Open (Secret)

By 2002, when Hava began thinking about adoption, it had become routine for a birth mother to select the adoptive family. The Donaldson Institute reports that 90 percent of birth mothers in voluntary domestic relinquishments now also meet the prospective parents.

Because of all this -- and because of her inescapable, fundamental relationship to the child -- the birth mother has become something of a dreaded figure: Experts agree that one reason for the popularity of international adoption is because it lets adoptive parents avoid her. "They're concerned about co-parenting; they're concerned about the birth mother or birth father coming to reclaim the kids; they're concerned about things that almost never happen," Pertman says.

Ann Goldfarb overcame her own reservations in 1998, after talking with a friend who spoke movingly about being present for the birth of her adopted child. Ann and Larry, whose parents were on the East Coast, thought it might be nice to have the child's birth relatives living nearby. Most of all, Ann felt that it would be healthy for a child to know firsthand that his birth mother loved him.

The Goldfarbs signed up with the Independent Adoption Center, a California-based agency that pioneered open adoption, a term that can mean almost anything, from the birth and adoptive parents meeting once only, or once a year, or exchanging photos and e-mails via the agency and never trading full names. At one session, the Goldfarbs met a couple who had pursued open adoption to obtain the birth mother's medical record, and who hated, they said, getting her annual phone call on Christmas. "Like fingernails on a chalkboard," the father called it.

Or, open adoption can mean total access.

This is the sort of thing birth and adoptive parents must reach accord on, and the Independent Adoption Center facilitated that, counseling the Goldfarbs, whose first task was to assemble a dossier. Ann and Larry put into words what they love about each other, and Ann found a quotation to express their parenting philosophy. "Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar" is what she chose, and she attached caterpillar clip art. By happenstance, Melissa McClendon, a pregnant 19-year-old living in the Pacific Northwest, had a friend who was partial to caterpillars. Helping Melissa sort through profiles, the friend handed her the Goldfarbs'.

At their first meeting, Melissa and Ann were both nervous, for different reasons. "We felt old," said Ann, who worried that she and Larry wouldn't seem cool enough. Melissa worried that the Goldfarbs would judge her for being pregnant and single. She got two friends to accompany her to lunch with the Goldfarbs, where they talked about jobs and religion and the fact that Ann, a health-care management consultant, was leaving work to be a full-time mom. This last aspect was important to Melissa, who "wanted one person at least to be home." So was the fact that they lived near her, in the San Francisco area. Negotiations followed. After Daniel came to live with the Goldfarbs, Melissa and her mother were able to visit frequently for the first two years, until Ann's father died and the Goldfarbs moved to the East Coast to be nearer to Ann's mother and a new job Larry had been offered.

The adoption with Hava did not go nearly so smoothly. This time the Goldfarbs decided to forgo working with an agency and advertise directly for a birth mother on the Web and elsewhere. Sitting in her Detroit apartment, Hava Leichtman clicked on their profile. She showed it to Bruce, who spoke for this article under the condition that his last name not be used. He liked the fact that they were fit and active. Hava called and quickly bonded with Ann, who is empathetic, a good listener and non-judgmental. Then Larry got on the phone and asked to talk to Bruce. This astonished Hava; other would-be parents had shown no interest in the birth father. But Larry was trying to determine if there was a chance Bruce might step up to parent the baby. "It's like a quarterback trying to read the defense," says Larry, who was relieved when Bruce made it clear that he did not want to marry Hava or raise a child.

"I told Ann that the ace in the hole is Bruce," Larry recalled, over dinner, on the first night of Hava's recent visit. Larry, who works in Falls Church as a geotechnical engineer, had just gotten home, and the boys, who had finished eating quickly, were playing under the table while the grown-ups chatted. Larry was giving Hava a hard time, which he likes to do, about the hard time she gave them.

And it was a hard time indeed, despite an auspicious beginning. Over the phone, the Goldfarbs told Hava they would drive to Michigan to meet her. Hava didn't believe them -- "I thought you guys were bluffing" -- but days later, they were on her doorstep with Daniel. The Independent Adoption Center had also taught them that a key person to engage is the birth mother's mother. Hava's mother, Gail, was extremely skeptical about an open adoption, but Hava begged Gail to see what she thought of them. So the Goldfarbs went to the house Gail shares with her second husband, Bob, and while Hava and Ann were playing in the basement with Daniel, Larry Goldfarb "did not leave the kitchen and Gail. She was preparing chicken for dinner, and she was pounding the hell out of it," says Larry, who suspected the chicken was a stand-in for him and Ann.

Gail, for her part, felt "absolutely excruciating anguish" over the loss of a grandchild, and had offered to raise the baby. Hava had declined, worried that caring for an infant would be unfair both to Gail and Bob, who was in his 60s. "I've been through some tough times in my life, and this was probably the hardest thing," says Gail, who liked the Goldfarbs very much but remained terrified that they would not keep their promise.

Hava told the Goldfarbs she wanted a week with the child after giving birth, and they agreed. Hava was, she acknowledges, trying to show the birth father she was serious about adoption; her hope was that he would relent when he saw the baby, and they would be a family. There was no point in Ann's asking if she could be in the hospital. "My feeling was: Don't ask me," Hava reflected. "I'll be damned if you're going to take away the one thing that's mine from me."