In a closed adoption, the identity of the child's birth mother and other family information remains confidential and is not accessible to the child. In an open adoption, this information is accessible to the child or limited information is available to the adoptee. In the most open situation of all, the child, his adoptive family, and his birth family interact more or less freely. The findings of the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project (MTARP) suggest that an open adoption is a good thing for the adoptive family, the child, as well as the birth family.

The MTARP project began in the fall of 1984 to evaluate the changes that three agencies were making in their adoption practices. Prospective adoptive parents and birth mothers were being offered various options including the opportunity to meet each other prior to placements, and have ongoing contact after placement. Seventeen adoptive families and members of their corresponding natural families were interviewed between May and September 1985. The results of this were published in Openness in Adoption: New Practices: New Issues (mcRoy, Groteyant & White, 1988)

The data from the above mentioned study provided justification for a nationwide project involving families with differing degrees of openness in their adoption arrangements. This study involved 190 adoptive families and 169 natural mothers. The adoptees were between the ages of 4 and 12 when the data was collected between 1987 and 1992. A summary of the findings was published in Openness in Adoption: Exploring Family Connections (Grotevan & McRoy, 1998)

The second part of the study took place between 1999-2000 when the adoptees were adolescents.

The current study began in 2005 with the same adoptees who now are young adults, with some of them married, some have children, some have completed college, and some are working. They are all taking many paths towards adulthood. This phase of the study is focused on looking at the long term experiences in different adoption arrangements that have set the stage for their development as adults. This part of the study is predicted to be complete in 2008.