This is a tricky issue. Of course, if you maintain a relationship with your child’s birth parent(s), you need to be transparent about it. This creates pressure, on both sides. The birth parent(s) may expect to have a relationship with the child. Conversely, the child may feel pressured to have a relationship with them. Not every adopted child wants to know their birth parents. But most adopted children feel a heavy obligation to please their aparents – this could lead to potentially damaging encounters if the child is not ready. There may be small things you can do – perhaps getting paperwork from the agency in the homeland. But establishing contact…it makes me nervous.

As far as open adoptions – it’s almost impossible to say because it would change the face of international adoption. It would limit the mothers who would put children up for adoption – in Korea, for instance, agencies won’t contact birth mothers if they were unmarried at the time of birth.

I see your point and that could be an option, but he may or may not want to ever meet his birth parents.  In any case you would have already done the “leg work” so to speak.  As long as the birth parents knew that it was up to your son to ultimately decide if he wanted a relationship or not…I don’t really see any issue.  I have friends on both sides…some have conducted searches and other are not interested at all.

Another question dealing with birth parent searches:

I have a follow-up question on the birth parent search issue.  I, too,
have been thinking about ways to open our adoption a bit more on
behalf of my 3-year-old son.  I noticed that each respondent said that
the decision of whether or not to have birth family contact should be
up to the child.

My question is, doesn’t waiting 15 or 30 years remove the choice
somewhat?  It seems that, if I am able to contact my son’s birth
family and maintain some level of contact with them over the years,
then my son truly does have a choice about whether or not he wants to
have contact with them as he grows older.  If we wait to pursue a
birth parent search, it may be impossible to find his birth family,
effectively leaving him WITHOUT a choice to have contact.  Or am I
misreading this somehow?

I also wonder how your respondents feel about the suggestions from the
domestic adoption community that open adoptions are ultimately
healthier for children and their identity formation.

For my own experience…my search didn’t begin with my parents initiating that conversation. However, I always knew that was an option open to me & they’d be supportive. They never pushed and I am glad they didn’t. I think I would have felt strange and uncomfortable if they kept bring up that possibility. As you might have read…this year I finally did decide to conduct a search, but I’m in my thirties. It took me a LONG time to come to that decision and it wasn’t easy. I personally view my adoptive parents as my parents and it has taken me a while to sort of wrap my brain around the idea that I have this other mother that for whatever reason couldn’t/didn’t want me. I…personally have appreciated the space my parents have given me in allowing me to decide when/what/and if I even wanted to do a search.

I think it’s great that you’re encouraging your kids to search. That’s not an easy thing to do and I hope that some day the birth mother you found will be open to a relationship some day. As for the other child, I wouldn’t push. If your close relationship continues into adulthood then he / she will know that you are supportive of whatever they choose. Finding birth parents is good for some kids but maybe not for others and it all happens at different times in our lives because we’re all unique. Nobody likes to be pushed or feel pressured into something even if it is for positive reasons. You can tell them that you will support their decisions now and in the future, no matter what, and that will be remembered, I’m sure.