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I think your experience is valid, and don't want to discount your feelings and your opinion, but I do agree with the previous poster that stated generalization is never a good idea, especially when navigating the uncharted waters of adoption.
I am also an adoptee from a closed adoption. It is wonderful that you have had no abandonment issues, and that you had such a positive experience. I am sincerely glad for you! But I DID have abandonment issues, and major ones, despite having wonderful, loving adoptive parents. Now that I have the entire truth about my birth family's background (both birthparents have schizophrenia) I don't think a completely open adoption would have been right for my situation. But I do think if I had the full truth, I would have been able to deal with my abandonment and trust issues better.
I've also worked with many, many individuals of all sides of the triads who have an open adoption. Most of them have challenges, but most of them also feel that open adoption was best for them.
Even in one situation where the birthparents had major issues (including alcoholism & domestic violence) & the teenager was struggling to figure out how to maintain relationships with both families, there was no doubt in my mind that this girl needed that contact at that time in her life. And this was a situation where the children were adopted through DCFS, and had been removed from the home because of abuse.
I do agree that having a situation where the birthparent is trying to control how the adoptive parents raise the child COULD be harmful and confusing for the child. Most open adoptions are not co-parenting. In fact the only co-parenting situation I have ever seen was where the adoptive parents actually had guardianship, not a legal adoption. And in this case they did eventually end up legally adopting the children, and have now moved into a more traditional open adoption with bi-annual visits for one of the children. The other child has chosen not to participate in the visits & was not forced to. It's interesting that you mention discipline, as this is one issue that came up in this situation (the adoptive mother believed in spanking, the birthmother did not), but they worked it out.
I didn't see the show, and have no desire to. I have yet to see an adoption-related movie that I feel gives an honest viewpoint of adoption. I don't trust the media's portrayal of anything! Call me paranoid (or realistic, one of the two!)
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