[Gadoptmom]

I've been wondering about this.

We switched to domestic adoption partly because we were interested in a more open adoption. We felt it was best for children to know about their birth family and be able to have any questions answered directly.

We are pretty open in regards to what possible issues we are willing to accept in an adoption situation.

We've always said that we are pretty workable about the parameters of open adoption, depending on the relationship and circumstances. We aren't being evasive in saying this...it truly does depend on these things.

We recently had to let a pbmom know that we couldn't work with her because we felt that we wanted two very different things. We had concerns about future contact with her because of her volatile nature, mental illnesses, some domestic violence history, and addiction issues. While she's working on these things...we also are very aware of long term possibilities. So we proposed what we were comfortable with. We weren't willing to commit to visits based on some of these things...however we still were willing to leave the possibility of visits open (with some specific boundaries clearly listed).

In this case she was envisioning adoption as more of an extended family type of situation. While we may feel that would be great in certain situations...we didn't feel like that would be a good idea in this case.

I have a hard time coming up with scenarios where exchange of photos and updates from either side would not be a good idea...even if it meant that it had to be through a 3rd party.

I'm just wondering...in the era of promoting fully open adoption...when do people feel that open adoption is NOT in the best interest of the child and/or should not be considered?