All About Adoption

It seems everyone is blogging these days, so I figured I had better get on the bandwagon. With foreign adoption programs dropping like flies, more people are turning to domestic adoption as a way to build their family. Every day we fight the "myths" of adoption. People are under the assumption that they can't adopt domestically -- that it is too hard or takes too long, or even that there are no babies to be adopted. Certainly, it's not easy, but it's not as difficult as most people think. In this blog, I'm hoping to address the issues that adoptive families find intimidating -- home studies, profiling, being chosen by a birth mother, travel, open adoption, stereotyping, and perceived barriers such as age, weight, occupation, or negative family members.

In the media, adoption is big news. You hear about "celebrity" adoptions. The myth here is that everyone thinks that celebrities have an "in" or somehow are able to adopt more quickly than others. Not so in most cases! In fact, in some ways it's much more difficult to match a celebrity with a birth mom. Consider that currently, most adoptions are "open" adoptions, in which the birth parents know who the adoptive parents are, and have chosen them. With celebrities, it is more difficult because you can't send their profiles out to birth parents without everyone knowing that they are involved in the adoption process. If the media gets wind of an impending adoption, it can become a circus. So, a birth parent has to be asking for a closed adoption (rare) or they have to agree up front to sign a confidentiality statement and even then it can be risky. Tabloids are willing to pay big bucks for stories that most families wouldn't want splashed across the front pages of magazines. Never mind the privacy issue this poses for the birth mother.

In one adoption that I recall, an agency social worker leaked information to the media prior to the birth of a child who was to be adopted by a well-known celebrity. My guess is that money changed hands. The media frenzy that followed was mind boggling. Paparazzi staked out the hospital in order to get pictures and the adoptive father couldn't even go to the hospital to see his child born because of the media hype. So, don't believe it if you hear that celebrity adoption is easier than it is for everyone else. Everyone has to go through the same home study and background check process -- there are no exceptions. And when you read about an adoption, it may be that there was a plan to adopt for many months or even years before it actually happened. Do celebrities have a right to privacy like the rest of us? I think so. Does the media overstep their bounds? I think so. It is conceivable that we need some laws written to address paparazzi and celebrity stalking and perhaps allow sanity and privacy to make a comeback.