Open VS Closed Adoption

Background
Adoption is a process by which those who adopt a child become the child’s legal parents, and the child ceases to be the legal child of his or her biological parents (Higgins, 2010). All the legal consequences of parenthood are transferred from birth parents to the adoptive parents. The adopted child receives a new birth certificate showing the adopters as the parents, and acquires rights of support and inheritance from the adopting parents. The adopting parents acquire rights to guardianship and custody of the child. Normally the child takes the adopters’ surname. The birth parents cease to have any legal obligations towards the child and lose their rights to custody and guardianship.

For an adoption to …show more content…
In a closed adoption, this information cannot be accessed by either party and no contact occurs between them. In an open adoption, the identifying information can be accessed by all parties, which may lead to a range of levels of contact between them. The processes surrounding the practices of open and closed adoption relate to how children and their families are seen in society, as well as the concepts of identity/belonging. From the 1920s to the 1980s, adoption practices in Australia reflected the idea of secrecy and the concept of having a "clean break" from the birth parents. It was intended that the identities of the parties were to be kept private forever. Legislative changes in the 1960s tightened these secrecy provisions. In SA, before the Adoption Act Review of 2015, adoption records were sealed and could only be opened at the order of the Supreme Court. This was in favour of the aforementioned “clean break” theory; a child welfare theory that held that it was better both for the mother and child if they were separated as early and as completely as possible. The current South Australian Adoption Act came into effect in August of 1989. Its introduction revoked the previous Act that provided for closed adoptions, and so was referred to as the “Open Adoption Act”, since for the first time in South Australia, legal provisions were made for parties to an adoption to access identifying information about each other. It provided this for all adoptions that occurred from August 1989 onwards, once the adopted person turned 18 years old. In rare cases, it may be necessary for an adoption to be closed, for example, where there may be physical danger to one of the parties if information is disclosed. While open adoption may raise a number of issues/problems for birth and adoptive families, and the adopted people themselves, experiences of the