My sinfull pride

Maybe I am a snob about adoption. I certainly have pride over my relationship with Sam and his family and wish that it was more common to have the level of openness that we have between birth and adoptive parents. I know that this type of relationship is not for everyone, it was difficult at first to move past thinking of myself as a parent and mold my role into what it is today. It hurt the first time he said mom and I knew for a fact that he didn't mean me and hurt even worse six years later when he asked if he could call me mom and I had to tell him no, that we would have to pick a name just for me but that it couldn't be mom. But does pride in what I have mean that I think it's best for everyone? I don't think it does. Just because I know how rewarding it is to have Sam and his family* in my life but this does not mean that I think that they type of relationship that I have would be best for everyone.

A few weeks ago someone approached me saying that something I had said months before hand had been grating her mind. She had asked me what I thought of the movie Juno and I had said something to the effect of "I was upset that it had been advertised as a movie about open adoption because it was not. I thought that it was a good movie but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has given a child up for adoption." She interpreted this as me saying that the movie was not good because it was not about open adoption.

Admittedly, this converstation was started with her saying that she was probably drunk enough to talk to me about this now (possibly this should be an article about the lack of interpersonal communication skills between the two of us and not about adoption?) but it really bothered me that she thought what I was saying was that open adoption is the only acceptable form of adoption. In fact, while it was the only option acceptable to me at the time, but I don't believe that everyone out there contemplating adopting a child out or adopting as a parent would benefit from it.

*It should be noted that I believe that open adoption that it only works if there is a mutual understanding about what the level of post adoption contact is going to be. If the desire on part of the birthparent is to have an open adoption they need state clearly what that means to them, weather that means visits once a week or once a month or a letter a few times a year the birth parent needs to address this in the early interviews and both parties need to be on board about what level of post adoption contact they are comfortable with. When interviewing adoptive parents I was lucky enough to meet Steve and Dianna when I did, they had a preexisting open adoption with their older son and happened to be a perfect match for what I was seeking.