A Family Focused Approach to Open Adoption

As a follow-up to our conversation with Thomas C. Rector about his family’s foster - adoption journey, the Accrescent Institute team asked Tom to elaborate further on his concept of Family in the context of Open Adoption.  

In this short insightful discussion, he shared his personal evolution from initially resisting open adoption to embracing family in a way that prioritizes the vital connections between adopted children and their birth families. 

Whether you are an adoptive parent, adoption professional, or simply seeking to deepen your understanding of open adoption, we invite you to listen in to this unique exploration of how he came to embracing a family-centric approach to adoption.

A Family Focused Approach to Open Adoption

Interview with Thomas C. Rector (Transcript)

Thomas C Rector:

It was part of the open adoption conversation, which is the the model we we really didn't think in terms of open adoption. We thought in terms of family, and what is family, and how do you what does it do, and how does it fit, and and the the imperfections that occur within families.

So I really kind of just changed it from the legal term open adoption to that's you're supposed to define, to take something that's already conceptually understood, culturally understood, and use that in that conversation. 

Q:  You have this philosophy of “There's never too much family.”  What does family mean in your meaning and why does that matter for BSC [BioSocial Cognition]?

Thomas C Rector:

The starting place is open adoption is a legal concept.  And its intention is to bring awareness to adoptive parents that the birth family -  I'll use that,  the genetic birth family of the child -  is of foundational importance to their self identity. 

That's open adoption is a term that was brought forward to advance this particular concept.  And it was put forward because the starting place on adoption, and so many times, historically, has been closed.  Castle walls. This is the new world. The slate gets wiped clean. We get to start here and make it all nice. 

And over time, it has become recognized that that is not a healthy way for a person to be raised.  That's not a healthy way for the child to become an adult, because it leaves them with empty spaces that demand they be answered, they be filled in. 

This goes back to the core component of our species, the human species, which is we are a social entity. We need to have the connections. We need to have, and those connections are founded upon where we came from. Where do we come from? Those are the roots that we build our lives upon.

And so when we created this concept open adoption, we were trying to find a way to be able to explain to people in the trenches in the adoption world how to go about doing this. 

When it came to us, and our adoptive children, the open adoption concept, initially was like, No.  That world of connections of their birth families brought them to this place where they needed to be adopted. And that didn't seem like you should repeat that. 

Shannon: 

You were very much closed adoption?

Thomas C. Rector: 

Very much closed adoption. And so what happened was, through the visitation.   And this is my own personal, “Oh, my goodness, gracious, I'm thinking wrong.” 

What came forward out of that was the people, and I'll speak specifically of the birth mother, because that's where the initial visitations were occurring.  I visited her with our child, her child, in jail, and eight months, nine months old, kind of thing. 

And my thinking at that particular time is, “This is ridiculous”, but if it has to happen, I'm going to go because I'm the one who has the connection to our child, her child at that point in time. And I'm going to do this in such a fashion that it doesn't create scar tissue. 

That was the words in my head is that this is not going to be something that is remembered in a negative way or impactful in another way. It's just a data point that will be known. 

So when I did that visitation, it became blatantly clear in my mind, in my observation, that our adopted child's mother dearly, dearly loved her child.  Absolutely, dearly loved her child.  

And that created a self reflection on my part, which was I need to separate their choices from their caring. And while their choices did not allow them to to follow through and implement on their caring, the caring was still there. 

As I shared these experiences with the people around me, out of these conversations, “well, I was adopted”, or “I had this relationship”, and “I didn't know them until such and such age”, and “oh, I knew them from birth”. 

And these people, in my particular case, these people were employees. So I was around them all the time. I had many people who work for me. And as an employer, it's my responsibility to engage my people, my employees, in whatever capacity that they're able to do. 

And there was clearly a weighting of those who knew their family, their birth family, at a very young age, compared to those who had always known their family, the difference was a certain stability, grounding, deep-ness of their resources to draw upon to deal with the world. 

And so these pieces all swirl together, and it's like, “Oh, my goodness gracious, I'm wrong. 

Closed adoption is wrong. It might be easier for me, but it's wrong for my child.” 

And what that did was say, “okay, how do I do the open adoption?”  And and how I do it is, “no, I'm not going to do open adoption. I'm going to do family. I'm going to do family.”

And family is all these roots.  Some of very specific. Some of them very deep. Some of them very thin. But wherever I stand, I always know this person is here - in my family -  always know they're there.  These people are here.  I know this is where  our roots came from.

I knew all those things, and while that didn't define me, it did give me a foundation to stand on to make my own personal choices. 

So I used our model of family rather than the legal model of obligation. Which is what open adoption is, it's an obligation to to open and do some sort of transactional relationship kind of thing.  To change it, take that away, and do family and make it all that can be done within the context of family connections. 

So we included the birth parents when they were in a good place. We did not include them when they were not in a good place. 

We created environments where there was connection, but those environments were specifically safe, if you want to call it that.  Not safe in the sense of physical, but safe in the sense of developmental, useful developmental kind of thing.  

And I cultivated,  explicitly cultivated, a relationship with the birth parents and the birth grandparents, to any degree, any possibility that could happen. 

And in doing that, I could learn more about the genetics of my child that I had adopted.  And I would learn more about the opportunities that might be able to be connected. 

And that created more opportunities, because they weren't just channeled in this little narrow thing called “open adoption, I did my part”, but channeled in the more greater goal.  

And within that, when I was talking to them, I was talking about the children and what their interests were. What they liked doing.  What they reacted to.  What we're on for development stage. The interests that they have.  Family. Family.  Sharing. 

So the word open adoption to me is a legal concept, but what's good for the child is family. 

And I've never seen a situation where a person has too much family. I haven't seen that. So that's where we went with that situation. 

To Learn More about BioSocial Cognition Training for Adoptive Families, visit AccrescentInstitute.org/Adoptive-Parents