This is a post that has been a long time coming and I
realize that some people could take offense to my/our thoughts on this but I
just want them out there.
Since my wife and I decided to start this path of adoption,
we have gotten quite a few responses from people that I find…interesting. Here
are just a few of those responses and my/our reaction to them, in no particular
order:
1. “You’re still young!! Why don’t you try to have kids of
your own?”
Well, believe it or not, we have been trying for 3 years and
as much as everyone says, “Stop trying and it will happen”… it has not. Also,
this is something we WANT to do and have been talking about since we first
started dating over 9 years ago.
2. “Why don’t you do/have you tried invetro?”
No. Why? Because…we don’t want
to. It’s as simple as that. I know there is a lot to be said about conceiving a
child and raising it from birth and what not, but that’s not what we feel is
right for us. If you yourself have used invetro to create your family, more
power to you, I am happy for you, and I don’t look down on that at all. All I
ask is for the same respect in our choice NOT to do that. There are sooo many
children out there that naturally came into this world that need a home and someone
to love them. This kind of goes back to what I have been feeling about our
society as a whole. If you decide you want to get a dog or a cat and you buy it
from a pet store or a puppy mill, you are looked down on and criticized that
you did not adopt a dog or cat from a shelter that needs a home. I don’t
understand why we put such an emphasis on the lives of animals over the lives
of people. Did you know that in the US, just as in nearly every other country,
the ASPCA was in existence for years, if not decades, before the child
protection agency came to be in existence? In fact, the first case of child
abuse was actually reported to and investigated by the ASPCA in the late 1800s.
3a: “Whoa! That’s really
expensive isn’t it? I couldn’t afford to do that...”
Not really. However, it depends
on the route you take in adoption. When it comes to adoption, there are a ton
of options I did not know about until we started down this road. Most of the
time people think of adopting an infant - where they get the child at birth and
the birth mother chooses the future parents for their child. Private adoptions
such as this are the ones that cost thousands of dollars. From what I have read,
it typically works on a sliding scale of 5-15% of your annual income. My
question there is “where does that money go? Who is making a profit off this?”
but that is another post for another time. Another costly adoption route is to
do an international adoption. We never considered this so I cannot say how that
would work or how much that would cost. What we chose to do from the get-go was
to adopt from within our state from the pool of kids in CPS custody. This was
not a financial decision’ however, when going this route the cost of adoption
is SIGNIFCANTLY less, and if the child is part of an “overrepresented
population” in CPS care there are subsidies that cover the adoption in full.
Also, since there are so many kids in need of adoption, the state give other
subsidies as well for the kids in the before mentioned population, such as
Medicaid until 18 and free in-state public university tuition for the
child(ren).
3b: “Oh so with all those
subsidies, it is kinda like Rick Perry (governor of Texas) is your baby daddy!”
... Sure. If that is the only
way you can relate to any of this, go with it. More power to you
4: “So how does this work when
your husband leaves you?”
Lindsay has run across some
special people. Just saying. Well, let’s first off point out the fact that this
girl said “when” and not “if”. Just because you anticipate going through
husband after husband does not mean that everyone else will be doing the same.
However, to answer your question little lady, how did it work when you left
husband #3 with baby #4? If it was to happen, it would be the same as any other
couple that might go through a divorce. Once the adoption is finalized, there
is a new birth certificate issued and the adoptive mother and father are listed
as the mother and father. Nowhere on that birth certificate, to my
understanding, is there the word “adoption”. Therefore, the child at that time
is no different from any biological child you may have.
5: “You know once you adopt you
will get pregnant, right?”
If that is what God wants to
happen then it will happen. However, just know that that will not keep us from
adopting at some point. We truly feel that this is something we are meant to
do.
6a: “What will you do if your
kid is black?”
Love them. We obviously will be
telling our child from the get-go that we chose them and we will share with
them as they get older all the hoops that we had to jump through to get them. I
know if our child looks drastically different from us that it will make things
different. However, I think if that is what God gives us He will give us the
resources to make it work if He wants it to.
6b: “Do you know how to take
care of black hair/skin?”
Nope we don’t. Will we learn?
You bet ya. In fact, in conversation when Lindsay told hairdresser, who is
African American, that we are working towards adopting she quickly said “If you
get a black kid I will totally help you with the hair! I am so excited for
you!”
Now that we have decided to go the foster to adopt route we
have gotten even a few more reactions to that:
1: “I couldn’t do it. The thought of getting attached to a
kid just to have them leave… I just can’t imagine….”
I hear you, and I don’t know how we will handle it. However,
with all the stories that we have heard about children who get into foster care
because their birth home kinda sucked only to have a ton of crap happen to them
in foster care, I feel we have to do something. When you think about it, the
only way to make sure that the foster kids have a good safe and loving home is
to make sure that the pool of people to provide that care is full of genuinely
good people and not people that just want the check of having a foster kid. If
you have never heard of people like this, talk to a teacher. Pretty much every
teacher has had or at least heard of a foster child that has been in a home
that only wanted to use them as a cash cow.
2: “How are you going to handle a child leaving your home?”
I truly don’t know. I will tell you when/if that happens.
All I know is that while the kid is here in our home, I feel we can provide the
needed love and care to help them grow as much as possible. If God feels that
child needs to move on then that is what it is.
UPDATE:
Still getting bids/quotes on replacing heater (see previous
post). However, we just got some good news. Typically the policy is that all
inspections must be done before the home study can be completed. However, since
we have been keeping our main contact with our agency up-to-date on the bumps
that we have hit and how we are working though it, they seem to have decided to
bend the rules a little. Apparently we are already heading towards the home
study. Lindsay got a call yesterday (12/12/14) from the woman that will be
doing our home study saying that she is going to look over everything we have
turned in so far and get back to us by Tuesday (12/16/14) to start working on
the home study. HALLELUIAH GOOD NEWS AT LAST!
PS.
Please share your thoughts. I am curious to get other
people’s perspective on the questions we have been asked and the responses that
we have had to them.
