For the following year, the only connection to our “disrupted” adoption was financial. The agency was lax in returning the small amount of the thousands we paid that we were entitled as a refund. Not being a legally recognized couple, we couldn’t split the burden of chasing down the money. Because only one of us was listed as the adopting parent, my partner had to deal with every call and detail related to the child that didn’t enter our lives as I stood mutely by, the unrecognized party, unable to share the burden. ...A "family foundation"? She works for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
We had learned that no country in the world would let an openly gay couple adopt internationally. Many of our states don’t either, so gay couples try to adopt, as we did, as a single parent. We comforted ourselves with the idea that at least we had the resources at our disposal to try again. Some lesbian couples we know did not.
We started again, this time with an “open” adoption agency. The openness didn’t just apply to the adoption itself, where we would have lifelong relationships with the birth parents, but in another way, with us as a gay couple. We could be ourselves, out and together, as we are in all other aspects of our lives.
We steeled ourselves for the process yet again: more fingerprints sent to the F.B.I., a new home study, a new agency, and another wait (average length for straight couples: 13 months, for gay couples: 16 months). At almost exactly 16 months, we got the call: a birth mother from the Seattle area had picked us off the Web site. She was due in August. An art student, she had connected with us because we cited Harry Potter and “The Lord of the Rings” in our profile as books and movies we enjoy. ...
After a full day spent together, topped by a dinner of sushi, I realized how much I liked this girl. She said she had picked us, in part, because she had read that lesbians have the longest wait for adoptions of all, and she wanted to right that wrong. How could we not love her? ...
It was 10:15 on Monday night when the agency called. “The parental rights have been terminated,” a woman said. ...
Jennifer Hauseman is the head of new media for a family foundation based in Seattle.
I guess that if you are acquiring a baby from a flaky tattooed 20-year-old girl, it helps to show an interest in Harry Potter.
Americans adoptions of overseas kids have been declining, and not just because the Russians banned them.
The article has no mention of dads. The 20yo mom was paid to give up her parental rights, but there is no mention of the dad giving up his rights. There is no mention of anyone wanting the kid to have a dad. There is no mention of the reasons that most countries and states do not want lesbian adoptions.
Call me paranoid, but I say that there is a plot to marginalize dads.
Happy New Year.
1 comment:
Really a good story.
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