• Typically the birth parents meet the adoptive parents and participate in the separation and placement process. The birth parents relinquish all legal, moral, and nurturing rights over the child, but usu. retain the right to continuing contact and to knowledge of the child’s welfare and location. Cf. closed adoption; coop-erative adoption.
open adoption
An adoption in which the biological mother (sometimes with the biological father) chooses the adoptive parents and in which the child often continues to have a post-adoption relationship with his or her biological family.