Adoption Blog: Production, not Reproduction

Please visit Heather's blog here!

Please tell us about yourself — your location, job, etc!
I’m an adoptive mom to two amazing kids: five-year old Eddie and two-year old Marian. Our family of four lives on the West Coast. I work in non-profit management by day and spend way too much time surfing the internet by night.

When/why did you decide to adopt?
After several happy years of marriage we were ready to make the leap into parenthood. Like a lot of folks, we had talked some about having a mix of adopted and non-adopted kids in our family. Once it was apparent that some pesky obstacles to conceiving weren’t going to go away anytime soon, it was an easy decision for us to start with domestic adoption. In an odd way, I’m glad for those (thankfully minor) health issues. I don’t know if we would have had the guts to adopt otherwise and we would have missed out on life with two pretty awesome kids.

Do you have any biological children?
Nope.

Whom did you adopt, and from where?
Both of our children were born in the United States and placed with us as newborns. We were lucky enough to be living an hour away from their respective first parents each time, so we didn’t really even travel. The kids’ adoptions are fully open and we wouldn’t want it any other way. Their families of origin are a natural part of our extended family now.

What was their name, and did you rename them? Why or why not?
We gave our son a name that my husband picked out when he was a teenager dreaming about being a father one day. (Yes, my husband actually thought about such things as a teen boy!) Although we shared the name with his birth parents when we first met (and were relieved when they liked it), it didn’t occur to us at that point to do anything more collaborative.

Our daughter’s first mother, Beth, was adopted as a young child and renamed by her adoptive parents. It was important to Beth that her own child have the continuity in her name that she lost, so she wanted to make sure that the names on her original birth certificate and post-adoption birth certificate matched. We named Marian together in a series of conversations that mostly involved me coming up with name after name after name and Beth and my husband vetoing them all. They have remarkably similar tastes! The name that finally made everyone smile came during a car ride one sunny afternoon.

What has been the most surprising aspect of adoption?
I think how little and how much adoption affects our daily lives. (Contradictory, huh?) On the one hand, we go about our day just like any family would, mediating disputes over toys and snuggling together for bedtime stories. Indistinguishable from non-adoptive families. On the other hand, adoption is a huge part of our family identity. We are the family that we are because of adoption. It shapes our life together, from our experiences as a multiracial family (Marian’s adoption was transracial) to the kids’ birth families’ presence to our parenting choices as our children begin the lifelong process of working out what it means to them that they were adopted.

What has been the most disappointing?
Definitely the judgments and assumptions people make about the kids’ birth parents. I know the sorts of comments I hear based on stereotypes and misinformation--I hate that Eddie and Mari’s first families have to face that sort of stigma every day. The flip side of that is people’s misplaced praise of my husband and me, as if adopting (or choosing open adoption) were something admirable. There was nothing charitable about it–every day we have the joy of waking up to these incredible kids. And the birth parents who created those two lively, creative kids and continue to invest in their lives? Also incredible.

What has been the most gratifying?
What I said above about getting to be parents each and every day to those two amazing kids? That.

Did any organization or agency really help you get through the process, financially, emotionally, or otherwise?
Not really. The agencies we used took us through the logistical process of home study, matching and placement. (Our second agency did an excellent job with shepherding us through that and walking alongside Marian’s birth mom through her own separate process. The first agency, not so much.) But I’ve found that adoptive parenting—like parenting in general—means going out and piecing together the ongoing support network and resources your family needs. Which isn’t such a bad thing; I’ve made some wonderful friends in the process.

What advice would you give people who are considering adopting?
Adopting is an incredibly emotional process and it’s tempting to cocoon yourself amongst like-minded pre-adoptive and newly adoptive parents who are going through similar experiences. Getting that sort of peer support is important and good. But I think it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we’re just one set of players in a much larger, incredibly complex picture. I’d encourage anyone adopting or considering adoption to seek out the voices of a variety of birth parents, adopted adults and adoptive parents with a decade or two of experience—especially ones who maybe make you feel a little defensive at first. Keep an open mind and listen, listen, listen.

I think we don’t earn the right to have strong opinions about “how adoption should be” until we’ve really heard those whose voices are too often left out of the conversation: birth parents and adoptees. Ethical, compassionate and honest adoptions are the best in the end for everyone involved, including us adoptive parents. And our choices as the adopting parents can help make those happen.

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