Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care
Aug 26, 2026 · 40 min · 15 segments
Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks! What does healthy openness in adoption really look like—and how can adoptive parents maintain meaningful birth family…
Annie IversonGuestTracy WhitneyHostSo when people hear the term open adoption, they often picture a very specific arrangement or set of arrangements.
[laughs] But, you know, openness, I think I felt so much more different about it when I first started than I do now.
And when I first thought about open adoption, I thought it was going to dinner together, having your birth mom over for birthday parties, um, you know, really open, but that's not it at all.
But also, I think openness really means connection, honesty, creating that sense of awareness for my child to know where she comes from, where she belongs, the gifts, the talents that she's received.
So is openness primarily then about the contact or the, the relationship, or is it maybe about something deeper?
With my two girls, so my oldest is adopted and then my youngest is adopted, and then my two middle ones are biological, and those both look very different.
She's eight years old now, and she has been singing since she was one year, one year old.
So when people hear the term open adoption, they often picture a very specific arrangement or set of arrangements.
[laughs] But, you know, openness, I think I felt so much more different about it when I first started than I do now.
And when I first thought about open adoption, I thought it was going to dinner together, having your birth mom over for birthday parties, um, you know, really open, but that's not it at all.
But also, I think openness really means connection, honesty, creating that sense of awareness for my child to know where she comes from, where she belongs, the gifts, the talents that she's received.
So is openness primarily then about the contact or the, the relationship, or is it maybe about something deeper?
With my two girls, so my oldest is adopted and then my youngest is adopted, and then my two middle ones are biological, and those both look very different.
She's eight years old now, and she has been singing since she was one year, one year old.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.