Mommies Here!

As I become more and more attuned to adoption stories, images, and faces in my every day life, I’m learning that adoption has many faces.

Pop Culture

Okay, did anyone see Dr. Phil last Friday? His show was on adoption dilmenas and it was enough to make me go screaming from the room. He started off by saying something to the effect of ”what would you do if someone took your child and wouldn’t let you have it back?”

The show presented a sensationalistic, one-sided, and narrow view of everything that can go wrong in an adoption. Some of the scenarios covered were:

• Kids that seemed to be placed without the consent of both birth parents.
• A mother who wanted to reclaim full custody of her child from it’s adoptive parents after six years.
• A prospective adoptive couple who paid an attorney $20,000 in cash after seeing a sonogram of “their baby” only to discover that the whole thing was a hoax.

Ugh. I kind of wish I hadn’t watched that show because it left such bad taste in my mouth but it was kind of  like watching a train wreck.

Real Life

Earlier this month, Nadia and I went to a post-adoption conference support group/workshop sponsored by the same organization that organized the adoption conference last month. If I had been in my right mind, I would have skipped the conference, but I was in still at the point in this process where I wanted to soak up as much knowledge as possible about adoption, so I dragged Nadia along with me to the workhsop.

When we walked, in the facilitator zeroed in on me like white on rice. He kept staring at me. Even as more and more people entered the room (there were about 15 attendees ), he kept looking at me and asking questions. He wanted to know what we thought of the conference? what we had decided about our domestic adoption options: private placement through an attorney? or adoption agency? He told us that he “assumed we wanted a biracial child” and that he wanted to save us some time because he knew the names of a few agencies that  would “help us ” under the circumstances.

I felt like I was in the hot seat, to say the least. My intention was to go to the workshop and listen, not to be the main attraction. I really didn’t say much, and neither did Nadia. We both kept glancing at each other, thinking, ‘when is he going to stop focusing on us.” As one of three African-Americans in the room, I really didn’t feel as if I needed any more attention, you know?

Don’t get me wrong, he was definitely trying to be helpful and he was very nice,but what’s that saying about the road to hell? He was basically shining a spotlike on “our situation” and, believe me, I know that in the context of that crowd, Nadia and I were ‘unique”.  To be blunt ,we were the only same-sex inter-racial couple in the room. Or should I say’ transracial?”  which is the new buzz word these days and I’m learning that there are a lot buzz words in the world of adoption, but that will be a separate post for another day.

At the workshop, there were many people who had questions and some people were even allowed to ask them. He did turn his attention away from us long enough to give advice about how important it is to decide what kind of child you want (white, black, domestic, international) because all of those factors can influence how long you wait and how much you spend. So people where able to ask some questions about those check boxes, but he kept coming back to us. I felt like a very exotic flower, and if you know me in real life, you knwo that I am not generally self-conscious. He just thought we would be good candidates for a specific agency.

When Nadia and I got up to leave, he interrupted the woman to my left, to tell me that we had to take down his email address. He desperately wanted us to attend the info session of an agency that is “very comfortable with non-traditional families” another buzz word and has placed many bi-racial children.  In the world of adoption children are reduced to check boxes (black? white? domestic? international?) Adoption is very much about race, and by extension, class. I took down his email  but I won’t be using it because thae agency in question charges $10 to $15K more than I hope to spend on this process.

Nadia and I plan to  do a lot of our own adoption outreach and networking and work with a private attorney  who is magnificient. In fact, she is helping us to get certified as adoptive parents with the court. To that end, our first of two meetings with the social worker who will do our homestudy is on 12/29.

Nature

All of that to say, that my wheels are spinning about adoption. I continue to have many mixed emotions but this story, my final presentaton on the many faces of adoption really made me smile this weekend. Friday’s  Sun  ran a story about  Gay Penguin dads, really and it really made me smile. If they can do, maybe Nadia and I can too. Here’s an excerpt…

EVERYTHING is going swimmingly for a baby penguin brought up by two GAY parents.

The unnamed chick has been cared for by dads Guido and Molly since being born six months ago.

Curator Siani Tinley, at the East London Aquarium in South Africa, said: “He’s strong and healthy and showing no signs of confusion from having non-heterosexual parents.

“He’s happy and loves swimming around – I think the parents are very proud.”

The youngster was born five months ago after Guido and Molly — named when staff thought he was a female — incubated the egg after it was rejected by a male and female couple.

Aquarium staff say they will be conducting blood tests on the youngster in the coming weeks to determine its sex after which it will be named.

Like heterosexual penguins, the two dads took it in turns to incubate the egg until their baby hatched.