The Truth About Adoption From Those It Has Touched
Building a family is typically an exciting and nerve wracking experience. For those like Nick Adams-King and his husband more of the process has to do with paperwork and meetings than late night cravings and morning sickness. Nick’s family was built through adoption in the UK. Since 2002 gay couples have been allowed to add... Continue Reading →
Nick Adam's King and his husband began their adoption journey years ago with the adoption of their son. Later they adopted again and their daughter joined the family. Nick helps me understand how adoptions in the UK differ from those in the US. We learn about the ups and downs of their journey and how... Continue Reading →
Photo by Michael Erhardsson How has adoption changed? Orphan trains were an attempt to decrease the population of poor children clogging the streets of big cities in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (1) Aid workers who were struck with the plight of these children thought that removing them from the dirty, dangerous city and... Continue Reading →
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood The orphan trains were an early experiment in American history in which well meaning adults in large East Coast cities put children that didn't appear to be in the care of an adult on a train heading west to be adopted by farm families . For some children this meant they... Continue Reading →
Photo by Julia M Cameron When I first heard about reactive attachment disorder it was in a paragraph sandwiched between food hoarding and developmental delays due to malnutrition. Training required for International adoption included a basic understanding of these unique conditions. This was a landscape of extremes that seemed as appropriate as the 15 hour... Continue Reading →
Photo by Miftah Rafli Hidayat JeNae Goodrich was adopted into her own family as a child. Growing up surrounded by adopted siblings helped prepare her for her life of social work, but she couldn’t have predicted that she would have gotten involved with one of the toughest, most stressful and even controversial sides of adoption.... Continue Reading →
Adoptees may be raised in families that love them fully. Often, however, a feeling that something is missing or they don’t quite belong still haunts them. The sooner we acknowledge this invisible burden and address it, the more healthy their lives can be.
Birth mothers are often the enigmatic part of an adoption who stays in the shadows. But adoption is something that never leaves her. She doesn’t forget the child she gave birth to and gifted to another family. What can we learn from a birth mother’s experience? Laura Orsini has been open about her journey as a birth mother and had a lot of advice to give to the rest of us.
What if, when a foster family does get successfully recruited, they have community support engulfing them to meet their needs and keep them encouraged in their efforts? Studies are starting to show that support groups can keep foster families in the game longer than those families who only have a busy licensing worker making a harried stop by a few times a year.
(Photo by nappy from Pexels) How Race Can Change The Experience of Everything From Adoptive Training to Adoptive Parenthood. A quick image search of adoptive families still pops up the popular picture of white parents hugging smiling children of a variety of racial backgrounds. A minority of those photos show something else. Black families also... Continue Reading →
Adoption Uncovered 