April 08, 2010

Q&A: Adopting Again?

Asks Susiebook of Endure for a Night (with whom I recently closed out a Starbucks and who is both lovely and gracious):
Under what circumstances, if any, would you adopt again?
You're trying to get me in trouble, aren't you? Heh.
  • If we were ever asked to adopt a sibling of Puppy or Firefly. I really don't ever see this happening--nor do I want it to happen, because how awful for whichever first parent involved--but there it is.

  • If we do end up doing foster care (we're registered to start the certification process this summer as sort of an exploratory thing) and if a child in our home became available for adoption and if we were the best permanent spot for them. Those are three pretty enormous ifs.

  • If I ever found a progressive, ethically respectable, reasonably priced program somewhere that primarily placed African-American children and worked with residents of my state. But even then I'm not sure.
If I selfishly think only about our household, I would love to adopt transracially again. Then I take our little household and put it back into the bigger world in which adoption involves the real lives of other real people and real open adoption relationships and real moral conundrums and real money and real emotions and all of a sudden I don't know what I want.

For those keeping track, Puppy has downgraded his original request for two brothers and two more sisters to just one additional sister. He also specifies that he needs to stay the oldest. During his haircut the other week, the stylist asked him he had any brothers or sisters in addition to Firefly. He told her, "No, just her. But we're thinking of getting some more."* Apparently he's got this under control.

* No, of course Todd and I don't talk about "getting more" kids. That's the four-year old talking.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the thoughtful answer--we'll have to try to get kicked out of another coffeehouse some time. =)

Astrid Jane said...

I know of two agencies that specialize in placing Black infants (Ad*pti*n Link in Chicago and Ad*pti*n Arc in Philly...I replaced the o's in adoption so the agency names aren't searchable.) I was thinking about going through one of them myself (even though I live in neither of those states.) Have you heard bad things about either or both of them?

Jacksmom said...

Very thoughtful. I have to say that I love how my 3 year old and your 4 year old sound very much alike when they talk about "getting" siblings. My son thinks because I work in a hospital and I take care of babies, that I can just bring one home for him.

Astrid Jane said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Glad you're back.

We adopted our youngest child from foster care. Considering whether one's family is the best permanent spot for a child is a tangle of a task. I'd say we were a very good spot, but I'd have trouble saying we were the best.

I can pretty easily design a better situation for him in my head, especially on days when it's hard to imagine being the 4th child as "best" for anyone--but knowing what would be better doesn't mean that option was really available to him.

My kids are constantly after me to adopt again, like it's a fun project I'm just too busy relaxing to undertake...

Jess said...

I think at this point the only way we'd adopt again is a sibling.

Not because we don't enjoy the whole adoption relationship or anything, but because we have a VERY VERY open adoption and it might become an issue time-wise if we have another very open adoption. Further, if we didn't get as blessed next time, it may be a hurt for that child. At two kids, it's hard to take that risk for everyone, you know?

cindy psbm said...

I love it when kids are blunt about how they see things. It's both amusing and eye-opening.

I am so glad you are so respectful of all the issues adoption involves.

cynthia said...

If I were answering this question, my answers would be the same. Except that its more likely in our case that a bio-sibling adoption could happen... though I really (for all the reasons you listed) hope not.
Wendell tells me he wants 2 more kids regularly. I'm glad he feels secure enough to want that, though I feel done with the 2 we have.
And you and Susie hung out??? I am jealous.

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...