Harold Grotevant: Openness in Adoption

Dr. Harold Grotevant holds the Rudd Family Foundation Chair in Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is the founding director of the Rudd Adoption Research Program. He, along with Dr. Ruth McRoy, leads the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project (MTARP), a 30+ year longitudinal study with adoptees and their adoptive and birth families. In this interview, Dr. Grotevant outlines the changes that have taken place over the last 50 years in adoption practices, especially as related to openness and on-going communication between members of the adoption kinship network. He describes his own research findings from MTARP as well as findings from other researchers that address the impact of openness for adoptees, adoptive families and birth families. Dr. Grotevant also identifies factors that are related to the ability to maintain openness and communication within an adoptive kinship network over time and the role of agencies and adoption professionals in supporting these arrangements. He ends by emphasizing the fluid nature of openness arrangements, highlighting that adoption is a life-long process and openness and communication will change over time within a kinship network. For more information and a transcript, visit emilyhelder.com.