Br J Soc Work-2009-Neil-5-23

© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf ofThe British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.

British Journal of Social Work (2009) 39, 5–23doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcm087 Advance Access publication August 8, 2007

Post-Adoption Contact and Openness in Adoptive Parents’ Minds: Consequences for Children’s DevelopmentElsbeth Neil

Elsbeth Neil is a senior lecturer in social work at the University of East Anglia. She has beencarrying out research into adopted children’s contact with their birth relatives since 1996. She iscurrently directing a study investigating adoption support services for birth relatives and post-adoption support for contact.

Correspondence to Elsbeth Neil, BSc, MA, DipSw, Ph.D., Centre for Research on the Childand Family, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

Summary

This paper explores openness in adoption on two levels: what contact children were havingwith their birth family (structural openness) and the openness of adoptive parents when itcomes to thinking and talking about adoption (communicative openness). Children placedfor adoption under the age of four years were followed up an average of six years post-placement. In-depth interviews were carried out with adoptive parents and parents com-pleted the child behaviour checklist (CBCL). Children having face-to-face contact with theiradult birth relatives were compared with those where the contact plan was letterbox con-tact. The communicative openness of adoptive parents was rated using a qualitative codingsystem. Adoptive parents involved in face-to-face contact arrangements were found to bemore communicatively open than parents involved in letterbox contact. Children’s emotionaland behavioural development was not related to either the type of contact that they werehaving with their birth families or the communicative openness of their adoptive parents. It issuggested that further follow-up of this sample in adolescence (using a range of outcomes) isrequired. This research suggests that social workers need to remain open-minded about thepossible impact of contact on children, resisting blanket predictions of either help or harm.

Keywords: adoption, families, communication, parenting, open adoption

Introduction

Questions about how contact with birth relatives might affect adoptedchildren’s development are of great concern to practitioners in social work and

by guest on Novem

ber 27, 2013http://bjsw

.oxfordjournals.org/D

ownloaded from

mailto:[email protected]

http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/


6 Elsbeth Neil

law, as well as to adoptive parents and birth families. Most children nowadopted in England and Wales are planned to have some form of contact withmembers of their birth family (Parker, 1999; Neil, 2000), although, in themajority of cases, this is likely to take the form of mediated written exchanges,as opposed to face-to-face meetings. There is some caution about face-to-facecontact amongst professionals (Neil, 2002a), adoptive parents (Smith andLogan, 2004) and the general public (Miall and March, 2005). Anxieties aboutsuch contact tend fall into two main areas; first, that contact might confuse thechild or stop him or her settling in their new family and, second, that it mightundermine adoptive parents’ sense of entitlement. For children who have beenabused or neglected, there is the additional worry about continuing to exposethe child to damaging influences or further harm. The ‘deterrent’ argument,that adoptive parents do not like birth family contact and that this issue mayput them off adopting altogether, is also put forward (Jolly, 1994).

The results of empirical studies about the impact of contact on children aremixed (e.g. Neil and Howe, 2004a) and comparisons of different types of open-ness do not support a ‘one size fits all’ policy (Grotevant et al., 2005). Studiestypically report satisfaction amongst those who have experience of more openarrangements, but evidence about whether or how contact influences children’sdevelopment is less clear (for reviews, see Quinton et al., 1997; Brodzinskyet al., 1998; Grotevant and McRoy, 1998; Quinton and Selwyn, 1998; Neil, 2003a;Neil and Howe, 2004a; Smith and Logan, 2004). Finding empirical answers toquestions about the outcomes of contact after adoption is frustrated by signific-ant methodological challenges (Quinton et al., 1997). To begin with, what ismeant by contact after adoption? The type, frequency, duration and manage-ment of contact all need to be considered, as does the type of birth relativeinvolved. These are all variations of what Brodzinsky (2005) calls ‘structuralopenness’. Looking for a relationship between contact arrangements and childoutcomes is also complicated by the need to take into account all the other fac-tors likely to affect the developmental pathway of an individual child. Theseinclude the myriad of pre-adoption risk factors including the child’s geneticheritage, pre-birth risk factors such as exposure to drugs or alcohol in thewomb, experiences of early harm such as abuse, neglect or multiple placementmoves. They also include post-placement factors such as family structure andsize, adoptive parenting, educational opportunities and availability of specialistsupport services.

To add further to this intricacy, Brodzinsky (2005) argues that the key con-sideration ought not to be structural openness, but the attitude and behaviourof adoptive parents with regards to talking and thinking about adoption—whathe terms ‘communicative openness’. He suggests that communicative openness‘reflects the general attitudes, beliefs, expectations, emotions, and behaviouralinclinations that people have in relation to adoption. It includes, among otherthings, a willingness of individuals to consider the meaning of adoption in theirlives, to share that meaning with others, to explore adoption related issues inthe context of family life, to acknowledge and support the child’s dual connection

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from



Contact and Openness in Adoptive Parents’ Minds 7

to two families, and perhaps to facilitate contact between these two family sys-tems in one form or another’ (Brodzinsky, 2005, p. 149). Building on the widerresearch about parenting, which has generally demonstrated that family pro-cess variables are more predictive of outcomes than family structure variables,he suggests that ‘regardless of whether a child grows up in a traditionally closedor open adoption arrangement, what is primary for healthy psychologicaladjustment is the creation of an open, honest, nondefensive, and emotionallyattuned family dialogue not only about adoption related issues but in factabout any issue that impacts on the child’s and family’s life’ (Brodzinsky, 2005,p. 151). Implicit in Brodzinsky’s theory is the suggestion that communicativeopenness is not an adoption specific feature of parenting, but that it is likely tobe underpinned by relatively fixed personality characteristics which he sum-marizes as an ‘open, empathic and secure personality style’ (Brodzinsky,2005, p. 153).

To test his hypothesis that the communicative openness of parents would belinked to developmental advantages for children, Brodzinsky studied sixty-seven children (aged eight to thirteen years, mean age eleven years) who wereall adopted under the age of eighteen months, with a mean age at placement of3.65 months (Brodzinsky, 2006). Adoption communication openness was meas-ured using a new fourteen-item child self-report questionnaire. The question-naire looked at both the extent to which children experienced their parents asopen and sensitive when talking about adoption, and the child’s own comfortwhen discussing adoption with their parents. Higher scores on this instrument,representing higher levels of communication openness (at least from the child’spoint of view), were related to lower levels of child behaviour problems asmeasured using the parent report Child Behaviour Checklist (Achenbach,1991), and higher self-esteem in children, measured using the Self-PerceptionProfile for Children (Harter, 1985). The Family Structural Openness Inventory—atwenty-item true/false questionnaire answered by adoptive parents—wasdeveloped to quantify structural openness. This measured the extent of contactbetween the adoptive family and birth family, with higher scores representinggreater structural openness. Scores on this measure did not correlate with childoutcomes independent of communicative openness. Brodzinsky was not sur-prised to find modest correlations between structural and communicativeopenness, arguing that structurally open placements are likely to facilitategreater communication about adoption. He also suggested the possibility thatthis relationship between the two variables ‘derives, in part, from a commonassociation with parental characteristics that leads one to choose and embraceopenness in adoption’ (Brodzinsky, 2006, p. 14). In discussing the limitations ofhis study, Brodzinsky argues that his results may not be generalizible to laterplaced children, especially where there is a history of abuse and neglect. Healso points out that children and parents frequently differ in their views aboutthe extent of communication in the family about adoption.

Brodzinsky’s recent work reviews, builds on and draws together the work ofmany other authors who have commented on the importance of communication

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from



8 Elsbeth Neil

about adoption, beginning with the seminal work of Kirk (e.g. Kirk, 1964;McWhinnie, 1967; Jaffee and Fanshel, 1970; Triseliotis, 1973; Raynor, 1980;Stein and Hoopes, 1985; Kaye, 1990; Wrobel et al., 2003). Brodzinsky’s work fitsa general move towards thinking about ‘when’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ contact mightwork or not work, as opposed to ‘if’ contact works, and of considering the multi-tude of reciprocal interpersonal processes that take place between adoptive par-ents, birth relatives and adopted children. As Grotevant et al. (2005, p. 182) putit, contact is ‘a complex dance in which the roles and needs of the participantschange over time, affecting the kinship network as a whole’ (Grotevant et al.,2005, p. 182). Children’s needs and feelings change as they grow, and this canprompt changes in communication patterns within adoptive families (Wrobelet al., 2003). Birth relatives’ feelings about and acceptance of the child’s adoptionand their need for contact can change over time and as a result of their experi-ences of contact (Grotevant and McRoy, 1998; Neil, 2007). In short, contact is adynamic and transactional phenomenon (Neil and Howe, 2004b).

This paper reports findings from a study of sixty-two adoptive parents andtheir adopted children, relating their communicative openness (as assessed byparents’ interviews) to the type of contact that they were having with theiradopted children’s birth families, and to their children’s behavioural develop-ment in middle childhood. The earlier work of the author (which focused onface-to-face contact arrangements) looked at the empathy of adoptive parentsfor birth relatives and for their adopted child (Neil, 2003b). Adoptive parentswho were highly empathic in these areas maintained contact even in complexcircumstances, coping with (and feeling positive about) birth relatives whomight have had difficulties accepting the adoption or who were living with ser-ious problems such as mental illness or drug or alcohol addiction. Adoptiveparents who found it harder to see adoption from the point of view of birth rel-atives or children were likely to give up on contact arrangements easily, evenwhen problems were minor. This earlier paper suggested that adoptive parents’empathic capacity might be related to underlying personality characteristicssuch as reflective functioning (Fonagy et al., 1991). The current study builds onthis earlier work by expanding the sample to include adoptive parents wherethe contact plan was for agency-mediated letter contact; by using Brodzinsky’sbroader, multidimensional concept of ‘communicative openness’; and byattempting to relate both structural and communicative openness to childbehavioural outcomes in middle childhood.

MethodologyEthical approval

Ethical approval for this study was sought and obtained from the relevantdepartmental ethics committee at the University of East Anglia. Approval forthe research was also obtained from the Association of Directors of SocialServices and from the individual adoption agencies taking part.

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from




Sample

The sample for this study was participants in the second wave of the longitudi-nal ‘Contact after Adoption’ study. The study began in 1996 with a socialworker-completed questionnaire survey of the situations of 168 children (fromten English adoption agencies), all of whom had been recently adopted orplaced for adoption, and were less than four years old at the time of placementfor adoption. Eighty-nine per cent of these children were planned to have someform of contact with their birth relatives after adoption. It is primarily from thiscohort that interview respondents for the current study were recruited. In thefirst phase of the study (1996–2000), interview data were obtained from theadoptive parents of thirty-five children, and nineteen birth relatives of fifteenchildren, all of whom were involved in face-to-face contact arrangements.

The second wave of the study (2000–04) sought to re-interview the sample offamilies having face-to-face contact and to interview for the first time a similarnumber of families where the contact plan at the time of placement was foragency-mediated letter contact (referred to subsequently as ‘letter contact’)between birth relatives and adoptive parents. Participants were sought fromthe original cohort of 168 cases, and from two additional adoption agencies(employing the original criteria of children placed for adoption under age fourin the 1996–7 time period). Adoptive parents, adopted children and birth rela-tives were all interviewed; this paper focuses on the adoptive parent interviews.Respondents were interviewed at home, unless they preferred a differentvenue. One interview was conducted by telephone and all others in person.

From the twelve participating agencies, 189 eligible adoptive families wereidentified. Adoptive parents who had previously taken part in the study werecontacted directly; in all other cases, agencies were asked to pass on informa-tion from the research team. However, in twenty-six cases (all letter contact),the agency did not send on the invitation, usually because they had no currentaddress and, in some cases, because they were aware that no post-adoptioncontact was taking place.

Table 1 shows the response rate in the 163 cases in which invitations weresent, in total and according to whether the family was in the ‘face-to-face’ or‘letter contact’ group. Comparing families planned to have face-to-face contactwith those in which the plan was letter contact, there were striking differencesboth in the ability of agencies to contact families and in the responses from thefamilies themselves.

Table 1 Invitations sent to potential participants, and their response to these

Eligible cases Invitation sent Positive reply Negative reply No reply

Face-to-face contact 36 36 29 (81%) 0 7 (19%)Letter contact 153 127 33 (26%) 37 (29%) 57 (45%)

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from



10 Elsbeth Neil

These response rates suggest that the sample of adoptive parents inter-viewed may not be representative of the wider group of adoptive parentsplanned to be involved in letter contact arrangements: where agencies have noup-to-date contact details, they cannot facilitate letter contact. The sample maytherefore be biased towards cases in which some form of letter contact wasongoing at the time of follow-up, as opposed to cases in which planned contacthad never started, or had stopped.

Of the sixty-two adoptive families that took part, fifty-four were two-parent families, and eight were headed by lone mothers (three were singlemothers, three had been widowed since the adoption, and two had divorced).In about half of the two-parent families, mothers and fathers were jointlyinterviewed. One father took part on his own but, in all other cases, it wasjust the mother who was interviewed (usually because the father was atwork). For the current analysis, one index child (randomly selected) per fam-ily was identified. Of these sixty-two children, thirty-nine (63 per cent) weremale and twenty-three (37 per cent) were female. The mean age at placementfor adoption was twenty-two months (range one to fifty-six). Seventy per centhad been adopted from public care. The rest had been placed at their parents’request, often in complex circumstances. Some of this latter group had alsobeen looked after in the care system. At the time of follow-up, the mean ageof the children was 8.5 years (range five to thirteen), and they had lived intheir adoptive family on average for six years. Three of the children were ofdual heritage, each having one white parent and one parent of mixed white/African-Caribbean origin. The remaining fifty-nine children were white, aswere all the adoptive parents.

Research questions and hypotheses

Key questions were as follows:

1 What is the relationship between structural openness and communicativeopenness?

2 Does contact type (structural openness) affect adopted children’s behav-ioural development?

3 Does communicative openness affect adopted children’s behaviouraldevelopment?

Our hypotheses were as follows:

1 That communicative openness and structural openness could act inde-pendently, but that there was likely to be some overlap because communi-catively open parents would be more likely to opt into, or readily agree to,face-to-face contact arrangements compared with parents who were lesscommunicatively open.

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from




2 That structural openness would not affect child outcomes, independent ofcommunicative openness.

3 That high levels of communicative openness would lead to better childoutcomes.

In forming these latter two hypotheses we also recognized the need to take intoaccount risks in the child’s pre-placement history which may also have abearing on their developmental outcomes.

Data collection: adoptive parent interviews

A semi-structured interview schedule was used. This invited adoptive par-ents to talk in as much detail as they wished about the following areas: thereasons why they adopted; their child’s pre-placement history; the child’sprogress and their relationship with him or her; their feelings about post-adoption contact and their experiences of such contact—including theirfeelings about birth relatives; and patterns of communication about adop-tion within the adoptive family. Most interviews lasted a minimum of twohours and all were taped and fully transcribed. The whole of the adoptiveparent interview was used to rate communicative openness and structuralopenness (see below).

Rating communicative openness

Starting with Brodzinsky’s (2005) definition of communicative openness, a rat-ing scale was developed by the author, Julie Young the project research associate,and Professor Hal Grotevant from the University of Minnesota. Brodzinsky’sconstruct of communicative openness was broken down into five constituentdimensions. The five dimensions included are outlined below, with briefexcerpts from the codebook included for illustration.

Communication with the adopted child about adoption

This is about the adoptive parent’s willingness to talk about adoptionrelated issues with their child and the extent to which they promote a cli-mate of openness within the adoptive family about adoption relatedissues. It takes into account the extent to which the parent is emotionallyattuned to the child as an individual who has his or her own feelingsabout communication about adoption.

Comfort with, and promotion of, dual connection

This scale has three elements: the adoptive parent’s personal comfort with thereality that the child is also connected to another family (the birth family); thevalue or importance they attach to the child’s connection with birth family;

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from



12 Elsbeth Neil

and the extent to which they take steps to encourage or promote the child’sconnection to birth family.

Empathy for the adopted child

This is about the extent to which the adoptive parent is willing to considerand is comfortable with the full range of the child’s feelings (or potential tohave feelings) about being adopted, e.g. feelings of loss, rejection, love, loy-alty, fear, anxiety, identity confusion, including being able to tolerate feelingsin the child that are experienced as negative or threatening to the parent.

Communication with the birth family

This dimension looks at the adoptive parent’s attitude towards communica-tion/contact with the birth family (regardless of whether any such communi-cation occurs), and, in situations where there is communication, how theadoptive parent behaves and feels about this.

Empathy for the birth family

This dimension is about the adoptive parent’s capacity to take the perspectiveof the birth relative. This relates to thinking about the reasons why the childneeded to be adopted as well as thinking about the birth relative’s currentposition and their behaviour in relation to contact.

Written definitions for the highest and lowest anchor points for these fivedimensions were drafted. Ten transcripts were then coded by each rater inde-pendently on a five-point scale (1 = low, 5 = high), after which ratings werecompared and reviewed. Following this, written descriptions were written forthe intermediate points on each scale. Another five cases were then rated inde-pendently by each person, and reliability was checked. Descriptions of the fivepoints on each scale were again amended to clear up any issues causing prob-lems with rating. This final version of the communicative openness scale wasthen used to code all sixty-two cases, each case having a possible score of 5–25.Half of all cases were rated independently by two people, and inter-rater relia-bility reached the target of 70 per cent accuracy for exact scores and 100 percent accuracy within one point on each sub-scale. The remaining transcriptswere rated by one person, with any unclear cases referred for discussion andrating by consensus.

Because mothers and fathers sometimes answered questions differently, itwas decided to base ratings of communicative openness on the response of justone parent—in all cases bar one, that of the mother (the exception being thefather who took part by himself). The ratings were also specific only to theindex child and his or her contact arrangements. When rating empathy for thebirth family, it was feelings about the main birth relative involved in contactwhich were rated.

The lowest communicative openness score was 7 and the highest was 25. Themean was 18.6 (sd = 5.63).

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from




Rating structural openness

Although there was a huge diversity of contact arrangements within the sample,for the purposes of this paper, a dichotomous categorization was used, based onthe contact that was happening at the time of follow-up. The ‘face-to-face’ contactgroup were those children who had a plan to see their adult birth relative and thiscontact, at the time of follow-up, had included at least one meeting in the past twoyears. All other children were in the letter or minimal contact group. Face-to-facecontact tended to involve birth parents (mothers and fathers) and birth grandpar-ents in roughly equal measures. Letter contact was most commonly planned totake place with birth mothers. Letter contact with fathers was less frequent, andsuch contact with grandparents was uncommon. Of the sixty-two cases, twenty-fivewere in the face-to-face contact group and thirty-seven in the letter contact group.

Both groups were highly heterogeneous with regards to the extent of contactexperienced. Some children in the letter contact group would have had very littleor no contact with any birth relatives, or would not be aware of any such contacthaving taken place, whilst others had an active involvement in two-way letter con-tact or may even have had face-to-face contact that had stopped. In the face-to-facecontact group, some children saw their birth parent or grandparents quite oftenand a few had overnight visits with them. Other children’s contact was quite erraticor infrequent (usually because of the instability of birth parents’ lives) and, in somecases, it was hard to predict when the next meeting might take place.

Measuring child outcomes and taking account of pre-placement risks

The child outcome measure used for this analysis was the parent report ChildBehaviour Checklist (CBCL) (Achenbach, 1991). This measures children’semotional and behavioural development and identifies whether children showclinically significant symptoms of internalizing problems, externalizing prob-lems and total problems. Parents returned this completed measure for fifty-four of the sixty-two children (87 per cent overall, 96 per cent of the face-to-facecontact group and 81 per cent of the letter contact group). In 28 per cent ofcases (n = 15), the child’s total t-score put them above the clinical cut-off point.Boys had significantly higher total t-scores than girls (60 vs 49, p < 0.001).

To try and take account of other factors that might affect children’s develop-ment, a system of coding for ‘risk’ was devised. This was based on question-naire data obtained from social workers around the time the child was placedfor adoption. It took into account factors identified in the literature as beingassociated with poorer developmental outcomes (e.g. Howe, 1998): age atplacement, the numbers of changes of main care-giver and the duration andnumber of types of abuse experienced. The minimum possible score was 0 and themaximum 10. The mean risk score for children in the sample was 4.5 (sd = 3.26).Correlations were carried out between risk scores and internalizing, externalizing

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from



14 Elsbeth Neil

and total problem t-scores. Externalizing problem t-scores were significantlycorrelated with risk scores (p = 0.028), but total problem scores and internaliz-ing problem scores were not (p > 0.1).

ResultsCommunicative openness related strongly to structural openness

Adoptive parents involved in face-to-face contact arrangements had signifi-cantly higher communicative openness scores than those involved in letter con-tact (21.6 vs 16.6, p < 0.001). Table 2 shows the percentage of parents in each offour bands of the communicative openness scoring range. Whilst parents hav-ing letter contact scored across the whole range in roughly equal proportions,no parents having face-to-face contact scored in the lowest band and two-thirdswere in the highest band.

Structural openness did not relate to child outcomes

Before looking at whether there was any difference in the CBCL outcomes forchildren according to what contact they were having, it was considered import-ant to first consider whether the children in these two groups differed fromeach other in other ways likely to have a bearing on their outcomes. Hence,children in the two contact groups were compared (using t-tests) on age atplacement, age at interview and number of pre-placement risks. No significantdifferences were found on any of these variables. There was also a roughlyequal percentage of boys in each group (64 per cent in face-to-face, 62 per centin letter). Children in the two groups were then compared on their CBCLscores (total t-scores for internalizing, externalizing and total problems). As isshown in Table 3, no significant differences were found.

Communicative openness did not relate to child outcomes

It was predicted that communicative openness would be positively related tochild outcomes. However, no correlation was found between communicative

Table 2 Communicative openness scores by contact grouping

Communicative openness scores Face-to-face contact Letter contact

5–10 n = 0 (0%) n = 6 (16%)11–15 n = 3 (12%) n = 10 (27%)16–20 n = 6 (24%) n = 10 (27%)21–25 n = 16 (64%) n = 11 (30%)

Totals N = 25 (100%) N = 37 (100%)

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from




openness scores and total problem t-scores (p > 0.1), externalizing problemt-scores (p > 0.1) or internalizing problem t-scores (p > 0.1). In other words,there was no association between the communicative openness of the adoptiveparents and the children’s emotional and behavioural development (as meas-ured by the CBCL) in middle childhood. There was no suggestion that commu-nicative openness was having any negative effect, but neither did this aspect ofparenting appear to be having the predicted developmental advantages for thechildren.

DiscussionThe link between communicative and structural openness

Our first hypothesis was supported: adoptive parents involved in face-to-facecontact arrangements had significantly higher communicative openness scoresthan adoptive parents involved in letter contact arrangements. This could meanthat communicatively open adoptive parents opt into face-to-face arrange-ments, or it could be that communicative openness is promoted by greaterstructural openness (these explanations are not mutually exclusive). We foundsupport for both of these effects in our interviews with adoptive parents.Although adoption agencies undoubtedly had a significant influence on contactplanning, it was quite common for adoptive parents to report some level ofchoice with regard to the type and level of post-adoption contact that they wereprepared to consider (in contrast, most birth relatives reported little choice orcontrol over post-adoption contact plans). In the first phase of this research,two-thirds of adoptive parents involved in face-to-face contact reported eitherleading the way in determining a face-to-face contact plan or agreeing easilyand willingly with such a proposal by the placing agency. A range of initialviews about contact were also found amongst parents involved in letter contactarrangements and, again, there were examples of parents’ communicativeopenness affecting the contact plan that they ended up with. The majority ofparents having letter contact said that they would have been, at best, reluctantto consider adopting a child where face-to-face birth family contact was theplan.

There was also evidence from interview data that experiences of having con-tact could alter people’s feelings in relation to the five constituent dimensions

Table 3 CBCL scores by contact grouping

*p = 0.085; ** p < 0.1.

Face-to-face contact group (N = 24)

Letter contact group (N = 30)

Total problems t-score (mean) 59 53*Externalizing problems t-score (mean) 58 54**Internalizing problems t-score (mean) 54 51**

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from



16 Elsbeth Neil

of communicative openness, and face-to-face contact seemed to have a greaterimpact than letter contact. In terms of communicating with children aboutadoption, face-to-face meetings necessitated an open dialogue with the child.Parents needed to talk to their child before and after meetings, and children’sconcrete experiences of their birth family often prompted them to ask morequestions or open up discussion. Some parents did use letter contact as a plat-form for talking to children about adoption, but this contact type did not neces-sitate communication (Neil, 2004a). Some parents having letter contact with thebirth family did not actively involve children in letter contact, or even (in somecases) tell them that it was happening (Neil, 2004a).

The dimensions of ‘comfort with dual connection’, ‘empathy for the birthfamily’ and ‘communication with the birth family’ could also be affected byexperiences of contact. Adoptive parents involved in face-to-face contacttalked of how getting to know the birth relatives as real people had reducedtheir fears, and had helped them to reach a realistic and sympathetic under-standing of birth relatives (Neil, 2003b, 2004b). Face-to-face contact also dis-confirmed adoptive parents’ fears about the child ‘preferring’ birth relatives:contact meetings tended to confirm the child’s attachment to adoptive parents(Neil, 2002b, 2004b). In contrast, in letter contact cases, adoptive parents whofeared the ‘special bond’ that might exist between a child and their birth familyhad no opportunity to test this against the reality of contact meetings. Lettercontact clearly did, in some cases, have positive effects on adoptive parents,particularly when they had met the birth relatives face to face. In many cases,though, this form of contact was ineffective in creating a genuine communica-tive dialogue between parties: both adoptive parents and birth relatives talkedof how hard it was to communicate in the written medium, with another personthey hardly knew, about a highly emotional subject (Neil, 2004a; Young andNeil, 2004).

In England and Wales, the 2002 Adoption and Children Act obliges agenciesto make post-adoption support plans for every child, and gives adoptive par-ents, adopted children and birth relatives the right to ask for an assessment oftheir support needs. Providing support for post-adoption contact is an import-ant opportunity for social workers to facilitate communication between chil-dren, adoptive parents and birth relatives, as well as helping all three partiesunderstand and manage their own feelings with regard to adoption. This studysuggests that letter contact should not be assumed to be the straightforwardoption; the support needs of people involved in this type of contact must becarefully considered. To begin with, adoptive parents having this type of con-tact may be less confident or more defended than those having face-to-facecontact: not all will feel secure about and committed to this process. Further-more, letter contact often does not go to plan, in many cases dwindling or stop-ping as the years go by, the cessation of contact usually (though not always)starting with the withdrawal of birth parents (Grotevant and McRoy, 1998;Logan, 1999; Neil, 2004a; Selwyn et al., 2006). In such cases, adoptive parents’communicative openness and their willingness to take part in contact might be

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from




undermined. Adoptive parents may well value ongoing advice about when andhow to involve their child in letter contact, focusing on using contact as aresource for helping the child think and talk about adoption. They may alsovalue advice and support in knowing what to write in letters to the birth family.Supporting birth relatives to stay involved in letter contact should also be apriority.

Contact type and child outcomes

As expected, we did not find that any significant differences in CBCL scoresbetween children having face-to-face contact and those having letter contact;no clear advantages or disadvantages could be seen between these two contacttypes in terms of the effects on children’s CBCL scores. Whether or not chil-dren were emotionally and behaviourally well adjusted was somewhat pre-dicted by their pre-placement experiences but the correlation between risksscores and CBCL outcomes was only statistically significant for externalizingbehaviour problems; outcomes were highly heterogeneous and, in many cases,the children’s development defied obvious explanation. This highlights theimmense complexity of understanding outcomes in adoption. Children’s devel-opment cannot be fully understood by focusing on just one area of influence (inthis case, the type of contact arrangement): development is affected by manyinterrelated biological and environmental factors and an ecological perspectiveis warranted (Palacios, 2006). A particular challenge in understanding thedevelopment of adopted children is the lack of accurate and detailed informa-tion about all the possible risk and protective factors. In the current study,social workers frequently indicated that they did not have full or accurateinformation about whether birth parents (especially birth fathers) had specificmental health problems, learning disabilities or substance misuse problems,and these parental characteristics, which could pose potential genetic risks tochildren’s development, were not included in the measure of risk. The riskmeasure also did not take account of possible pre or peri-natal influences ondevelopment (e.g. maternal substance misuse or birth complications), asinformation about these factors was missing for many children. The informa-tion about the care that a child received before placement for adoption waslimited to the number changes in main carer and presence or absence of abuseor neglect, and these are, at best, crude indicators of the quality of care that achild experienced. Even if more detailed and accurate background informationwas known, a larger sample may be required to control for all these differentvariables.

What the results of this study do suggest is that general (as opposed to case-specific) fears about face-to-face contact having a detrimental effect on chil-dren’s emotional and behavioural development need to be queried, especiallyfor children placed in early childhood. Adoptive parents and children them-selves mostly reported face-to-face contact to be a positive or benign experience

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from



18 Elsbeth Neil

(Neil, 2004b), and such contact appeared to have a positive effect on the abilityof birth relatives to adjust to and accept the child’s adoption (Neil, 2007). Face-to-face contact is clearly not advisable for all children: care must be taken incases in which children have been seriously abused (Macaskill, 2002; Howe andSteele, 2004; Selwyn, 2004; Wilson and Sinclair, 2004). The need to balancesecurity and risk for children is undeniable (Beek and Schofield, 2004), butover-estimating risks may deny children (and the birth family and adoptiveparents) a satisfying and valuable experience.

Child outcomes and communicative openness

The predicted relationship between adoptive parents’ communicative open-ness and better child adjustment was not found. Although this finding is at oddswith Brodzinsky’s results, it is important to remember that whilst this studyuses and applies Brodzinsky’s concept of communicative openness, it is not areplication of his empirical work. There are important methodological differ-ences between the two studies in terms of how communicative openness wasmeasured, and a closer look at these differences raises interesting questions.The use of child self-report versus parental interview might account for differ-ences in results. Brodzinsky’s child self-report measure looked at what childrensay their parents do, and how they feel about this; the scale used in the currentstudy attempted to measure what parents say they do and feel about variousaspects of adoption communication. Both of these ways of measuring commu-nicative openness could be criticized for the fact that they do not objectivelymeasure what adoptive parents actually do—only what either the child or theparent says the parents do. Leaving this aside, it is possible that children’sreports of family communication about adoption are more reliable than par-ents’ reports of their own behaviour: adoptive parents might feel that to be‘open’ is likely to be seen as ‘better’ and this might have affected theirresponses to questions. However, this type of defensive responding is arguablymore likely when people are asked direct questions with fixed responses, asopposed to the very open and lengthy interviews conducted with parents in thisstudy, in which the whole interview was used to code communicative openness.Even if the rating of communicative openness in this study was influenced bysome level of defensive responding, large differences in overall scores betweenpeople were found (the range was 7–25), suggesting that the scale does pick updifferences in behaviour and attitudes.

If it were to be accepted that the rating scale used in this research is measur-ing real differences between adoptive parents, why do these differences notpredict child outcomes in the way that Brodzinsky’s child-based rating did? Itcould be simply that it is the child’s perception of parental openness that isimportant, not the parents’ views of their own openness, or even what open-ness actually occurs. Or, less simply, it might be that it is the fit between whatthe parents do and what the child wants and needs that is important. It was

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from




clear from our interview data (from both adoptive parents and children) thatthere are large individual differences between children in terms of their inter-est in adoption, their feelings about adoption and about members of their birthfamily, and their wishes and feelings about talking about adoption (Neil, 2006).Endless combinations of parent and child are possible—and child and parentsmay ‘match’ each other or not: for example, a curious child with open parentsmay feel that their parents have got openness just right, whereas a child who isangry with their birth parents may feel misunderstood if their adoptive parentskeep trying to ‘understand’ or ‘explain’ their birth parents’ actions. Of course,children’s views and feelings about adoption may in part be shaped by theiradoptive parents, especially when children are placed at a young age. Similarly,parents’ views and behaviours may be shaped by children, especially when chil-dren are placed at older ages and already have strong views about adoption ortheir birth family. If parents and children mutually influence each other, andthese interactions are part of a wider system which includes the whole adoptivefamily (both parents, siblings and the extended family), the adoption agencyand the birth family, then what has been measured in the current research(adoptive parents’ feelings and behaviours at a certain point in time) is not apure measure of adoptive parents’ underlying psychological characteristics, butthe product of how any underlying characteristics of parents have been influ-enced by those of other relevant people and events. It would be useful forfuture research to seek empirical evidence of any association between adoptiveparent communicative openness and other broader characteristics (e.g. reflec-tive function, attachment security, personality traits), and the scale reported inthis paper provides a means for people to do this.

It also needs to be remembered that the children in Brodzinsky’s study wereon average about three years older than in the current research; for the oldergroup, communication about adoption may have taken on greater interest andsignificance. Many parents in the current study expressed the view that open-ness in adoption was not yet affecting their children. Instead, they viewed theircurrent promotion of communication about adoption and their contact withthe birth family as an ‘investment’ that would pay dividends in the future. Mostchildren in the study were in the seven-to-nine-year age range and were justbeginning to ask rudimentary questions about their adoption: serious identityissues were not being tackled but parents anticipated that they lay in ahead inthe teenage years. Child outcomes need to be reconsidered at a later stage inthese children’s development.

Another key difference between this sample of children and Brodzinsky’ssample is that this sample contained a majority of children who were adoptedfrom care after experiencing abuse and neglect. It could be that some dynamicsof openness within adoptive kinship networks operate somewhat differentlywith children who have experienced trauma in their past. Perhaps, for somechildren, in order to feel safe and feel that they belong in their adoptive family,they need their adoptive parents to draw a clear, impermeable boundarybetween the adoptive family and the birth family. There were some examples

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from



20 Elsbeth Neil

in our study in which children found it very difficult to even think, let alonetalk, about their birth parents: they wanted to draw a very firm line betweenthe past and the present. To have an adoptive parent who wholly claims you astheirs and reinforces your view that your birth family have nothing to do withyou anymore could feel reassuring for some children, at least in the short term.However, children are likely to have different feelings about and needs to talkabout their adoption at different stages in their development (Brodzinsky et al.,1984; Wrobel et al., 2003). A ‘split’ psychological position of seeing the adop-tive family as all good and the birth family all bad may prove to be a brittlestrategy in the long term. Thoburn (2004) reports how some children in herstudy had little contact with their birth families and appeared to be well settledfor a number of years. However, some of these children underwent dramaticchanges in their attitudes towards their birth and adoptive families in adoles-cence, ‘bursting out’ of their adoptive home and seeking their birth parents. Incontrast, children who had explored both positive and negative feelings abouttheir birth family over a number of years had often reached a position ofgreater equilibrium by adolescence.

When considering the finding that neither structural nor communicativeopenness had an effect on children’s CBCL scores, it is also possible that thiswas the wrong outcome to measure and that more adoption-specific and quali-tative outcomes should be examined. For example, it may be more telling tolook at children’s feelings about adoption, their satisfaction with the level ofopenness in their adoption, their self-esteem in relation to their adoptive sta-tus, or their adoptive identity development. Qualitative interview data werecollected from forty-three adopted children in this study, and children’s feel-ings about adoption were examined. The relationship between this coding andadoptive parents’ communicative openness is undergoing further analysis.

Another reason why the current study failed to find any correlation betweencommunicative openness and child outcomes could be that the range of parentsincluded in the study was too small. In Brodzinsky’s study, 45 per cent of theadoptive parents had never met the child’s birth parents and had never had anytype of contact with them (Brodzinsky, 2006). His data on openness were col-lected as part of a larger study about adoption adjustment. In contrast, the cur-rent study was specifically about post-adoption contact; cases of closedadoption were excluded, and cases in which letter contact was planned but wasnot taking place were under-represented. Furthermore, adoptive parents mayhave opted into (or out of) the research on the basis of their communicativeopenness. It is possible, indeed likely, that an adoptive parent has to be at a cer-tain level in terms of communicative openness before he or she will agree totake part in a research study about openness in adoption. It is possible that allor most of the adoptive parents who took part in the study were communica-tively open to a ‘good enough’ extent: the range was simply too limited to dem-onstrate any effect. Although differences in communicative openness scoresbetween the two groups were significant, the average score of each group wasat least moderately high.

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from




Conclusion

Post-adoption contact, be it by letter or face-to-face meetings, is more than aseries of events taking place at intervals. It is a nexus of interconnected proc-esses that take place both within and between individuals, in which how eachperson feels and behaves can have an impact on how others feel and behave.The research reported in this paper cannot fully capture the complexity ofthese processes, but does contribute a much needed detailed examination ofone part of this system: the adoptive parent perspective on communicativeopenness. Understanding the contribution that adoptive parents make to theseprocesses can help to elucidate the qualities of contact that might have a bear-ing on children’s development. The research reported in this paper raises inter-esting questions for practitioners about recruiting and supporting adoptiveparents and supporting post-adoption contact. For researchers, it highlightssome of the methodological complexities of trying to examine the relationshipbetween children’s development and post-adoption contact.

Accepted: June 2007

References

Achenbach, T. (1991) Manual for the Child Behaviour Checklist/4–18 and 1991 Profile,Burlington, VT, University of Vermont.

Beek, M. and Schofield, G. (2004) ‘Promoting security and managing risk: Contact inlong term foster care’, in Neil, E. and Howe, D. (eds), Contact in Adoption and Per-manent Foster Care: Research, Theory and Practice, London, British Association forAdoption and Fostering.

Brodzinsky, D. M. (2005) ‘Reconceptualizing openness in adoption: Implications fortheory, research and practice’, in Brodzinsky, D. and Palacios, J. (eds), PsychologicalIssues in Adoption: Research and Practice, New York, Greenwood.

Brodzinsky, D. M. (2006) ‘Family structural openness and communication openness aspredictors in the adjustment of adopted children’, Adoption Quarterly, 9, pp. 1–18.

Brodzinsky, D. M., Singer, L. M. and Braff, A. M. (1984) ‘Children’s understanding ofadoption’, Child Development, 55, pp. 869–78.

Brodzinsky, D. M., Smith, D. W. and Brodzinsky, A. B. (1998) Children’s Adjustment toAdoption: Developmental and Clinical Issues, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage.

Fonagy, P., Steele, M., Moran, G., Steele, H. and Higgitt, A. C. (1991) ‘The capacity forunderstanding mental states: The reflective self in parent and child and its signifi-cance for security of attachment’, Infant Mental Health Journal, 13, pp. 200–57.

Grotevant, H. D. and McRoy, R. G. (1998) Openness in Adoption: Exploring FamilyConnections, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage.

Grotevant, H. D., Perry, Y. V. and McRoy, R. G. (2005) ‘Openness in adoption: Out-comes for adolescents within their adoptive kinship networks’, in Brodzinsky, D. andPalacios, J. (eds), Psychological Issues in Adoption: Research and Practice, NewYork, Greenwood.

Harter, S. (1985) Manual for the Self-perception Profile for Children, Denver, Universityof Denver.

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from



22 Elsbeth Neil

Howe, D. (1998) Patterns of Adoption: Nature, Nurture and Psychosocial Development,Oxford, Blackwell Science.

Howe, D. and Steele, M. (2004) ‘Contact in cases in which children have been traumati-cally abused or neglected by their birth parents’, in Neil, E. and Howe, D. (eds), Con-tact in Adoption and Permanent Foster Care: Research, Theory and Practice, London,British Association for Adoption and Fostering.

Jaffee, B. and Fanshel, D. (1970) How They Fared in Adoption: A Follow-Up Study,New York, Colombia University Press.

Jolly, S. C. (1994) ‘Cutting the ties: The termination of contact in care’, Journal of SocialWelfare and Family Law, 3, pp. 299–311.

Kaye, K. (1990) ‘Acknowledgement or Rejection of Difference?’, in Brodzinsky, D. M.and Schechter, M. D. (eds), The Psychology of Adoption, New York, Oxford UniversityPress.

Kirk, H. D. (1964) Shared Fate, New York, Free Press.Logan, J. (1999) ‘Exchanging information post-adoption: Views of adoptive parents and

birth parents’, Adoption and Fostering, 23(3), pp. 27–37.Macaskill, C. (2002) Safe Contact? Children in Permanent Placement and Contact with

their Birth Relatives, Lyme Regis, Russell House Publishing.McWhinnie, A. M. (1967) Adopted Children: How They Grow Up, London, Routledge

and Kegan Paul.Miall, C. E. and March, K. (2005) ‘Open adoption as a family form: Community assess-

ments and social support’, Journal of Family Issues, 26, pp. 380–410.Neil, E. (2000) ‘The reasons why young children are placed for adoption: Findings from

a recently placed sample and a discussion of implications for subsequent identitydevelopment’, Child and Family Social Work, 5(4), pp. 303–16.

Neil, E. (2002a) ‘Contact after adoption: The role of agencies in making and supportingplans’, Adoption and Fostering, 26, pp. 25–38.

Neil, E. (2002b) ‘Managing face to face contact for young adopted children’, in H. Argent(ed.), Staying Connected: Managing Contact in Adoption, London, British Agenciesfor Adoption and Fostering.

Neil, E. (2003a) ‘Adoption and contact: A research review’, in Bainham, A., Lindley,B., Richards, M. and Trinder, L. (eds), Children and their Families: Contact, Rightsand Welfare, Oxford, Hart Publishing.

Neil, E. (2003b) ‘Understanding other people’s perspectives: Tasks for adopters in openadoptions’, Adoption Quarterly, 6, pp. 3–30.

Neil, E. (2004a) ‘The “Contact after Adoption” study: Indirect contact and adoptiveparents’ communication about adoption’, in Neil, E. and Howe, D. (eds), Contact inAdoption and Permanent Foster Care: Research, Theory and Practice, London, BritishAssociation for Adoption and Fostering.

Neil, E. (2004b) ‘The “Contact after Adoption” study: Face-to-face contact’, in Neil, E.and Howe, D. (eds), Contact in Adoption and Permanent Foster Care: Research,Theory and Practice, London, British Association for Adoption and Fostering.

Neil, E. (2006) Final Project Report for Nuffield Foundation: Contact with Adult BirthRelatives after Adoption: A Longitudinal Study of Children Aged Under 4 at Place-ment, Norwich, University of East Anglia.

Neil, E. (2007) ‘Coming to terms with the loss of a child: The feelings of birth parentsand grandparents about adoption and post-adoption contact’, Adoption Quarterly,10, pp. 1–23.

Neil, E. and Howe, D. (eds) (2004a) Contact in Adoption and Permanent Foster Care:Research, Theory and Practice, London, British Association for Adoption andFostering.

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from




Neil, E. and Howe, D. (2004b) ‘Conclusions: A transactional model for thinking aboutcontact’, in Neil, E. and Howe, D. (eds), Contact in Adoption and Permanent FosterCare: Research, Theory and Practice, London, British Association for Adoption andFostering.

Palacios, J. (2006) ‘The ecology of adoption’, Keynote presentation at the Second Inter-national Conference on Adoption Research, UEA, Norwich, 18 July 2007.

Parker, R. (1999) Adoption Now: Messages from Research, London, The StationeryOffice.

Quinton, D. and Selwyn, J. (1998) ‘Contact with birth parents after adoption: Aresponse to Ryburn’, Child and Family Law Quarterly, 10, pp. 349–61.

Quinton, D., Rushton, A., Dance, C. and Mayes, D. (1997) ‘Contact between childrenplaced away from home and their birth parents: Research issues and evidence’, ClinicalChild Psychology and Psychiatry, 2, pp. 393–413.

Raynor, L. (1980) The Adopted Child Comes of Age, London, George Allen and Unwin.Selwyn, J. (2004) ‘Placing older children in new families: Changing patterns of contact’,

in Neil, E. and Howe, D. (eds), Contact in Adoption and Permanent Foster Care:Research, Theory and Practice, London, British Association for Adoption andFostering.

Selwyn, J., Frazer, L. and Wrighton, P. (2006) ‘More than just a letter: Service user per-spectives on one local authority’s adoption postbox service’, Adoption and Fostering,30, pp. 6–17.

Smith, C. and Logan, J. (2004) After Adoption: Direct Contact and Relationships,London, Routledge.

Stein, L. M. and Hoopes, J. L. (1985) Identity Formation in the Adopted Adolescent, NewYork, The Child Welfare League of America.

Thoburn, J. (2004) ‘Post-placement contact between birth parents and older children:The evidence from a longitudinal study of minority ethnic children’, in Neil, E. andHowe, D. (eds), Contact in Adoption and Permanent Foster Care: Research, Theoryand Practice, London, British Association for Adoption and Fostering.

Triseliotis, J. (1973) In Search of Origins, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.Wilson, K. and Sinclair, I. (2004) ‘Contact in foster care: Some dilemmas and opportuni-

ties’, in Neil, E. and Howe, D. (eds), Contact in Adoption and Permanent Foster Care:Research, Theory and Practice, London, British Association for Adoption andFostering.

Wrobel, G. M., Kohler, J. K., Grotevant, H. D. and McRoy, R. G. (2003) ‘The familyadoption communication (FAC) model: Identifying pathways of adoption relatedcommunication, Adoption Quarterly, 7, pp. 53–84.

Young, J. and Neil, E. (2004) ‘The “Contact after Adoption” study: The perspective ofbirth relatives after non-voluntary adoption’, in Neil, E. and Howe, D. (eds), Contactin Adoption and Permanent Foster Care: Research, Theory and Practice, London,British Association for Adoption and Fostering.

Acknowledgement

This research was funded by the Nuffield Foundation, London.

by guest on Novem



ownloaded from



Documents

Br J Soc Work-2009-Neil-5-23