Search Results for: blog adoption loss

Adoption Match Meeting

The adoption process is nothing like you see in the movies, there was no big home where you walked in and pick what child you would like to call your own. The closest comparison I can think of is like when you are trying to buy a house. The family who would like to adopt is asked to create a one page flyer that talks about your family, what your home life is like and what you have to offer a child. When a child comes up for adoption placement that matches the criteria that you have given, they give … Continue reading →

Adoption Loss

Throughout the adoption process, when people heard that we were adopting they automatically looked at us like we were defective. They would ask if we had tried hormones, in-vitro, or if my husband was not able to make babies. There are no biological reasons why we went the adoption route. The choice to adopt was just that for us, a choice. We made a conscious choice to prevent ourselves from getting pregnant; we made the choice to adopt as a couple from the beginning of our marriage. You would be surprised at how differently families that adopt are treated compared … Continue reading →

iPhone App for Pet Adoption

I blogged recently about pet adoption. I truly believe that adopting a pet from a shelter is the best way to take home an animal companion. There are so many animals to choose form right now too. With the economy hurting, many families and individuals are finding that they can no longer afford to keep their pets. It’s sad, but true. Shelters are overwhelmed with animals. One of the local news networks here ran a story about an area shelter that suspended its adoption fees to help families adopt pets. I called the shelter to find out how well it … Continue reading →

China Adoption Book Report Series: Wanting a Daughter…Part Three

My last two blogs discussed Kay Ann Johnson’s research on abandonment and orphanage care in China and whether Chinese parents desire to adopt girls. This blog continues to explore domestic adoption within China. Johnson and her colleagues have interviewed 1200 Chinese adoptive families. Many of these interviews were in person, locating adoptive families by word of mouth. Johnson says that the procedural paperwork, discrimination, and expense (relative to income) faced by parents adopting internationally is far less than those faced by the Chinese families who adopted children in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Chinese authorities wanted to forestall the … Continue reading →

Life after Adoption: Secret Fears

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I recently reviewed Jana Wolff’s Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother. My last two blogs share some of My Own Secret Thoughts as we began the adoption process and My Secret Suspicions while we were out of the country adopting. When we considered adopting, I had some fears about life after adoption as well. Some of these are embarrassing to admit. I worried a bit about whether it would be hard for me to find her in a large group of Korean kids, such as at culture camp. My siblings and I each have a different hair color, so it … Continue reading →

Book Review: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Adoption

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The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Adoption is an overview of all types of adoption. Thus it is necessarily light on any one type. While it provides many “real-life snapshots” of various parties involved in all types of adoptions, it is a good general overview for initially researching adoption, rather than a manual I would refer to again and again (as, for example, I do with Real Parents, Real Children, in which I always seem to learn something new that applies to the different stages of life that our family moves through). The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Adoption is written by … Continue reading →

Adoption Storyline on “ER”

Once a regular watcher of the NBC drama ER, I’ve gradually cut off almost all television watching. But I may have a reason to start watching ER again—purely for professional reasons, of course. No, I’m not going to medical school. ER is in the middle of an adoption storyline. This season’s new Chief of Emergency Medicine (played by Angela Bassett) and her husband Russell (played by Courtney Vance) have decided to take a chance on loving a child again after the devastating loss of their five-year-old son to a fast-killing leukemia, which we see in flashbacks. Banfield, 40 at the … Continue reading →

Adoption in the Little House TV series, Season 9 and Final Movie

This is the last in a series of blogs dealing with adoption in the popular, still-airing-in-reruns show Little House on the Prairie. In season nine’s two-part opener, “Times are Changing”, Almanzo’s brother dies. Their niece Jenny will now live with them. They are perplexed at how to help her deal with her grief and with the changes in her life. Also in season 9 is “The Wild Boy”. A deaf boy has been kept in a circus show and drugged to act as “the Wild Boy”. Jenny Wilder, Dr. Baker and Mr. Edwards discover his true nature. Although the judge … Continue reading →

Prospective Parents Health: Possible Impacts on International Adoption

My last blog began to address a reader’s questions about whether health conditions would disqualify someone from adopting. In that blog I talked about possible impacts on domestic infant adoption and adoption from state foster care. This blog will talk about possible impacts a health condition could have in pursuing international adoption. For international adoption, someone with a serious health issue may very well be disqualified by certain countries. Other countries can set their own standards on who is eligible to adopt. They often do not have the same anti-discrimination laws we do. Various countries have set conditions that their … Continue reading →

Adoption Nightmares

Many Americans remember the “Baby Jessica” case. In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Michigan Supreme Court decision to return a child to her birth father (who was by then married to her birth mother) after two and a half years with adoptive parents who had cared for her since very soon after her birth. The case caused outrage across the country. Media accounts railed against the courts for failing to consider the best interests of the child by taking into account the trauma a move would cause her. The birth parents were portrayed as irresponsible and selfish … Continue reading →