necessary distance that has to be maintained.”

“I wonder how the child will react to all this,” continued Carl. “Being told, ‘This is your mother, and that’s your other mother.’ . . .

“But in any case, the child is going to find out he’s adopted, and will want to know who his birth parents are. At least with open adoptions you’re up front about the whole thing, rather than waiting until the child reaches the age of 18 and then saying to him, ‘By the way . . . .’ ”