Simply “opening” adoption, however, does not guarantee healthy relationships. The report made sure to identify factors that contribute to the long term success of open adoptions. Some important factors being pre-adoption counseling for both expectant and adoptive parents and ongoing, professional support for both parties after the adoption is complete.

The executive summary makes sure to point out, that although adoption has come a long way, many people entering the process — or those unaffected by adoption — still harbor misunderstandings about adoption deeply woven into history and the media. Adoption professionals, the institute concludes, must work hard to provide accurate information on the realities of openness and continue to push down adoption barriers.

The authors of this study are leading open adoption researchers, Deborah H. Sigel, Ph.D. and Susan Livingston Smith, LCSW.

The adoption study is also covered on ABC News.

To download the full report, visit the Adoption Institute website:
“OPENNESS IN ADOPTION: FROM SECRECY AND STIGMA TO KNOWLEDGE AND CONNECTIONS.”

He took me on a fascinating tour of the major adoption milestones of the past two centuries before circling back to the present day. And he did it in five minutes flat, without taking a breath the entire time.

Had his achievements been limited solely to his groundbreaking 2001 book, Adoption Nation, Pertman would have secured himself a place of honor in the Adoption Hall of Fame.

But that was just the beginning of a long career devoted to adoption education and advocacy. As the Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, the leading U.S. think tank on adoption policy, Pertman has become one of the leading voices for adoption reform.

And now, with the recent release of the new, updated and revised edition of Adoption Nation, Pertman is once again bringing adoption — and the need to bring its practices into the 21st century — to a larger audience.

Recently I asked him what he sees as the major adoption trends in 2012. According to Pertman, by far the biggest change in the world of adoption is in the type of adoptions that now take place.

“The adoptions that people historically think of when they think of adoption, infant adoption, is now the smallest minority,” he says.

What’s more, he added, even those adoptions aren’t what they used to be.

“It’s not mostly white infants born to unwed white mothers being raised by married white couples. Parents today are multiracial; they are sometimes gay or lesbian or single; and the kids are biracial or of color.”

And yet, he adds, “all the laws, policies, practices and attitudes about adoption today are still built on the platform of a type of adoption that barely exists.”

For Pertman, perhaps the biggest change we’ve seen in adoption over the past few decades is the shift toward openness. By openness, he doesn’t mean the type of relationship that we traditionally associate with open adoptions, where adoptive parents and birth parents share identifying information and contact through phone calls, emails, letters or visits.

Instead, the way Pertman sees it, openness is more of an attitude and an approach — one marked by honesty, compassion and information. For decades, this kind of openness has been the foundation of open adoption.

And now Pertman says, it’s suddenly finding its way into public adoptions as well.

“Child welfare placements make up by far the most adoptions in the U.S., he says. “But even that’s coming around. It’s more complicated. There are court orders. The kids are removed from their homes rather than placed voluntary. But now there’s an understanding that knowledge, information, and even contact where it’s possible, is a positive thing for the people involved.”

And, he says, openness is also influencing international adoptions as well.

“The trend in international adoption is that the numbers are plummeting. But the kids and adults who were adopted abroad are searching in unprecedented numbers. It’s a positive message for all of us because what we see is that adults are going back to find their birth families to get that information and meet people, if possible.”

Rather than be alarmed by adoptees wanting to know about their origins, we should respect and support their efforts, Pertman says.

“These people aren’t ingrates. They’re successful adopted people. And what they want is the same thing that everyone has as a birthright. They want to know where they came from, who they look like — all the stuff that the rest of us take for granted. And that’s a really big lesson for other realms of adoption. Because that movement toward international search and reunion and openness really started with infant adoptions.”

Pertman sees the movement toward more openness as beneficial not only for children, but for their families as well.

“Those insecurities that made (adoptive parents) not want contact or connections aren’t good for them or their kids. Knowledge is good for you. Honesty is good for you and your kids. One informs the other. One feeds off the other and the trendline in that respect is toward greater openness.”

Lawrence Morton is an adoptive father and co-founder of America Adopts!, an open adoption meeting place that connects expectant parents who are considering adoption with families that are hoping to adopt.  Follow America Adopts! on Twitter and Facebook.

The article highlights a recent research report released by the Evan B. Donaldson Institute (http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/index.php) finding that California, Texas, New York, and Massachusetts have the largest number of gay and lesbian family adoptions. It is important to note that California, Texas, and New York are also the most populous states, which may explain the larger number of adoptions in these states regardless of the sexual orientation of the adoptive parents. Florida is the fourth most populous state, but does not have a large number of gay or lesbian adoptions because of a 30-year ban on the practice that the courts overturned last year. The Evan B. Donaldson Institute report also found that 60% of the agencies they surveyed accept applications from gay male and lesbian families seeking to adopt.

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This morning the TODAY Show featured a story that helps reveal the impact of social media on adoption. The video clip above explains how an adoptive mother and her daughter used Facebook to find the woman who placed her for adoption 19 years ago. After contacting her birthmother and meeting her for the first time, she explains how her life has changed. Also interviewed in the segment, is Adam Pertman, the Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. He states that social media’s role in adoption in real and growing. The transparency of information across social media has initiated new research into what, if any, adoption policies should be adjusted and how to define best practices in adoption.

Having placed about 1000 infants with LGBT families over the course of 29 years, the Independent Adoption Center has been involved in numerous studies and has a lot of information to offer on this topic. Wrixon urges all same-sex families hoping to adopt that even if they aren’t going to adopt through the IAC, they can feel welcome to call and have their questions answered.

*Ten Percent, a weekly interview series that focuses on lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender (LGBT) issues, is a half-hour show created and hosted by long-time San Francisco media professional David Perry.

For more reading on LGBT adoption and same sex parenting read the following posts:

1. LGBT Adoption Legal in Florida
2. Wait Times for Adoptive Placements in LGBT Families
3. Gay and Lesbian Parents Raise Well-Adjusted Children: IAC Families Participate in Groundbreaking Study
4. IAC Recognized by Human Rights Campaign for Best Practices with LGBT Families
5. Son of Lesbian Mothers Speaks Out Against Iowa’s Legislation to Ban Gay Marriage

The study, published in July 2010 in Psychology Press, is significant for several reasons. First, it includes outcomes for children of Gay male couples, which is a gap in the research that has previously focused on children of Lesbian and Heterosexual couples. Second, it used reports of the child’s adjustment from caregivers and teachers as well as parents, which provides greater validity to the results.

Unfortunately, there was no way to have a truly random sample. In addition, the children were a median age of only three years. A longitudinal study would provide a much richer look at the development process over time.

The most significant outcome is that well-adjusted children are the result of good parenting and other healthy family processes, and the sexual orientation of the parents is not a factor in this outcome. As Farr, Forssell, and Patterson state, “Regardless of parental sexual orientation, parents who reported less parenting-related stress, use of more effective disciplinary techniques, and greater happiness in their couple relationships had children who were described as ‘well-adjusted’.”

This study confirms other research on this topic, including the longitudinal study of children of Lesbian parents released in June of this year. See my blog post on this at: http://adoptionhelp.org/blog/2010/children-raised-by-lesbian-parents-have-excellent-outcomes/