abc family

Infuriation

About two months ago we told our parents that we had started thinking seriously about adoption.

This was, and still is, an emotional rather than a practical change. We haven’t even picked an agency; we haven’t even picked a country. But back then in June we had reached a turning point: we had started to see adoption not as a second choice or a compromise, but as a first choice, as a call, as something that might very well be the best thing for us.

In our emotional journey through our fertility problems, we’d reached a revolution of sorts. And we wanted to share it with our families.

Telling my family was no big deal. We mentioned that we’d decided to start looking into adoption, and they were all excited. They left it at that, clear and loving support but no pressure. We could tell them as little as we wanted, and they’d be happy, and we could tell them more, and they’d be happy with that too. That’s just the way my family is. They understand.

With Michael’s parents, on the other hand, we’ve learned that if we don’t have answers to their questions, the advice flows freely. So when we told them, we treated all our preliminary plans as if they were set in stone. “Yes, international adoption. Probably a Latin American country.” It’s easier to get them to adjust to a change in plan than to explain to them that we don’t have one.

In spite of our careful preparation for that conversation, I almost burst into tears several times during it, thanks to my father-in-law. He was outraged at the (very low-ball) figures we quoted him when he asked about the costs of adoption. “Where does all that money go?” He appears to believe that international adoption is essentially thugs selling babies for drug money.

But I was far more upset by what happened when we first named Latin America as our area of choice. He started naming other countries, countries that were coincidentally (can you hear the irony in my voice?) all European. The implication was painfully clear: why can’t you adopt a white baby?

And then there was this weekend’s conversation with my mother-in-law. It started with an innocuous question: How is adoption research going?

It hasn’t really gone anywhere. Busy summer, you know. But I met with a friend who adopted from China and she told me about other programs they considered. Korea sounds interesting.

Really? (Pause.) You know, I think people my age tend to view Asian children as smarter than… others. (Meaning Hispanic or African children.) It might be good to look into Korea.

And I was stunned. Floored. I had no idea what to say. I stumbled through it as best I could. Well, whatever kind of adoption we decide to do, people will have stereotypes and questions. We’re prepared for that. I think we’ll try to pick the program that seems the best fit for us, and not worry about that stuff, because it’s going to be hard no matter what.

(I probably wasn’t quite that eloquent, but that was the gist of it.)

After both episodes, I was frustrated with myself for not being braver. I could have asked my father-in-law why he was only suggesting European countries. I could have asked my mother-in-law if she thinks that the best way to respond to people’s prejudices is to bend to them. I could have asked both of them if they think the race of our child really matters (because I have a sneaking suspicion that they do). I could have challenged both of them, could have stood up for what I know to be true instead of giving half-hearted answers.

I think that in most cases, I’m ready to do that. I’m strong enough. Mustering strength in argument is hardly ever a problem for me. I’m expecting that if we adopt, our lives will be inundated with questions and comments, many of them well-meaning and many of them completely inappropriate or wrong. I’m prepared for that.

Where it gets me, where I’m surprised and don’t know what to do, is when it comes from people so close to us, people who are supposed to be on our side. I understand that I’m spoiled by the fact that my own family is so understanding, and that many people deal with family who are far more upsetting than my parents-in-law. And I love them, and I know that they really want to help. But it’s hard, and sometimes I get a little overwhelmed by the thought of facing it again and again, of knowing that the race of our child matters to them even though it truly, truly doesn’t matter to us. It’s certainly not a deal-breaker, but it’s a reminder that this journey, and life in general, are hard. Tonight, I’m feeling just a little grrrrr-ish over that.

The best thing, of course, would be to have children of your own.  You don't want to miss out on that experience, which I hear is incomparable.  Besides which, I imagine it would be pretty hard to love kids if you didn't give birth to them.

Second-best, I suppose, would be adopting children who look like you.  That way it'll seem like they're your own kids, even though they're not.  You'll probably be able to fool a lot of people into thinking your family is real.

If you can't adopt kids who look like you, then try to at least adopt American kids.  That would be third-best.  They might look different, but at least they'll be from the same culture as you, so they won't be too different inside.  If you can't have a real family, you can at least have an all-American family.

If you end up having to go overseas (which is clearly the worst option), make sure you get the kid checked out before you bring him home.  I've heard those foreign babies often have lots of stuff wrong with them, and you wouldn't want to get a flawed one. 

Of course, if you can't have children of your own, it would probably be better to just go childless.  Nothing can really compare to the experience of real parenting, and you wouldn't want to go your whole life knowing that your family is second-best.

...If you haven't picked up the tongue-in-cheek tone of this, I hope you're furious with me by now.  You should be furious anyway, because there are lots of people who, if they read the list above, would think nothing of it.

I guess it's not surprising, in a world where we're constantly bombarded with rankings and lists - top colleges, best hospitals, most successful corporations, most beautiful celebrities - that they tend to rank families the same way.  When people hear about adoption, their faces show their preconceptions and their pity.  You're adopting?  How sad for you, that you don't get to build your family the best way (biologically, of course).

Here's the thing: I'm not denying that there is a beautiful bond between a mother and the child she carries, between parents and the child who has their eyes and their toes and their ears.  I've seen enough pictures of parents in the hospital holding their new baby to know that they experience a special, life-shaking joy.

But the joy of biological parenthood is not the joy that God has intends for everyone, just as the joy of marriage is not intended for everyone.  It would be silly to pretend that you can only live a happy life as a person if you get married, and so it would be equally silly to pretend that you can only live a happy life as a parent if your children are biologically your own.

It's an infamous question in the infertility blogworld: are infertile people just not meant to be parents?  I find this question infuriating for many reasons, not the least of which is that fact that conceiving and giving birth to a child is not, as so many people assume, the only way to become a parent.

Are some people intended not to have biological children?  Quite possibly.  But that doesn't mean they're not intended to have children at all.  Maybe God has picked children out for them, children who are not biologically related but will become their own, just as if they had always been of the same flesh.

I've asked many adoptive parents, and I've heard the same thing over and over: the joy in parenting through adoption is fulfilling.  It's not missing anything.  In an email, one woman put it like this: "As for your fear about not loving an adopted child as much as a biological one - well don't feel bad about thinking it but you really will laugh about it one day!"

But most people will never laugh about it.  Most of them will go through their daily lives absolutely convinced it's true.  They'll look at adoptive families, maybe at your family, and feel sorry for parents whose children are not "their own."

Read the blogs of women who are adopting, and you'll see them working through inferiority complexes about adoption, inferiority complexes that are fostered by our world's condescension toward adoptive parents and children.  I find one blog particularly heartbreaking, as the woman (who is in the process of adopting) writes about how much it hurts her that other mothers don't see her as one of themselves, that when she tells them she's adopting they don't share her joy the way they would if she was pregnant.

It's easy, so easy, to see adoption as second-best.  I'm seduced by that viewpoint myself sometimes, seduced into thinking that if we are never successful in conceiving, we'll never have the wonderful family we hope for.  But when I'm not being seduced, I can see how wrong that is.

Adoption is not second-best.  I want to stop mumbling that; I want to be able to look people in the eyes and tell them.  I want them to know that I'll love my adopted children as much as I'd love biological children, that I am not worried about having children who don't look like me, because I know that Michael and I will be their parents because we've taken them as our children, and that will be enough. 

Infertility is heartbreaking, but adoption is a glorious solution.  All of us, everyone who is thinking of adopting, who has adopted, who has adoptive or adopted loved ones, who has seen the joy of adoptive families, should stand up and shout that to the world.  We have to be proud of adoption.  We have to stop letting them relegate it to second place on the list of ways to build a family.  Because if we don't protest, who will?

Questions

Michael's coworker P and his wife S came to dinner last Monday.  They adopted a little girl from Guatemala over a year ago, and are in the process of adopting their second daughter.  (She was born in April; they've already met her and should get to bring her home within the next couple months.)  We'd invited them because we wanted to ask them questions about adoption, to hear their story.  They brought their daughter with them, and over grilled salmon and wild rice pilaf, they shared their experiences. 

We asked why they chose Guatemala and how they liked their agency, and what the process takes and how long the steps are and everything else we could think of, and they answered the questions honestly and thoroughly.  But for me the best thing was not hearing their answers, but seeing them together, seeing how much they love their little girl and how she is truly their daughter even though she is not biologically their daughter, and how that doesn't even seem to matter.

She's eighteen months old, with beautiful coffee-colored skin and black curls.  She talks a lot, and they've obviously worked hard with her, because she knows, among other things, almost all the letters.  (Do most eighteen-month-olds know their letters?)  I drank in their interaction with her, loving the way they could anticipate her responses, loving having this beautiful little family in my living room.  I imagine that they were once where we are, bruised by infertility and uncertain about the future, and now they are past that.  Someday we will be, too.

Things we learned: In Guatemala, you can adopt children when they're very young, which is appealing.  The process is more expensive than we had anticipated, at least with this agency and country; P and S said to expect it to cost about $27,000.  However, it takes less time than I'd thought, as the time between beginning paperwork and bringing the child home is generally less than a year.

Our current tentative plan is to gather information, save money, and pray hard for guidance.  We've got to choose a country and an agency, and we hope to have enough saved that we can start the paperwork by January.  I'm somewhat bummed about the delay, but we still have a lot of research to do, and it's necessary for us to save up to be able to pay for the adoption. 

Also, I think it might turn out to be good for me.  The past year and a half has been really hard, and maybe I need more time to heal.  I know in my head that if this is what God is calling us to do, then it is best for us, but my heart needs time to catch up.  I certainly don't want to go overseas to get our son or daughter feeling that the way we're getting him/her is second best. 

If you're a pray-er, please pray that these next months will be fruitful in their way.  When we finally become parents, I want to be as ready as I can possibly be.

Racial blindness and adoption

When I was seven a new girl joined my second-grade class. Her family had just moved to our town. I was shy, but she was friendly and kind and we soon became inseparable the way young children do. I told my parents about my new friend, and promised to point her out to them at the upcoming all-school open house.

At the open house, I searched the crowded cafeteria for my friend’s face, and found her standing with her family on the other side of the room. I grabbed my mom’s arm and told her that my new friend was standing over there. She searched. “Where?”

I pointed. “Over there, in the red dress.”

Mom didn’t tell me at the time, but she was secretly thrilled that I identified the girl by her dress, because she and her family were the only African-Americans in a room filled with Caucasian people, and it had simply not occurred to me to notice that.

I have my parents to thank for the fact that, when I was in high school and my friends were remarking that their parents would kill them if they ever brought a black guy home, I was appalled. I had never been taught to think of people in those terms. To me, people were people, the differences only skin-deep and therefore completely inconsequential.

I’m sorry that I have been forced to lose my seven-year-old naivete. I wish we lived in a world where people never assumed things about others because of the color of their skin. Unfortunately, we don’t.

Racism is very politically incorrect, and you will rarely find someone who admits to being racist. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, “I’m not racist, but I would never marry or date someone of another race.”

Um. Excuse me? What’s that? You’re not prejudiced against people of other races, you just wouldn’t consider them as life-partners? How is that not prejudice?

As I’ve grown older I’ve come to realize that prejudice against interracial families is something that most people consider acceptable. Perhaps they wouldn’t mind a family of another race living next door, but they want your spouse and your children to look just like you. That’s how God intended it, right?

When I was in high school I used to daydream that the person God had picked out for me would be of another race. What better way to start fighting the crazies than with an interracial family of my own? Six, eight, ten kids, all raised with the real knowledge that all persons are of equal value regardless of the color of their skin. Six, eight, ten kids, all living, breathing examples of how beautiful interracial families are. Raise those kids and fight those prejudices from the ground up, that’s what I wanted to do.

Michael, although his great-great-great grandfather was a full-blooded Sioux, is just as Caucasian as I am. Our baby pictures are eerily similar – blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin. I knew when I married him that my dream of a visibly interracial family was gone. Genetically, we don’t have a chance of a dark-eyed child, let alone a dark-skinned one.

As it turns out, having children who are genetically related to us is not as easy as we thought. In fact, it might never happen. We might have to build our family another way.

From the first time we discussed the possibility of adoption, Michael and I knew that we would never limit our search to Caucasian children only. Even if we decided to do domestic adoption, we’d be open to all races. Why insist upon a child of the race that is in highest demand in our country, when there are so many other children who need homes? Especially since we know (as people know instinctively if they are not taught to think otherwise) that there is no real difference among the children.

I’ve just finished reading The Family Nobody Wanted by Helen Doss. It’s the true story of an infertile couple in the mid-twentieth century who ended up adopting twelve mixed-race children. Reading about the Doss family inspired me and reminded me of my dream of an interracial family, a dream which suddenly seems within reach again.

A few months ago I asked Michael to pray about the possibility of adoption. He and I have been praying, together and separately, for guidance, and it seems we’ve gotten the same message. The other night I told him, “For some reason, the idea of testing and treatment makes my stomach drop. But when I think about adoption, I just feel happy and excited.”

He answered, “I feel exactly the same way.”

I had wanted to do testing before we looked into adoption, because I wanted to make sure that biological children were an impossibility before we started looking into adoption. A mixed family (some adopted and some biological children) was the one thing I didn’t want. Not because I thought such families at all unnatural, but because I was afraid I’d end up loving the children to whom I gave birth more than the children who came to me after they were born.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned many times, but will probably never learn fully in this life, it’s this: don’t say “no” to God. He’s been hammering slowly at my heart in recent months, showing me that I have nothing of which to be afraid, showing me that however our children come to us, I will love them with my whole heart.

It’s easy to be scared right now. But I know that years from now, whether our house is filled with children who look like us or with children who look completely different, it will not matter one whit, because they will be our children.

We’ve decided to start doing the preliminary research on adoption. I like the idea of international adoption, and I lean toward Latin American countries, but those are just very initial ideas. I know this is a long process and a hard one, so if we move forward I’m sure you’ll be hearing much more.

What if I get pregnant? It could still happen, any time, and we will always be open to it. I’d love to have the experience of pregnancy and childbirth. But Michael and I have talked about it, and we have decided that we can’t imagine that, if we adopt children and later have biological ones, we’ll wish we had waited. Impossible.

We’re still praying constantly, praying for guidance. But for the first time in a long time, we feel like that guidance is leading us toward something other than more waiting. We still have no idea what the future holds. But how exciting to know that it’s coming.