Open Adoption Roundtable #15

The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It's designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don't need to be part of the Open Adoption Bloggers list to participate, or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you're thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table.

Publish your response during the next two weeks--linking back here so we can all find one other--and leave a link to your post in the comments. If you don't blog, you can always leave your thoughts directly in the comments.

Does money have an impact on your open adoption? If so, how? (Could be issues pre- or post-placement, expectations, assumptions, costs of visit activities, travel, gifts--you name it.)

This is another roundtable where I have to give a hypothetical answer since we are not currently in an Open Adoption with Liam’s first family.

Money unfortunately is always a factor in so many things. Liam’s family lives 4 hours away and Hilary and I don’t own a car so if we were ever to travel to see them, money would have to be considered – renting a car, gas, staying overnight somewhere etc. I don’t think however that money would come up in any other expectations or assumptions, but again, since it’s all hypothetical right now it’s hard to say. Hilary and I are certainly not rolling in dough. We’ve just had one of those weeks of a “perfect storm” of things requiring lots of money we don’t really have – plumbing issues, new glasses, dental problems, therapy costs. We both work and our parents help us out with the cost of Liam’s schooling. I’m sure Liam’s mom has similar financial worries too.

Living in Canada, and specifically in Nova Scotia, adoption is much different then what some bloggers are familiar with in the US. When we adopted Liam it was made very clear that NO money or gifts could be exchanged before his mother had signed the final termination papers. The only costs to us were what we paid to have a social worker do our homestudy (about $1000) and then 10 months later the lawyer fees to finalize the adoption in court. Because of our awesome health care system, there was no cost to “K” to give birth or for any of her pre or post natal care. As well there was no cost to either her or us for the 17 days that Liam was in foster care. So overall the adoption itself did not have any money involved.

Was money a factor in her decision to place Liam for adoption in the first place? I can only speculate on that, and assume that it day play a part. At the time she was a single mother raising a 3 year old on her own. She had been employed, but left her job to move to the “big city” to make her adoption plan. I do know that she was able to go back to her job after Liam was born.