the situation improved greatly and the vast majority of unwed mothers kept their babies. In a mother-driven society after WWII, infertile couples were also seen as deficient due to their inability to bear children. The social experiment of taking children from "unmarried mothers" and "giving" them to adoptive parents became the norm during the Baby Scoop Eea. These adoptions were predominantly closed. The records were sealed, biological mothers were told to keep their child a secret, and adoptive parents told to treat the child "as if born to" them. According to a 2012 report in the Washington Times, 95% of US infant adoptions now have some level of openness between adoptive and birth parents. In 2020, almost 60-70% of domestic adoptions in the US are open, according to the Adoption Network. Pre-birth openness in the United States In the past when an American birth mother would go to an adoption agency to place her child for adoption, the agency took full responsibility in selecting the adoptive family, with the birth mother playing no role. Most adoption agencies in the US since the early 1990s have offered some, or complete, openness. Although practices vary state by state, most adoptions start with the birth mother reviewing dozens of adoption profile books or online profiles of prospective adoptive parents. Usually, these are adoptive families who have retained that agency or attorney to assist them in the adoption process. Most US states permit full openness not just regarding identities, but also personal information about each other. Just as the adoptive parents want to learn about the birth mother's life and health history, so does the birth mother want the same information about the people she is considering as the parents for her child. When the birth mother has narrowed down her prospective adoptive parents to one or a few families, normally they arrange to meet in person. Good adoption agencies and attorneys do this in a pressure-free setting where no one is encouraged to make an immediate decision. If they are geographically distant from each other (as some adoptions are interstate, with the birth mother living in a different state from the adoptive parents), the first meeting will normally be by phone, then advance to a face-to-face meeting if the meeting by phone went as well as hoped. Many birth mothers do more than just meet the adoptive parents once before the birth. If