We have an open adoption that has become not so open over the past few months.  I really want to maintain our relationship with our birthmom so that the girls can know her and have a good relationship with her as well.  The calls have slowed down immensely and I do not want to intrude on her life, however, I noticed that she is on facebook.  Do I request her to be my friend?  Is that an intrusion on her life?  I think it would be a great way to share photos of the girls and an easier way for all of us to stay connected.  What do you think?

There is another Thread addressing this same issue in the Open Adoption Families forum called “Social Media in the context of Open Adoptions”.

http://www.adoptivefamiliescircle.com/groups/topic/256/#reply-1162

We have been FB friends with our daughter’s birth parents since the day she was born.  It has been wonderful, and I highly recommend it.

Most other families agree that this is an excellent resource to maintain contact with birth families.  They can check your profile (or not check it) whenever they want too.  Check out the other thread to get some more opinions on the matter.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, I am new to this forum and will check out the other thread.  I like the idea and I guess I can just request her as a friend and let her decide.

Hey there, we also use facebook with our birthmom. Our adoption is so new still that our birthmom found it difficult to read all the excitement from our friends on my page. So we opened a page just for us… this way we feel that we are not as guarded to what is shared. She loves looking through photos without reading all the comments from our friends. I have her on my personal page as well, and she then can choose what she reads ect. The private page works so well because our son is still a baby, we have chosen not to share all the details regarding our adoption, because we feel that God has given us guardianship over his history, and that he should be the first to hear all the details. Again, another bonus for setting up a private page, everything is open for disciussion between us, and kept private from curious friends/aquaintences. Not sure if that helps ... works well for us♥

Thanks, I think for now I did not request the friendship for now.  I was waiting to talk to her again before I moved ahead.  Which from looking at the dates on these posts I realize it has been a while. I need to call her!

My husband and I created a FB page for our son (he’s almost three months) simply because the opposite happened to us. The birth parents’ extended family members were finding us on FB and friend requesting us. It put US in an uncomfortable position because we didn’t want to be rude and deny the request, but we also don’t want them knowing all of our business.

As a happy medium, I created an email account and FB page for our son. The only people that we allow to be his friends are his relatives (our families and his birth family). That way they can see pictures and videos of him, and I can post cute status updates, but it keeps our personal pages our own. Our son’s page has no information on it (other than his birth day). It doesn’t even say where he lives.

It works for us and was a great way to meet everyone’s needs. When he gets older, he can email them through his address if he wants, and they know they can email him through that address as well. They’ve been using it and more and more of their extended family members have been requesting friendship with him.

Cathy

That is a good idea.  I think that I will talk to my husband about a FB page for all of our family members and their birth family members.  We have a lot of out of state family members and they don’t get to see the girls very often and they would probably get a kick out of seeing posts from them.  Is there a way that I can make their status updates only available to family?

Yes—You can make the page so that ONLY their family members are their Fb friends. That’s what we did with our son’s page. When he posts updated, ONLY his family sees it because they’re the only friends that we’re allowing him to have.

We have 2 adopted children from 2 different birth families.  We had a FB request from one of the birthmothers.  We declined.  In general, we don’t share much information about our children on line.  Also, due to the situation with the birthfather, we didn’t want him to have access to our daughter’s information.  I know there are ways to limit access to FB pages, but there are often ways around them, too.  We keep our options open for the future.

My son’s birth mom requested to friend me and I was very reluctant. I tend to post a LOT of pictures and videos (as well as status updates about Dante) and I was worried that would be hard for her.

But my SW said that if she is the one initiating it, it will probably be healthy for her to see our son growing up happy and healthy. She nicely said it isn’t my place to decide if it would be detrimental for her to see him through Facebook. I friended her (and the birth father) and it’s been really good so far. The only downside, for me, is that they’re both very young, and I struggle seeing what they write/are going through sometimes.

A fair amount of our friends/family think it’s bizarre, but it’s really none of their business. =)