I look back with a bit of embarrassment at the snapshot in my head of the time when I sat on my living room carpet in a patch of sunlight as a teen and listened to my mother’s religious psychology radio show. At that time, I heard heart-warming stories of loving families with children who weren’t biologically related. Adoption was lovely. It was a good thing to do for the world and for God. Win-win. My altered view of adoption and foster care has been forged over years of small inconveniences, huge disappointments, and enlightening conversations. There was surprise, joy, and dread, even in the early days of our first adoption.
Before I learned about where internationally adopted children were found, I imagined that maybe the child I adopted would have been pulled off a dusty mat on a grimy road and saved from the dangers of begging for a living. I didn’t find out until later that children in those circumstances would probably never be saved by me. It was unlikely they would be plucked from poverty and plopped in my middle-class American home, where their daily routine might include baths, homework, and music lessons. If they were lucky, an aid organization would connect with those kids and give them some food and clothes every so often, maybe a scholarship for school. The children I might adopt needed a pedigree of sorts. There needed to be a mother who gave permission for this child to be raised by someone else. The biographies of children who might be presented to me for adoption were unlikely to include nights endured on the street. Maybe I would save them from that fate down the road. Maybe, since they were in the system, another family would adopt them if I didn’t. Maybe they would be raised in an orphanage with food, socialization, and medical care.
If I couldn’t take a child from the streets, the next thing I could consider would be accepting a child with extra needs. Once we started all the signing, photocopying, and notarizing, I began studying the list of children who were already waiting for families. There was one boy on the waiting children’s list who had a mild case of cerebral palsy that attracted our attention. His profile had been active on the site for some time when we were finally at the point where we could request more information about him. The day after we requested his information, a giant exploding envelope of documents appeared on our doorstep. We dug through the text for clues on what his condition might mean for his life ahead. I hung on to every paper, even the ones I couldn’t read because they were handwritten by doctors in Bengali. We researched, asked for advice, thought, and even prayed at the time. Then, we asked to adopt him.
Before we brought him home, I went on the forum page that our adoption agency had set up to allow all of the families who were adopting from India to chat, exchange experiences, and offer advice. I don’t even remember the question I asked, but the bit of information about the age discrepancy that existed between our current children and our potential child had slipped out. We already had two biological children by the time we began this adoption process. Our oldest was three, and our youngest was one and a half. That would place the boy we had requested to adopt at six months older than our youngest child. Those within the international adoption community know this practice ranks somewhere between frowned upon and outright forbidden. The adopted child in your family is meant to be the youngest by a year. Another mother in the forum picked up on this and told me that our adoption probably wouldn’t go through because of the age difference. She said that even though we had been told he would come live with us, he wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be allowed. Her story included a scenario she claimed to be similar to the position we were in. According to her recollection, she had been denied the adoption of a child based on the ages of the children in her home. This mother had seen the profile of the boy we had requested to adopt. She said she would have loved to adopt him if she hadn’t just brought a child into her home. I felt hurt, scared, and alienated. Was I ignorant or misled? The trust I lost in community support has never fully returned. I never went back to the forums. And she was wrong.
She was a strong voice that was misinformed. After being jolted in the forums, I contacted my social worker to double-check my understanding of our case. When I mentioned the warning I got in the forums, she knew exactly the person who had interacted with me. The social worker informed me there were many factors that led to the other woman being kept from the adoption she referenced, not just age, and that often the age requirement is waived within special needs adoptions. I realized over time that loud, confident voices with singular “right” answers were common in the adoption and foster care space. Everyone seemed to have an idea of the best way to go about helping women or children or both, and often these ideas were at odds with each other. People angrily attack others with alternative ideas. Since the stakes are so high in many cases, people can be made to look downright harsh or evil. If you don’t agree with the speaker, you are condemning children to nightmarish scenarios or women to pain or destitution.
Often, in reality, there isn’t an easy way out. Family in the best of times can be messy, and in the worst of times, can inflict hurt as only those you are most vulnerable to can. The boy on the waiting list came to live with us twenty years ago. Over the years, my older children, all three of them within two years of each other, have been very different, but have worked together. They have gotten on each other’s nerves, but stood up for each other. They are vocal about giving each other advice and offering a hard time when chiding is needed. They don’t remember a time when they weren’t siblings. Even now, as they enter adulthood, they share a friend group and are happy to attend our family outings.
I have come a long way from the early days when I was vulnerable to the misinformation of others. Learning who to listen to and who it was permissible to tune out wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed at first. Credentials don’t mean that your philosophy will work for my children in my house. Some of the glue that has encouraged my children to rely on each other has been my own mistakes. My willingness to face those mistakes and my openness to talk to my adopted children about the aspects of their experience I can never know firsthand have helped narrow some of the distance my imperfections chiseled. I believe now, as I am continuing to learn, that humility and curiosity can often do more to help widespread understanding of how to better care for women and children than volume and arrogance.
Adoption Uncovered 