Adoptive Couples: Communication and Changes Made in Openness Levels

Abstract

The communication facility component of the Clinical Rating Scale (CRS), based on the Circumplex Model of Marital and Family Systems (Olson, 1993), was employed to compare a group of adoptive couples that had increased their level of adoption openness from mediated to fully disclosed with a group that remained in mediated arrangements. Couples with increased levels of openness demonstrated significantly higher levels of self-disclosure, listener's skills, empathy, continuity/tracking, respect and regard, and global communication facility than couples in the mediated group. Groups did not differ significantly in speaker's skills. Case studies illustrative of these findings and implications for professionals working with adoptive families are provided. COMMUNICATION AND CHANGES MADE IN OPENNESS LEVELS* Until the 1970s, adoption in the United States was shrouded by secrecy and stigma. Members of the adoption triad (adoptive parents, adopted children, and birthparents) were protected from each other in the belief that all benefited from confidentiality. Birthmothers permitted their parental rights to be terminated, transferring those rights to adoption agencies, who then placed the children with adoptive parents. Adoptive parents and birthparents never met, and children were usually not given the opportunity to meet their birthparents (Chapman, Dorner, Silber, & Winterberg, 1986). The secrecy so paramount in this procedure centered around the stigma that the culture had placed upon it: birthparents had children out of wedlock, adopted children were labeled as illegitimate, and adoptive parents were infertile (Feigelman & Silverman, 1986; McRoy, Grotevant, & White, 1988; Reitz & Watson, 1992). In response to general dissatisfaction with this traditional arrangement, the past two decades have seen notable changes in the confidentiality once commonplace in agency-facilitated adoptions (Chapman et al., 1986; Chapman, Dorner, Silber, & Winterberg, 1987; Feigelman & Silverman, 1986). Adoption practices now lie on a continuum of openness, allowing for different levels of communication between adoptive families and birthparents. In confidential adoptions, no communication exists between the adoptive family and the birthparents. In fully disclosed, or open adoptions, the adoptive family and birthparents maintain direct, ongoing communication. In mediated adoptions, communication is relayed through a third party without the exchange of identifying information (Grotevant, McRoy, Elde, & Fravel, 1994). Many adoptive families move along this continuum through their life cycle, making significant changes in openness levels. For example, an adoption that began as confidential or mediated may evolve into direct correspondence and full disclosure with birthparents. Conversely, some adoptions move the opposite direction on the continuum, decreasing in openness from initially higher levels (Grotevant et al., 1994). This study examines marital communication processes within families that are actively opening up their adoptions. This is an important area to study because changes made in adoption openness are potentially stressful to the family system. Openness changes are often in response to one or more members' dissatisfaction with the current openness level. For example, a child adopted in a confidential arrangement could become unhappy with the lack of information regarding his or her background. Researchers have noted this feeling to be especially likely during a child's adolescent years (Feigelman & Silverman, 1986; McRoy, Grotevant, Ayers-Lopez, & Furuta, 1990, McRoy et al., 1988) because the primary developmental task of this period entails the establishment of a coherent identity and sense of self (Feigelman & Silverman, 1986; Galvin & Brommel, 1986; McRoy et al., 1990; McRoy et al., 1988; Morrison & Zetlin, 1988). Not possessing basic genealogical and background information (e. …