Open heart and home

Petaluma couple share the meaning of open adoption

Terry Hankins Ann and Jim Belove enjoy some play time with their adopted sons Carter, top, and Robert. Zoom Photo

To be loved and to be cared for is something that each of us crave; to be wanted and to have a community supporting us should be natural rights. Petaluman Ann Belove have given all this and more to her sons, regardless of the fact that she is not their birth parents. A family who often states that “a child can never have too many people that love them,” the Beloves live true to the statement by having an open adoption between their children’s birth family and their own.

“Open adoption refers to any adoptive situation where there is either maintained contact or the parties are known to each other,” said Belove. “In a closed adoption the records are sealed and the adoptive family or the adoptive child doesn't have any access to that information.”

In open adoptions, it is typical for birth mothers to choose a child’s adoptive family, and then keep some form of contact with the child throughout the years. Yet, in the case of Belove’s oldest son Robert, who is 9, his adoption has been slightly more unusual.

“Robert’s birth mother and I knew each other and were friends before he was adopted. Apparently, that’s not a common situation and because of that we have a really out-of-the ordinary and quite beautiful open adoption,” said Belove. “We keep very close contact. We still after nine years speak very regularly. We visit them and stay at their home, and they visit us and stay at our home. Robert’s birth brother Jack, who is 18 months older, just flew out for the first time by himself this last summer and stayed with us for five days, and that’s very atypical of an open adoption, but it works for us.”

However, Belove’s younger son Carter, who is 4, has a more typical open adoption compared to his older brother’s.

“Carter was born in Fremont, and his birth mother at this point in time is not in the picture at all,” she said, “but we are in fairly regular contact with his grandparents and uncle who want to be a part of his life — his birth mother lives out of state and is just not emotionally ready yet to have him as a part of her life. His situation is much more usual, much more typical that there is some contact with the birth mother or birth parents, and if not that then some birth relative.”

The experience of adopting for the Beloves was one that started out as slightly intimidating, yet ended in happiness with their sons and the healthy relationship they maintain with their birth families.

“I’d say it’s an uncertain thing to start out doing, especially for us because we didn’t know very many people at the time with adopted children; it was somewhat daunting and a little bit scary,” said Belove. “It’s not that different from having a pregnancy and carrying that child. You don’t know exactly what to expect, and we didn’t know what to expect in our situation. But then the child enters your life and you can’t help but to fall in love with it. It’s your child from the moment it comes to you, no matter how it gets there.”

Participating in an open adoption was something that the Beloves chose to do because of the rights they felt their children should have.

“I think it’s a child’s right to know where they came from. It’s a right to know what sort of medical history is in your family. It’s a right to know your ancestry and the basic information of the family to which you were born, and with closed adoption, that wasn’t a possibility and it’s detrimental to everyone concerned,” said Belove.

No matter the structure of their family, Robert and Carter are sure to have a relentless amount of support for days to come.

“The adoptive parents and family have to be open to accepting something that isn’t your typical Beaver Cleaver nuclear family, and in a lot of ways there’s no such thing as that anymore. Families now include step parents and foster children — there’s so many possible ways to define what a family is now,” said Belove. “There’s so many different people in the world that not every situation is going to be perfect. But like any relationship, it’s going to take a little work on both parts with understandings and agreements; it will work.”

(Contact Shannon Kowalski at argus@arguscourier.com)