What exactly are a birthparent’s responsibilities? When the child is an infant, it is especially easy to overlook the fact that the reason for an open adoption is that the child will ultimately benefit from having a relationship with his/her birthparents. A birthparent’s number one responsibility then is to nurture the relationship they have with their child.
To do this successfully the relationships with the adoptive parents and other members of the adoptive family also need to be nurtured. Building healthy relationships is never easy, and in open adoption relationships it can even be more difficult. In their book, “The Open Adoption Experience,” Lois Melina and Sharon Roszia compare the relationships between birthparents and adoptive parents as being most similar to the relationships between in-laws. “They meet,” they say, “with the understanding that they will be entering into a long term relationship primarily because they both love and are concerned for the well being of the same person.” Brenda Romanchik