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All About Birth Mothers
Learning About Those Who Place Their Children for Adoption
By Teri Brown
Kathleen Silber is the associate executive director of the Independent Adoption Center, a nonprofit organization that has finalized more than 3,000 adoptions in 35 states. The Independent Adoption Center deals only with open adoptions. Silber believes it is natural for children to want to know about their birth parents, and they should have access to that information.
"All adopted children have questions about their 'roots' and their own identity," Silber says. "This has nothing to do with the adoptive parents. That is, they are not dissatisfied with their adoptive parents or looking for another set of parents. They simply need information about their own identity, such as 'Who do I look like?' and 'Why was I given up?'"
This contact with the child reassures the birth mother that her child is thriving and she did make the correct decision. In open adoption, the birth mother becomes part of the extended family and is not cut off from the child to whom she gave birth.
Silber believes that society tends to have serious misconceptions concerning birth mothers. "People tend to assume that women who place their children for adoption don't care about them," she says. "The opposite is true. This decision is made with a lot of love and caring. It takes a lot of love to make this kind of unselfish decision for the sake of the child."
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