People Say the Darndest Things!

Being an adopted child or an adoptive parent can invite strange and unwelcome comments from strangers, as well as family and friends. Sometimes it is helpful to be ready with an easy answer, so that you, or your child, do not feel defensive or angry. Your child may be asked questions about her “real parents” or “real family”, especially if he is of different racial background or the adopted child of a same sex couple. It may be difficult to avoid the unwelcome comments and questions, but you can be a positive role model for your child and for adoption if you think about your response and reply calmly.

One insensitive and particularly galling question is “Why would you want someone else’s child?” It takes a lot of patience to smile and say, “Alex is my child and I love being his parent”. When others speak in terms of your child’s “real parent”, it is helpful to educate them to understand that your child had a birth family, or a first family and that you are her parent and forever family. A child might be asked who or where her “real family” is. It is helpful for her to know that while she had a first or birth family, you are her real and forever family. After a stranger nosily insisted that her daughter looked nothing like her, one adoptive mother smiled and said, “I know. Sara is so cute, I wish I looked more like her!”

A foster father once told me his foster son was confused about who his Daddy is. This Dad gently explained to his foster son that a Daddy is someone who makes him breakfast and dinner, and special treats, reads him books, plays with him and is always there, everyday, to hug and love him. 

Gay Morrissey, LMSW, is a social worker in private practice and has been performing home study reports, in New York, for the past 25 years. Gay is also an adoptive mother of two adult daughters, Kate, 27, and Liz, 25, whom she and her husband adopted as infants. Gay explains, “Children figure out how to respond to questions about adoption in a way that is unique to their personalities. Kate to this day is more likely to ‘go to task’, and Liz is much more likely to ‘let things roll’”. Gay shared that she told her girls their adoption stories from the earliest of ages. As the girls grew older, Gay explained that some people, adults and children alike, ask questions about adoption simply out of curiosity and often out of ignorance. Gay counseled her girls, and numerous adoptive families, that we should practice what to say when asked a difficult question, but more importantly that we know how to talk about our family’s adoption story with each other. Of course, every chance she gets, Gay reminds her girls that she and her husband are lucky to have them as their daughters! 

People are generally well meaning but can say hurtful things out of ignorance. I am told clients have actually been asked how much their child cost! It takes a very strong and patient person to calmly answer that one! Sometimes less is more and maybe, in such a situation, you can find the inner peace to suggest the questioner research different agencies and call a few adoption attorneys to get a sense of adoption expenses. Adoption is a wonderful avenue to becoming parents and while you may not have signed on to be an adoption advocate, our community and our children become stronger and better understood when we speak of adoption in a positive manner.

LGBTQ Parenting Rights and Second Parent Adoption

LGBTQ PARENTING RIGHTS

Over the past few months, at least five states have introduced bills or passed laws limiting same-sex adoption across the country. Each with different language, the legislative initiatives allow states and agencies to refuse services to same-sex couples. This discriminatory legal trend not only denies children in the foster care or adoption agencies loving homes if the prospective parents are LGBTQ, but the laws serve as a building blocks to restrict all rights of LGBTQ parents. Given the terrifying political and legislative landscape, now more than ever, same-sex parents need to reach for and secure their parenting rights before the legislators erode them completely. LGBTQ couples can protect their families forever through quick, simple, and inexpensive, second-parent, or step-parent adoption.

The recent legislation is a huge step backwards for LGBTQ families. In March of 2017, the governor of South Dakota signed a bill allowing child placement agencies to discriminate based on “religious belief or moral conviction,” protecting any agency from government retaliation if they choose to discriminate against LGBTQ people. Soon after, Alabama and Texas signed similar legislation allowing adoption and foster care agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples based on “religious beliefs.” The Georgia Senate Judiciary Committee also added a discriminatory section in their adoption bill targeting LGBT people with an amendment that allows agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples and refuse to work with LGBTQ prospective parents if doing so meant going against “their mission.” And, in Tennessee, a bill was enacted that requires the words “husband” and  “wife,” and “mother” and “father” be interpreted by their “natural and ordinary” meanings indirectly restricting the rights of LGBTQ parents and their ability to adopt privately or through the foster care system. 

Second-parent adoption is the adoption of a child by a second parent who may otherwise not be considered a legal parent. In New York, when the parents are married the process is called a step-parent adoption, versus a second parent adoption when they are not married. Regardless of marital status, for same-sex couples building families, this process is an important legal tool. Without second-parent adoption, the partner of the legal parent, even when married, is not a legally recognized parent and has no parental rights. Once a second-parent adoption is finalized in court, the child has two legal guardians and parents with the same parenting rights recognized across state lines. In the event of a divorce, dissolution of a relationship, or death, both parents’ rights and the child’s rights are unequivocal and an indispensable part of family preservation.

Clearly, LGBTQ parenting rights are on the legislative chopping block. With second or step-parent adoption, mothers and fathers are protected from being denied custody, visitation, the ability to make medical decisions, and the joys of being a part of their child’s life without states standing in their way. Quick, simple, and inexpensive, second-parent adoption protects LGBT forever families.

Single Parents and Adoption Profiles

Creating an adoption profile is an important step in your adoption journey. The profile enables a birth parent to learn about you and to help her make the difficult decision of who she will choose to parent her unborn child. The adoption profile is your chance to make a first impression with a prospective birth mother. As many birth mothers are single women, they typically look for a married couple to adopt their baby. Single adoptive men and women have an extra hurdle to jump in convincing a birth mother that they are up for the task of parenting on their own. In addition to presenting a beautiful profile full of warm, loving, images, single adoptive parents must show they are a capable of being a single parent and will provide a full forever family to child. There are many ways to overcome any potential concerns by a birth mother by addressing them upfront on your online adoption profile and in your profile books. If you are single and considering adoption, please find below several useful tips, from Creating a Family* when building your adoption profile.

Who is your support system? Remember to share photos and descriptions of your family and friends. Include images of holidays spent together, special events shared, or just every day happenings enjoyed with your loved ones.

Focus on the stability of your job and your financial ability to raise a child. Explain where or what you do for work, your career goals reached, and a plan you have in place to accomplish your next challenge.

Who will take care of your child when you are at work? Describe the childcare arrangements you will put in place. Will you use a day care center? Will you have help at home?

Explain how you hope to achieve balance in your life as a single mom or dad. Is your employer family-friendly? Does your job allow for flexibility?

Share why you want to be a mother or a father even though you are not married or do not have a life partner. Explain what parenting means to you and why you know you will be a good mother or father.

Who will be male or female role models for your child? Share the other relationships in your life that will allow a child to connect with other adults.

Do you have single parent role models? If yes, explain how meaningful those role models are to you and why.

* Creating a Family is a nonprofit organization that provides education and support to families touched by infertility, adoption and foster care.

Survivor Benefits and Your Adopted Children

Social Security provides support to families of workers who pass away. Widows, widowers, children, and other dependents may be entitled to survivor benefits. When a widow or widower remarries, the question is raised, “Will my children lose their survivor benefits if my new spouse adopts them?” The answer is simple. Children who are later adopted by their living parent’s new spouse do not lose their survivor benefits. As long as children were already entitled, adoption does not terminate their survivor benefits.

For more information about child’s benefits termination and entitlement, please visit the Social Security Administration website or call 1-800-772-1213.

Adoption Books

Since 1994, Tapestry Books has been a leading literary source for adoptive families, birth families, adoptees, and adoption professionals. Hand picked by the team at Tapestry Books, enjoy this carefully selected mix of best sellers about adoption as well as publications for the whole family that last a lifetime. Click on an image if you are interested in purchasing the book online.

You can learn more about Tapestry Books at http://www.tapestrybooks.com. Their phone number is 716-544-0204 and they are happy to make more recommendations.

Enjoy!

ABC Adoption & Me

by Gayle Swift

A wonderfully simple children’s book that is perfect for younger children. This book artfully introduces the concept of adoption to young readers.

Inside Transracial Adoption

by Beth Hall and Gail Steinberg

Inside Transracial Adoption is an authoritative guide to navigating the challenges and issues that parents face in the USA when they adopt a child of a different race and/or from a different culture..

What Do I Say Now?

by M.C. Baker and Carol Bick

This is a Tapestry Books’ favorite! This book brilliantly details how to respond to awkward and difficult questions about adoption.

Three Little Words

by Ashley Rhodes Courtier

This a wonderfully written account of a young girl’s experience in the foster care system and how she overcame the many obstacles she faced growing up.

Ithaka

by Sarah Saffian

Sarah Saffian recreates her personal account of reuiniting with her birth family as an adult. Saffian expertly describes the adoptee perspective as well as the emotions associated with finding the missing pieces of one’s identity.

What's Happening in Pro-Family Legislation

One in eight couples of childbearing age in the United States has trouble conceiving or sustaining a pregnancy. Not being able to have a child is life altering and fundamental to the lives of so many men and women. Medical technology now offers more treatment options for people trying to conceive a child including hormone treatments, ovulation induction and intrauterine insemination. In addition, more advanced technologies like in-vitro fertilization, ICSI, surrogacy, egg/sperm donation and even embryo donation have become widely available. These advancements build families every day. The World Health Organization and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recognize infertility as a disease, yet access to infertility treatments is shrinking, and family building issues are in need of support. The following legislation is at the forefront for advocacy groups, supporters, and partners defending and promoting positive public policy for reproductive rights and the infertility community.

NY State Capitol Building

Support the Women’s Veterans and Families Health Services Act

Our country’s veterans deserve the nation’s full support. Those with severe reproductive injuries often need specialized treatments such as IVF in order to have a family, but IVF is excluded from Veteran Affair’s medical benefits. This bill provides veterans wounded in the line of duty with access to reproductive treatments and adoption assistance, permanently. 

Support The Adoption Tax Credit Refundability Act

Adopting a child can be expensive. Since 1997, there has been bipartisan support in Congress for the Adoption Tax Credit (ATC). The ATC advances the important public goal of encouraging adoptions, especially of children with special needs. A tax credit helps only those who can use it-- the ATC needs to be made refundable so that low-to-moderate income families can afford to adopt children.  

Stop Personhood Bills

The Personhood movement asserts that a microscopic embryo is equivalent to a person and therefore is afforded the rights of a person. Personhood bills seek to limit IVF medical treatment and have the effect of reducing access to family building options to thousands of families. Since 1985, American parents have welcomed over 1 million babies born as a result of IVF. If personhood were the law, these children would never have been born. The United States should not prevent this life-giving treatment that is available in all other developed nations.

Support New York’s Child-Parent Security Act  

The Child-Parent Security Act, pending in New York, lifts the current ban on surrogacy and legalizes gestational carrier arrangements, where a woman can receive compensation to carry a pregnancy, but has no genetic link to the offspring. Since 1992, New York has banned compensatory surrogacy agreements, which means intended parents may not pay a surrogate to carry an embryo for them. Since the New York ban was enacted, the medical and legal fields around assistive reproductive technology and surrogacy have advanced significantly. This legislation allows for carefully regulated gestational carrier arrangements.  

To get more involved, and learn how you can help, in ways however big or small, check out RESOLVE.org, a non-profit, charitable organization, working to improve the lives of women and men living with infertility.