The impact of closed, semi-open, and open adoption on children's psychological development.

In this study, the psychological adjustment of children in closed, semi-open, and open adoptions is compared. Thirty-nine children ranging in age from 5 to 10 years old were categorized into closed, semi-open, and open adoptions, depending on the level and nature of contact they had with their birth parents. Both parents and children were administered standardized adjustment measures, as well as a semi-structured adoption interview, and the children's teachers completed the Child Behavior Checklist. In comparisons among the children in closed, semi-open, and open adoptions, few statistically significant differences were demonstrated. However, patterns within the data indicated that the children in semi-open adoptions, while functioning within normal limits, are experiencing somewhat greater emotional difficulties, particularly of the internalizing type. On the semi-structured interviews, children in each form of adoption struggled with feelings related to their adoption. The children expressed ambivalent feelings about adoption, a wish to know more about their birth parents, concerns about being teased, and questions about the permanence of adoption. The three groups of parents differed in their view of the emotional needs of adopted children. Parents in closed adoptions believed that contact with a birth parent may be psychologically damaging to children. Parents in open adoptions asserted that contact with a birth parent is essential for a child's psychological growth. Parents in semi-open adoptions represented a variety of viewpoints. Unlike the majority of parents in open and closed adoptions, several of them were less able than the parents in the other two groups to articulate a coherent and child-centered rationale for their arrangement. The conclusion of the author is that the degree of contact between the child and birth parent does not appear to play a primary role in the emotional development of young children. Rather, it is adoptive parents' commitment to either open or closed adoption that serves their children well.PhDDevelopmental psychologyPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129439/2/9513344.pd