10.1177/0192513X04270210 JOURNAL OF FAMILY ISSUES / April 2005 Miall, March / ASSESSMENTS OF SUPPORT AND OPEN ADOPTION Open Adoption as a Family Form Community Assessments and Social Support CHARLENE E. MIALL McMaster University KAREN MARCH Carleton University In this article, community assessments of support for three levels of open adoption are exam- ined, including two types of mediated adoption, fully disclosed adoption, and confidential adoption. Combining telephone survey data from a Canada-wide random sample of 706 respondents with 82 qualitative interviews, the authors report on community assessments of these levels of openness and the relevance of these results for other survey research con- ducted on these issues. The authors also explore community assessments of the perceived advantages and disadvantages of open adoption and confidential adoption for adoptive par- ents, birth parents, and adopted children and how these may or may not reflect clinical assess- ments. Finally, the authors consider the implications of these results for clinical initiatives with members of the adoption triangle. Keywords: adoption; community survey; open adoption; confidential adoption STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM Nonrelative adoption creates a family that, in important ways, differs from the biologically related nuclear family—as a parenting option, it separates the biological from the social nurturing part of parenting (Kirk, 1964). Until recently, nonrelative adoption was characterized by secrecy 380 Authors’Note: This study was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (410-97-1195).We thank John Pollard and the Institute for Social Research at York University, Toronto, Ontario, for assistance with the telephone survey, and Ms. Olga Cannon for assistance in transcribing the interviews. Address cor- respondence concerning this article to Charlene E. Miall, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Sociology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M4; e-mail: [email protected], or Karen March, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Sociol- ogy and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 5B6; e-mail: [email protected] JOURNAL OF FAMILY ISSUES, Vol. 26 No. 3, April 2005380-410 DOI: 10.1177/0192513X04270210 © 2005 Sage Publications
Open Adoption as a Family Form
Jul 09, 2023
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