One of the most compelling arguments for open adoption is that no child can ever have too many people that love him. If we look at our own lives, most of us have, tucked in our hearts, a special aunt or uncle who knows us well, or a grandparent that loves us and believes in us no matter what we do.

There is no doubt that the love we get from the special family members in our lives supports us and sustains us. They are some of life’s most precious connections.

For our children placed in open adoptions, our extended family often has the opportunity to provide that special connection. With the love of two families, what can go wrong? The answer is…many things. Fortunately, with some emotional work by those involved, all of them are resolvable.

Your Perception

First of all is our perception of what our extended family’s role should be. The first few years of Matthew’s life, I was afraid that my parents would jeopardize my relationship with his adoptive parents by being too doting. I would often try to curb their behavior…giving them limits, telling them what I thought to be acceptable. Finally Cathy, Matt’s mom, laid my fears to rest by telling me that she could handle my parents and not to worry so much. As I became less concerned about my parents doing something wrong to mess things up for me, I was able to see all the things they were doing right for him. I was also able to see how much they mean to him.

Your Family’s Perception

Most birthparents do not include their families in the counseling and education they receive during the placement process. As a result, most family members are perceiving the situation through uneducated eyes.

There are a couple of factors that need to be considered here. One is what your family’s beliefs are surrounding adoption. For those uneducated about open adoption, they may feel the loss as a complete severing of their connection with the child. Conversely, there may be family members who are misinformed about open adoption and believe that there is no loss attached to it.

Either way, family members need to be educated about what open adoption means for them. Even in the best-case scenarios, there is loss. Take, for instance, Julia’s experience. She states:

A birthgrandparent’s loss is also affected by the fact that the birthparents are not the ones parenting the child. As one birthgrandmother said to me recently, "Even though he calls me grandma, the relationship I have with my grandchild is different because of who his Mom is now. I feel more inhibited because my daughter is not the one parenting."

For others, it is the loss of how they dreamed it would be. One birthgrandma explains: "When she told me (she was pregnant)…I grieved lots of things: the loss of being able to celebrate the pregnancy and birth of my first grandchild, the loss of my daughter’s free happiness, the loss of my family’s peacefulness. It is hard to describe these losses, but let me begin by explaining that although none of these things were completely lost, they just weren’t happening in the way I had dreamed they would. In that way, they are lost."

Birthgrandparents are also not immune to feeling worried that the adoptive parents may not want to continue the relationship.

Helping the birthfamily define their loss will also help them define their role in your child’s life. It may also help both of you to understand that to a certain extent, you share a common ground.

Extended Family Relationships

Another complicating factor is our relationship with our extended family. For many birthparents, their family’s lack of support was one of the factors that compelled them to place their child for adoption. Some of these birthparents feel that if their parents wanted to be a part of the child’s life, they should have made it possible for them to parent the child. Angela, the birthmom of an eight year old, recently wrote to me,

"My parents have a regular "grandparent/granddaughter’ relationship. They are treated by the adoptive family as extended family members. My daughter loves them. I have to admit there are times when I am jealous. More often it is a feeling of, She disowned me when I was pregnant, said that this child would not be her grandchild if I kept it, and NOW she gets to be a wonderful grandma like none of that ever happened, whereas I who always loved and wanted this child am never going to be mom to her. It’s not fair. I lost so much and she lost nothing. Those are difficult feelings to handle. But the most important person is my daughter, Hannah. Her amom’s parents are dead, leaving only one set of adoptive grandparents. I also grew up with only one set of grandparents, and know how hard that can be. Also, there are many good things about my parents, and it is good that Hannah can be exposed to those good things. I try to remind myself that unless they are actually harming her in some way, it is not my place to interfere in their relationship with her, and that to do so would be cutting her off from her birth roots, for they are also her family."

Sometimes shame is also a large part of this scenario. Birthparents who were told that a child born outside of marriage or that a biracial child would not be accepted into the family often will want to protect their child from their family’s attitudes and prejudices. Some birthgrandparents in these circumstances will choose not to have contact based on the child’s race alone. One adoptive mom told me:

Many birthgrandparents also grapple with feeling that they somehow let their child down. In this case, their shame and loss are connected with the desire every parent has to protect their child from pain and hurt. Many birthgrandparents feel that they should have been able to do something…from preventing the pregnancy to raising the child themselves, even if those decisions were not in their hands.

One birthgrandmother states:

Family dynamics are another area that can create difficulties. This is especially true for those birthparents who have parents or siblings who try to control the situation. Allison depends on her mother and sister for transportation to and from her child’s house. For the first few months of her child’s life, Allison only rarely got the chance to hold her baby because her mother and sister often took the honor. Luckily her child’s adoptive mother quickly became aware of the family dynamics and started arranging for Allison to have visits without her family involved. In this case, extended birthfamily involvement was interfering in the relationship the birthmother was trying to establish with her child.

The Adoptive Parents’ Perception

The determining factor in if or how extended birthfamily are included in the child’s life is, of course, dependent on the child’s adoptive parents. How welcoming adoptive parents are to the extended family varies. Many adoptive parents feel that their first priority is to the birthparents, and will often give your feelings the utmost consideration. Other adoptive parents find themselves walking a tightrope, wanting extended family to be involved but not wanting to hurt their child’s birthparents.

Additional complications can arise when the adoptive parents’ family is not supportive of contact. Because the roles of extended adoptive family and extended birthfamily are not all that different in the child’s eyes, many extended adoptive family members may feel threatened.

Some adoptive parents are not welcoming at all, feeling that their only obligation for contact is to the birthparents. This happens most often in cases where the open adoption is viewed as an arrangement, not a relationship. Adoptive parents with this mindset are failing to see their child as part of an extended birthfamily clan.

There are also cases where contact does not occur because the birthparents have not told their families about the child. One adoptive mom writes:

"It has been the birthmom’s choice not to tell her parents that she placed a child in another family. She feels her parents are not in good health and that ‘this would kill them.’ She does not have a good relationship with her parents, lives 3,000 miles away from them, sees them less than once a year, and they have shown zero interest in her three younger children (didn’t see them until they were at least three or four years old). I have told the birthmom several times that if she wants to tell her parents about our daughter it’s OK with me. In fact, at this point, I think I might enjoy having them in the picture. I know their names and address, but will not make any effort to contact them on my own. I feel this is the birthmom’s right to handle as she wishes. She is a mature woman and knows them much better than I do."

Some Benefits

Besides the extra love and support available to children, there are a number of other benefits that an adopted child can derive from contact with extended birthfamily. For one,t hey can get a more complete picture of who we are. Our families are a treasure trove of memories. Whether relation your most embarrassing moment or a childhood talent that you don’t remember having, our children can have a better understanding of who we are through the eyes of someone we have shared our life with.

As they get older, they will also come away with a deeper knowledge of the circumstances surrounding their birth. As they learn about the complexities of adoption, many will have questions about the extended family’s role in their placement. Being able to get it from "the horse’s mouth," so to speak, will certainly increase their understanding.

Most importantly, with a broader view of their family tree, they will come to a better understanding of who they are. For many adopted persons, the issue of who their ancestors are is complicated. While many feel a psychological and spiritual connection to their relatives by adoption, they also feel connected to the descendants found in our family tree.

Our mothers and fathers, our aunts and uncles, our grandparents all have stories to tell and pictures to share. It is an incredible gift for a child to know the extraordinary people from whom they’re genetically descended. Not only do they learn who they look like, but a world of possibilities opens up through the accomplishments of those that came before them. There are also lessons to be learned from family members who may have led difficult and tragic lives. Certainly they may also learn from other’s mistakes.

There will also be situations when birthparents live far from the adoptive family or are reluctant to have contact. In cases like these, extended birthfamily may be the only available source of information and support.

Some birthgrandparents, especially in the first few years, rely on their parents to act as a go-between with the adoptive parents. This is especially true of birthparents who are grieving deeply and are having trouble communicating. It can also be true when birthparents are very young.

Supporting Your Family’s Involvement

Getting to the point where you feel comfortable and willing to "share" the contact you have with your child can take a bit of work. Many birthparents see the time they spend with their child as too precious to share with family members. They enjoy the intimacy of the one-on-one contact they have. Many are also fearful, as I was, that their family’s involvement will be "too much" for the adoptive family and that it will somehow jeopardize the relationship they have with them.

For other birthparents, the real key to opening the door to contact is forgiveness. As mentioned previously, when a child was placed in part because of our family’s pressure or lack of support, welcoming these same family members into our child’s life can seem like a major hurdle. It is, however, an important part of the healing process. Whether it was the first time that your family let you down, or just another in a long line of disappointments, forgiving them is the first step in accepting them as the human beings they are.

Establishing Contact

If there has been no contact up to this point, it may be a good idea to talk to the adoptive parents about what their expectations are. Again, as parents, it is really up to them to decide the nature of the relationships.

What names and titles are to be used is often a big issue. One child I know in an open adoption has all eight of his grandparents involved, plus one great-grandmother, the grandmother of the birthmom, Jennifer. To avoid confusion, he calls his birthmom’s parents Grandma and Grandpa Jennifer, his adoptive mom’s parents Grandma and Grandpa Mom and so on. In this way he has been able to keep everybody straight, though Grandpa Jennifer did say it took some time to get used to his new name.

Educating Family Members

While it is not up to you to control the relationships between your family and your child’s adoptive family, ther are a few things you can do to educate them:

• Teach them what you have learned about the adoptive family.

Whether it is important holidays that the adoptive family celebrates, or their style of gift-giving, passing on known information will make contact easier on everybody. Knowing, for example, that the adoptive parents do not allow toy guns in the house will prevent the possibility of an awkward situation. Letting them know the communication style of the adoptive parents and your child will also give them an idea of what contact may be like. If, for example, it takes a long time for your child to warm up to strangers, family members will know not to expect the child to run to them with open arms.

• Let them know that all children are created equal. This is especially important if there are other children in the adoptive family. The best way to do this is to remind them that they are accepting the entire adoptive family into their lives, not just your child.

• Prepare them for possible emotional fallout. All of us remember what those first visits were like. Just as you have had to learn to deal with the bittersweet quality of open adoption, so will your family members. Many of our parents especially may find that visits bring a new dimension to their loss.

Conclusion

It is important for bithparents to realize that our children’s definition of birthfamily extends beyond ourselves. In order for our children to have a complete picture of their roots, we need to find a way for them to get to know their extended family. Through direct contact or through the stories we tell, our children’s lives will be better for knowing all of their family tree.