http://travel.state.gov/content/adoptionsabroad/en/about-us/statistics.html
http://ccainstitute.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=25&layout=blog&Itemid=43
Everson, J. (2015). Personal interview.
King, D. (2015). Personal interview.
Outlook–Where and when were you adopted?
King–I was adopted at the end of June 01. 2.5 months before 9/11. When 9/11 hit, it was like “oh crap that coulda been us” kinda thing.
Outlook–All right so, you were adopted really young, right?
King–Yeah, i was adopted when I was 2 or 1.5 ish. I was pretty young, but not baby young. Specifically my mom was originally given the file of a really small child. She had actually previously adopted my older sister who she had an open adoption, so she had my sister since the day she was born, and a little before that, because my sister’s biological mom lived with my adoptive mom before she gave birth, so she’s had my sister for her whole life. I don’t know specifically why she wanted older, maybe she didn’t want to deal with diapers and bottles and stuff. She was originally given a little baby, and did not feel comfortable because she wanted a toddler, or someone going into toddlerhood. So she had sent back that file and I remember how she talked about how guilty she felt, and whether or not it was the right thing. But then she got me. I don’t know the exact whole process but I can ask her. She got a file of me and when she saw it, she just knew it was a good fit. She didn’t want a huge age gap between me and my sister. Me and my sister are 4 years apart. She’s older. She wanted a good age gap and 2 girls. Our whole family is all girls. My mom never married; she’s adopted.
Outlook–So was it a closed or open adoption?
King–I was a closed adoption. I don’t know my biological parents. I’m not too sure where I was from, but I was found with pneumonia, and I don’t know how I got it. The down side of a closed adoption is that I don’t know my medical history, or if I’m prone to anything specifically. I get asked a lot about if I’m ever going to find my real parents, and if I have an interest in who they are. And honestly I don’t because I was raised so well, and couldn’t ask for more. My mom is amazing. She chose to raise two kids on her own and that’s an amazing thing for a woman to do. I’m so happy with how my life is right now. I’ve never really had that need to look for my real parents. It’s all the way in China. So it’s a little hard.
Outlook–So does being adopted affect the way you form your identity?
King–No, I mean it doesn’t affect how I identify. I obviously identify as Asian and Chinese. I guess people get confused when they see me, my sister, and my mom because I’m Chinese (I’ve actually been called Korean) and my sister is Filipino and she has some Hispanic in her. And my mom is pure white. She’s a straight up European ginger person. And if we were next to each other, you would not guess that we are related in any way and we aren’t’ in blood, but we love each other like a family. We’re really close. It’s never affected how I’ve identified from as young as I can remember. I always knew I was adopted because I don’t look like my mom at all, so it was never hidden or anything.
Outlook–Has there ever been any awkward questions or anything?
King–No, I do get asked about my real parents, but everyone’s pretty respectable about it. I remember there was one incident with me and my sister when we went to Costco. It was our first time at Costco but my mom has had a Costco card for a really long time, and we didn’t know it was expired. We went to Costco and we tried to use her card, and they asked if we stole it. They thought we had stolen some person’s Costco card because again, we look nothing like our mom. And me and my sister don’t look alike. It just looked like two people stealing some person’s [Costco] card. And it was pretty offensive, I mean I guess it could be considered to be a sticky situation and of course it’d only happen to us, but that was the only one time that I’ve ever felt like, wow that was pretty rude of someone. We haven’t gone back to Costco since.
Outlook–So there’s lots of good things about being adopted.
King–It’s sometimes really shocking and confusing to people, like, “Oh you’re adopted”. Like some people I’ve been here with for years, and they don’t know I’m adopted. And when I tell them, they are like, “Oh I would never guess.” Like my mom isn’t a super involved parent, she definitely lets me live out my own life in high school and stuff. So when people see her pick me up from some place, they’ll be like “Is that your Uber driver?” And I’m like, “No that’s my mom.” It was really funny. It’s never been a problem and I don’t think it ever will be.
Outlook–Is there anything else you want to share?
King–I don’t know. I think the difference is that my mom is a single parent. And there’s no special situation, she’s just my parent, and I wish people would just understand that she doesn’t have to be married or anything to have kids, she just chose to have kids. That’s the only thing. I love being adopted; it’s such a cool fun fact. Being a senior right now, it makes for a great college essay.
Klein, K. (2015). Telephone interview.
Klein–
Well I am an adoption social worker for the Health and Human Services here in San Mateo County. What that means is that I work with children who are residing in foster care and that they are dependents of San Mateo Juvenile Court, and I work with those kids and the families that they are living with.
I make sure that they are healthy and safe and doing well in the placement home that they are living, and if it is determined that they are going to be needing a permanent home and go down a path of an adoption, then I get more thoroughly involved in their life and try to help make that happen.
We think about kids- we have kids who are age zero up to age eighteen, some of them are older. We don’t want kids to grow up in the foster care system because that means that they would be living in temporary housing, and we would prefer to have them live in a permanent settled home where there is somebody to care and love them forever, and so if it is determined that the kids are unable to return to their family of origin,you know, sometimes that means their birthparents- their mom, their dad, whether it was one or both of them, if they are unable to go back home to them, or if they are not living with a relative- and sometimes they do live with relatives- but sometimes we know for sure they are not going back to live with mom and dad- I work with them and the rest of us in my adoption unit work with the child to try to find a permanent home so they can have a mom and dad that they can call on forever, so that means that when they go to college, that they have a place to go home to for thanksgiving and christmas, that they would have parents to take care of them when they are in their 20s and 30s.
We don’t want a kid to grow up without a family.
The reason that’s a significant question for me is the agency I work with. Since I work with the county Health and Human Services, it’s a public adoption agency, so the kids that are already living in foster care, and they got there because there was a court that determined that they weren’t safe at home and that they had to live besides with their mom and dad. And because the courts are involved (?) – that’s why my agency, as a public entity, we get involved concurrently, while the parents are working on hoping to get their kids back, we’re working on the adoption agency to have a backup plan in case that doesn’t happen, which is different from kids that are adopted through a private adoption agency. There are a lot of private adoption agencies throughout California and some of them specialize in family adoptions or newborn adoptions or even do international adoptions, but we specifically, in ym agency work with kids that are already in the foster care system.
We have designated social workers and we get to know who the kid is without having them living with us here. Whether its visits every month or weeks to get to know the kid in the home that they are living- like how they are doing in their school, whether there are medical issues if there are any, do they have any psychological or emotional issues that I need to be aware of, and once I gather enough information about who this kid is, I take that information and I talk to other social workers who liscence families for adoptions – we have have licensed families within San Mateo county through our county and there are also licensed families through private agencies and I talk social worker to social worker to figure out what families would be able to meet the needs of these kids and that’s how the process started and eventually, we go through a slow transition of introducing the child to the family. The social workers are always involved to make sure everybody is able to not just get along, but the needs will be met throughout the future and that we talk about who the kid is and their history, and eventually, we move the child into that home
Our families have to be licensed first, that’s why we work with them first as foster parents, but with the intention and goal that if the child is not returned to their mom and dad, then they can rollover the foster home into an adoption home, so their needs are getting met for a longer period of time as opposed to waiting until the court makes this determination which can be anywhere between 6 months and 2 years and the kid shouldn’t living foster home to foster home
They are going to receive that attention and love that will continue on past just the foster care stage
I work very closely with the team of social workers that are working with families and kids- the agency itself is called Children and Family services, and our goal is to help reunify kids who are in foster care back with their mom and dad if we can make it happen, and so even though I primarily focus on the child and on what that individual child’s needs are, I am always talking to the other social worker about how things are going and the court case- sometimes I even need to go to court to hear about what’s going on and it’s from our communication that we really get a full picture of who this kid is and what they need and whether or not they are going to be able to go home of if they need to find a permanent home like an adoption.
That’s why they go through a licensing process. There is a long process where they go through training as a foster parent. They end up having their own licensing social worker who interviews them and create a homestudy on who they are- it’s basically a report about who each of the individual parents are and sometimes they are a single parent and sometimes its a lesbian or gay couple – we don’t discriminate against any family. We just look at who are these parents- what are their skills at individuals- what kinds of kids have they been around growing up in their family and what their education like and just what their personalities based on the assessment- I listen to their social worker first and then i end up getting to meet them in person. That’s why it’s a gradual process in getting to know people that we originally lien it up with the reports the social workers are able to create together and have conversations about the families and kids.
At a minimum we do monthly visits for six months. usually it’s longer than that if we’re going for an adoption and the primary reason is that we want to make sure that the kid is transitioned well into the family home and system, that they are getting their needs met, if there are any issues with medical insurance and not finding a doctor or let’s say, transitioning to a new school and the kid is having an issue. I would want to stay involved with the family not just leave them on their own to figure out the school system. I would want to be there to help them advocate in the school district or call a therapist in their area that can help them deal with whatever emotional issues that are going on in the home, so we want to make sure everything stabilizes so that when we finalize the adoption, which we do at court, that they have the resources, that they know what kind of services are available to them and that they feel confident without a social worker needing to be involved anymore- kind of a happy moment when we get to that point
Verducci–
Outlook–Ok-for the record, is it ok if I record this interview?
Verducci–Yes.
Outlook–Ok so can you take me through the process that San Mateo does to kind of get adopt adopted kids into their families?
Verducci–For adoption?
Outlook–Yeah.
Verducci–Or for foster families?
Outlook–Let’s kind of start with adoptions and we can go into foster families later.
Verducci–Ok. So the reason I ask is I can get you some more detail on mail(??) if that’s ok.
Outlook–That’ll be fine.
Verducci–The process is a little bit involved, but essentially, in San Mateo County, you need to sign up to basically get vetted and trained and all of that, and essentially it’s one process for foster families and adopted families, we call them resource families, basically. And the reason for that…there are multiple reasons for that, one is that there’s always a shortage of foster families in the community. We have foster kids that are all different ages, and characteristics, and we’re looking to place them in homes that can match their backgrounds and characteristics or can handle them, so we always need more foster families than we have.
And what we’ve found is that some of the families who go in only wanting to adopt, and then we ask them to foster ahead of time, and sometimes that foster child is the one they end up adopting, because that foster child has to become eligible for adoption, not all foster children are, eligible, to be adopted you know, some, our county really works to get their reunified, with either their biological parent or some relative, but so some families come into the fostering, and say oh you know, well, we’re interested in adopting a baby, but if we have to be foster families first, we can take this 2 year old or 6 year old or whatever. And sometimes they end up falling in love with each other, you know. A child does really well in their home, family gets attached to the child, and then the circumstances sort of line up and then the child becomes eligible for adoption, then we’ll have the family adopt the child and then it’s a win win for everybody.
So [in] San Mateo County, we ask folks who are interested to kind of start the process with definitely an assessment of their situation, their qualification for being a resource family, and then, you know, what they’re looking for, what we have in terms of our dependents, and we do ask them to be on our roster for fostering kids while the adoption is being worked on.
Outlook–So you mentioned that some kids are eligible for adoption and some aren’t?
Verducci–Right.
Outlook–Could you kind of take me through the process of how kids become eligible for adoption and what types of kids can receive these services that you offer?
Verducci–Okay. Let me start with the second question first, so: kids who become dependents of the county, come from a variety of circumstances. Some have lost connection with their biological parents or relatives through circumstances in life, unfortunate circumstances that leave a kid basically without a family. And at that point the county takes over and takes responsibility for the child. And so the county becomes the family for that child. For that time. And there are group homes and foster homes and different placements, but the country works really hard to get as many as possible placed into either a foster family or an adoptive situation if they’re eligible for adoption.
Then to answer your first question, not everybody is eligible for adoption, because sometimes, for example, the biological parent or the guardian of that child or multiple children, they are incarcerated, or you know, they’re ill in some way, whether they’re in rehabilitation, or otherwise unable to care for the children, then the county will step in the protect the safety and wellbeing of the child, the county will take the children out of their biological home and basically just take care of them temporarily, while we try to give the parent and guardian the best support we can until they’re able to take their children back. And in those cases is where we really need foster families, you know, for those kids that won’t be able to be adopted, at least at this time.
I can tell you how many referrals we receive every month, which is basically phone calls, by business, neighbors, or our community organizations, let’s say you know, you should look into, we’re not sure if abuse is happening here, or if a child is neglected, or living by themselves under age, you know, twice they’ve been evicted, and…unfortunately most often it’s allegations or suspicions of abuse. So that is what we call referrals, and we look into, of course, every single one of those each month.
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Verducci–I love that you guys are covering this, and I think that’s fantastic.
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Outlook–Thank you so much, have a nice day! Bye.
Verducci–Bye.
Klein–
I can clarify with the numbers- sometimes it’s less than that. The kids that are in that group, a lot of them are placed with relatives and are still considered foster youth because they are not reuniting with their birth mom or dad and because they are still involved with the court system and the social workers. I don’t know what the rates are with the kids lived in a licensed foster home as opposed to a relative licensed foster home but either way, not all the kids go forward into an adoption plan. Some of them don’t even go into a legal guardianship plan. Many of them get to return home to their moms and dad and have a successful reunification. That’s another side of our child welfare services but to answer your question about the age
I think a lot of the reason is that the kid is older. They are maybe in school more often, of course be probably in first grade by the time they are six, so they also may be involved in sports or dance practice or an afterschool program, so there are more adults and caregivers in their life that are going to be able to see what’s going on in their life or if their needs are really being met in the home that they are living and if there’s ever a concern that a teacher has or a coach or a nurse or a doctor, they are mandated by the state to make a call to our agency and that’s for the kid’s protection, and so if people are seeing kids better at five or six more often than toddlers and infants, then it just makes sense in just the way the world is that we’re going to see a lot more kids come into foster care that are older.
Sometimes it’s just out of convenience that they get our phone number first – for a new parent who has just delivered at a hospital, we have gotten calls to help them place their child up for adoption. Sometimes they prefer to work with a private agency and they sometimes…In our public agency they don’t necessarily meet the family and it’s really up to us and our agency to decide which family the kid is going to go to and so that’s really where there’s a difference between public and private.
They know that with a public agency, that we have the resources available, they know we have a lot of families like them that are ready to adopt and so they don’t have to worry about where their child is going to go.
In our public agency, there’s no cost. To adopt, they go through the training voluntarily, there’s some cost here and there, but no actual adoption fee.
I love the work that I do, I’ve been working with parents and families for 13-14 years now. I’ve been doing adoption for a good amount of time as well. My first foremost enjoyment is making sure kids are in a safe place, that they are doing well, and that they are happy. Even if they have their own little quirks or issues, that I’m able to help them through helping their families that they are living with. That they are able to make accomplishments and change their growth and development to perform and have a positive life and have a successful future. That’s why I’m able to face the challenges of working with families. We all come from families and know that there are a lot of different issues, sometimes conflict gets in the way of making the right decisions or emotion and sometimes it’s hard to watch a child that almost going home to their mom and dad and then they’re not. Going through the court system is very tough, just emotionally. It’s emotionally draining for a lot of families and kids and social workers too, including the attorneys and judge and people involved. WE all just have to refocus our minds to why we are here and why we are going through these challenges and ultimately, it’s to make sure that the child is safe and doing well. And when we are able to refocus our minds from all the negativity or bickering that may come from dealing with the politics of the system or the politics of court go away.
A lot of memorable cases, it’s really through learning about a lot of my kids that I was able to finalize their adoption a while ago and now I hear that they are successfully doing well in high school or graduated high school and are moving onto college, and sometimes when I get to see them here back in my office- every year we have a holiday party for resource parents and we always invite our previous families or adoptive families and when I’ve gone to them, I’ll run into some of my kids and families and to see how well they are doing and that their lives have turned out well and making the decision to be adopted by this family was the right decision- it’s finding that reward and seeing how pleased the family is and how pleased the child is with them- it’s wonderful
The most challenging part is hearing the history and stories. It’s unfortunate a lot of the trauma they had to deal with, especially if they are older. I see it even with infants; any kid at any age, it’s really hard to hear the stories and know that I’m just hearing it from another social worker or I’m reading it through a report; I didn’t live through the experience, but the kid did and when I put myself in that kid’s shoes, I really feel for them and I want to be able to help them make sense of their world so that it’s just an experience in their past and they can look forward to the future being good and happy rather than fearing that any kind of trauma like that will happen to them again.
I’m their social worker so I have to define my role in their life. I have to build a rapport with them and be friendly so they at least talk to me, but eventually,it’s about defining, I care for them and I want them to do well, but I’m not their parent, I’m not their teacher, I’m not their friend or best friend, I’m not going to gossip with them or talk about who they like or dislike at school. I want to know if there’s an issue. I guess it’s kind of like an mentor but it’s more than that because I’m still helping make decisions about their life, so I have to define it to them- sometimes they ask for things they really really want but then I am not able to give that to them whatever it may be and I have to be able to explain it to them, and that’s where defining my role as a social worker vs. their aunty or their friend is different. Like an aunty can take you shopping whenever you want but, I’m not that person. I’m here to protect you and if the question you are asking me is something that might kind of mess with their life, or at school, I’m going to say no, but that’s my job as their social worker to keep them safe.
Verducci–
I wanted to speak to those challenges…overall, my understanding is that there are actually some tough kids to place- sometimes we have kids that are legally free for adoption and we don’t have the right homes for them
Klein–
I can talk about two things about identifying the answer to that: the first part is our families, I talk about, are licensed parents and we do have a lot of- sometimes we are not able to take the child who is a dependent of San Mateo county in our county. Sometimes we have to place them outside our county or outside the Bay Area. Sometimes we think, “oh, it’s just San Francisco or Santa Clara or San Jose or even Oakland- it’s not that far” but those still means that we are moving them out of their community of origin into other places, so they have to go to new schools, build new friendships, so that’s a challenge in terms of the system – that we have a lot of families, but we don’t have enough families to meet the needs of the kids that we’re looking for here in the county, and so, that’s what leads me to the second part of your question as to some of the challenges the kids face, when it is a child that is older, they sometimes have experienced more trauma in their past so they have more lively lifestyle, they might have some health issues or academic difficulty and they act out at home or at school, and those children with more challenging behaviors are of course more challenging to find a home that can accept them and participate in the many services that they have. The big thing with medical issues is that we sometimes have kids that have severe medical issues who we have to look out of state for their placement home because there’s not enough licensed families that can meet their needs or they need 4-5 days of therapy- not every moment of the day but we would need a parent that is willing to go with them to all of their medical appointments or do physical therapy at home even after their one or two sessions that week. Sometimes it is harder to find a family that is able to step up to that challenge and really put their mindset to where the kid is and what the kid needs and sometimes all the kids needs is a year of theses services or two years of these services and they change their behavior or grow through some of their medical challenges and so we just need dedicated families up front and in the long term they do well and better. Those are harder just out of the families we have right now- not impossible – I’ve placed plenty of kids in county where the family has stepped up to the plate, like I said, but it goes with the flow when they already adopted, I’m not able to say, “Hey can you take five more kids?” because that’s not going to work- we feel blessed they came and were licensed and were able to meet their needs, adopting once or twice but yeah, sometimes we do have to look pretty far away for some of our kids.
Verducci–
So older kids are going to be a little tougher than the special needs kids, so like Kristin mention, special needs can mean just some up front attention with providers in a particular way and it’s not a forever thing, it may be, but we are always looking for families that represent the entire diversity of the county- two moms, two dads, one parent, young or old
Klein–
Young or old- some families that call or like a single parent, they sometimes call and say, “oh, I’m too young, I’m not married and never raised kids” and I say, “No, come get licensed. If you want to be a parent, then come and be a parent, you can get the support and training that you need.” If they are already having that desire then being a single parent shouldn’t hold them back
Verducci–
The county has some lovely resources that can support the family through the process of being licensed and afterwards and getting matched up with the right kid.
Along the lines of looking for families
There’s definitely a need for more of them but if in general, a lot of the foster families come in the system through seeing their friends already in it or their neighbor or friend’s kid that is a foster and getting to know the family and seeing the rewards of it. While we can’t speak to that in first person, I think tis’ a testament to the fact that it works well for both sides and we got some very long term foster families in the system. Some have been doing this for 20-30 years. IT’s a system that works that once you get it to work.
Klein–
That’s the greatest part: because we have so many foster families that have been doing it for so long and help transitioning a kid back home – they can help just support new families to get licensed and gives more stories that they had in their own foster home about helping a kid transition into a new home or meeting a new family and what that’s about and we have a lot of knowledgeable families that want to share their stories with new families.
Herdon, R. (2015). Telephone interview.
McIntosh, A. (2015). Personal interview.
Outlook–Have you ever wanted to meet your biological parents?
McIntosh–Yes i have, but i can’t do that until i hit 18.
Outlook–Why?
McIntosh–I haven’t seen them in a while, ever since age six, and I want to see how they’re doing. I don’t want to see my mom, just because of how I was abused by her but I would like to figure out about how uhh… I want to see my brother, my dad, and my aunt, like that kind of family. Outlook–Do you still remember them a little bit?
McIntosh–Yeah.
Outlook–Thats pretty cool. Okay. How do you interact with your parents differently, knowing you are adopted? Do you think you act differently with them?
McIntosh–I think I act the same, I think through all the stuff I’ve been through, my personality has changed, just through, being by myself and taking care of myself, and not taking authority as well, I’m just taking care of myself and not having my parents go “do this or do that,” so i think my personality changed.
Outlook–Do you feel like your parents interact with you differently?
McIntosh–They treat me like a son. I mean, they adopted me.
Outlook–Do you love your biological parents? Do you love your adopted parents? Do you like them equally?
McIntosh–I’ve been with them, and I’ve been with my dads, and I love them just as much. Outlook–Do your friends treat you differently
? McIntosh–When I was in elementary school they did. Just cause, the whole entire thing, having gay dads was different, you know, when you had gay dads in elementary you used to get bullied. You know, oh “you had gay dads, you’re gay.” so it was kind of, different, but in middle school and high school, it kind of changed, and I was able to stick up for myself, but people treated me different, in elementary school, but nowadays no.
Outlook–How would you describe your experience as an adopted child in a few words?
McIntosh–Hard, somewhat … when I first met them, I didn’t want to move in with them, just because I lived with so many different families and I knew them so much better, but the best word to describe would probably be ‘hard.’ It was hard to get used to a whole new environment, family, with all the stuff I’ve been through before I came came here, I was with that family for years, so… Before this, I was in Petaluma for one year, I lived with [my foster parent] for a year.
Outlook–Did it not work out?
McIntosh–Well I wasn’t able to have a choice, when you’re getting adopted, you’re not … you can go in the judge room, but you can’t say anything because it’s between the judge and the guardian, but I was devastated when I wasn’t able to stick with her. I don’t know what the problem was, but I was pretty much devastated. They just pulled me away, and then I just had to say goodbye, and that was it.
Outlook–You lived in Hawaii too, right? Was that your biological family, or an adopted?
McIntosh–Biological.
Outlook–Have you ever felt like you weren’t a part of your adopted family?
McIntosh–Yeah, you know, ever since I was in a new family, and Dylan was the main, main child since he had been here for long, it was hard getting used to having another brother, and having parents that cared about you so much, and I felt like … i don’t know, it was just hard.
Outlook–Closed adoption?
McIntosh—Closed
Outlook–Any other comments?
McIntosh–It’s hard, and you can get through it, and there’s always somebody else there that will treat you just as well as I’m being treated, like I got wonderful friends, uh there’s somebody out there who will adopt you, and I know it’s hard, but, you’ll get through it, and they’ll love you just as much as your biological family.
Outlook–Brother?
McIntosh–Two adopted siblings.
Outlook–You have two, you have an older sister?
McIntosh–Transgender, she was a boy and now she’s a woman, and then, Dylan.
Outlook-Do you think you’d act differently with your adopted brother/biological brother?
McIntosh–I wasn’t really around my biological brother because he was an alcoholic, he was mostly in a facility because he was so addicted to it, but I think having an adopted brother helped me get through this kind of environment, just because he knew what I was going through, compared to Dan and Doug, and since he was in a lot more families than I was, he was able to get me through it, and treat me like an actual brother.
Osorio, M. (2015). Personal interview.
Sadlon, H. (2015). Personal interview.
December 3, 2015
Ms. Heather Sadlon–
We thought that we might want to have a kid. We’ve had people in our family who have been adopted, in-laws and things like that, and we just kind of have a sense that there’s already a lot of ppl in the world and there’s people who need homes and so we probably decided about two years before my daughter was born that if we were going to have a family we were going to pursue adoption.
We had the sense of we didn’t feel like we needed to have a biological child to love. Like we just didn’t think that mattered at all in terms of our ability to be able to love and raise a child. And given the fact that we were two women married to each other we knew we couldn’t have a child together and at best it would be one of our biological children
There’s a lot of misconceptions about adoption. I think a lot of that is just fed by the popular culture. We were probably pretty naive about adoption going into it. There’s always this really big focus I feel on the joy half of adoption like oh we’re getting this beautiful baby and we’re completing our family and I feel like everything in the popular media focuses on the positive.
There’s this incredible emotional part of it that is incredibly sad and difficult when it comes to the birth family and the birth mothers and fathers that we’ve come to appreciate so much better through this.
And also understanding that there’s no one reason why birth families make this decision and based on what I understand now this is the hardest decision they would ever make in their lives and it’s not something done with any kind of joy and can lead to a lifetime of heartache for them and I feel like we understand that really well. We’re really protective of Klara’s birth family and we’ve tried our best. Like it makes me emotional thinking about it now to be as connected to them as possible and we think it’s really important for our daughter to be as connected to them as possible because no matter what that’s her origin and those are people who love her and will always love her but because if their circumstances they made this decision for her before she was born and so we’ve tried to respect that. It can be as you imagine really emotional and not easy.
We need to embrace and want to embrace this other part of her family so that she understands we aren’t her only mothers and that she has another mother and that is her mother and she in many ways has a stronger connection with that mother than with us even though that mother isn’t raising her. Like she loves her and that’s where she came from.
Early on, for a birth parent to make that decision, it’s heart wrenching and it can be normal from what we understand for them to need to separate emotionally because they need to be able to come to terms with what’s happened. So it was about when my daughter was 2 that we really started to make a really strong effort to contact the birth mother.
We have been in touch. We went to visit and she’s got this whole extended family that loves her and we’ve been to visit. They don’t live in the states so we’ve been to visit and they’ve been to visit us and we’ve been doing our best to try to open the lines of communications and like physical visits as well as texts and sending things just so that that’s a constant presence in our daughter’s life like they want it we want it and my daughter wants it even though it’s not always easy.
The thing about my daughter is that she looks extremely different from us. Like she’s African American and we’re white so it’s not a question at all of let’s somehow weirdly pretend that I gave birth to you or anything like form a really tiny age like I think that’s completely emotionally wrong to do to a child. That’s definitely not the norm today and when your child is a different race today like it’s just out there it’s your skin color and people can see that.
We’ve talked to her about adoption since she was a baby and we could see no understanding that she she understood what we were talking about but she’s know the term adoption and birth parent and birth family and things since she was 2 years old. That’s the norm for her life. We are part of groups of transracially adoptive families. It’s all about adoptive parents being educated and talking with birth families so that you can try to understand birth family points of view and also having the kids understand what adoption is—both the joyful part and the really hard and sad part that is also part of adoption and understanding that they are a part of both of that.
For her this is just something else to figure out. She has to be a little bit of an ambassador for a lot of things. She’s one the only African-Americans at her school so she’s kind of forced to be an African-American ambassador and when people come in and see us picking her up from school the little kids are very honest like “why does your mom look different than you? Why do you have two moms?” and so she’s always been kind of assertive in being able to explain that really well like she’s just that kind of kid where she’ll be like “it’s because I was adopted! And my moms are married!” I don’t know if we’ve really taught her that. I don’t know if we can take credit for that because that’s just her personality. I think that’s a very good personality for her to have because she stands out like crazy and she needs to be able to own that and be able to respect herself and make other people respect her.
It’s not something she should be ashamed of or embarrassed about so she has the language to use, but she’s only 6 so it can be emotional. There’s always weird things going on with 6 year olds like what’s going on? Is it because you’re 6 and weird things are going on with 6 years old? Or is it because you have two moms? Or is it because you’re black and we’re white? Or is it because you’re adopted? Like what is the source of this kind of bad behavior or whatever it is. Kids are complex.
She’s African-American and one of the best things that I’ve come to appreciate as just being somebody who’s always lived among other people like there’s always been a critical mass of other people who look like me. As a gay person, as a young person, I definitely grew up in a very close-minded small town.
We understand as her parents that one of the best things we can do for her is to live somewhere where she is not the representative, where there is a critical mass of people that look like her, who feel her experience, who know what it feels like to be different, to have people try to touch your hair.
And these are people who know nothing about her birth family or birth situation and they just have it in their brain that she must be adopted because there must be some drugs involved or some poverty, but in reality, it’s always much more complicated than what people assume.
I definitely don’t feel that, that she’s really lucky. Like she would’ve been fine and loved with her birth family, without a doubt. She’s just an awesome kid and it’s all these series of randomness that matched her with us.
Her birth mom chose us before she was born, like that’s kind of how it works these days. Like we just feel lucky. Whenever you’re raising a kid, the kid does things to your life that you can never imagine like people who are kidless versus people who have kids. People always tell you it’s going to change your life, like you have no idea how much it’s going to change your life. It’s crazy, it makes me look at things differently. The fact that she’s adopted makes me look at things and try to understand things differently. The fact that she’s a different race from us, I can’t tell you how much more in tuned that’s made me like I feel like I’m understanding things I could never understand just because of how I was born and how I was raised. I couldn’t understand what African-Americans talk about in terms of feeling that weight of discrimination, that sometimes it’s not discrimination that’s overt, it’s like this constant—they call them microaggressions or whatever it is—and I feel like as a white person, my reaction before, while I may have been sort of empathetic, it would be like I don’t really understand that. Now, it’s like when you love someone so deeply who feels that, and this is a little kid who’s felt that, and I’ve seen it happen to her and she talks about it. It’s these little things. I feel like it’s a gift for us even though it’s hard to see that. You can’t really understand that until you walk in the shoes of another person and the way our lives are, most of us can’t walk in the shoes of another person. The best that we can do is to love another person who is walking in those shoes and I think that can create that kind of empathy and sadness and heartache in a lot of ways. It’s good for me to understand those things in a way that I never could before.
Spiegel, N. (2015). Telephone interview.
(Edited for privacy)
November 30, 2015
Nora Spiegel–
I was part of a very open adoption and so – usually it’s not to this extreme, usually it’s not as much contact with the birth family as I do – I grew up adopted by two gay men and I am a Latino Cherokee mix. From birth I have had contact with my birth family – we are very close. We are all like family, so it’s like having an extended family.
Growing up, it felt normal – I didn’t know I was sort of in a different position until I had reached probably grade school, and so that’s when people began to come over and I began to understand I was different. With gay parents, I was lucky enough to be in a school where it was overall accepted, so they didn’t talk differently to me . I think the racial difference played a bigger part because there was always the issue where people thought that one of my fathers was kidnapping me or something because you know, they are 6’ 2” white men, and I’m a 5’ 1” Latino girl so it’s funny when there are some issues where if we’re at the airport, they have to make sure that I’m not being kidnapped.
That’s why I started working with Adoption Connection because parents that are thinking about adoption need to make sure and need to know how they want to decide to raise their child and there’s really no good or bad way to raise a child. When you’re raising a child, it doesn’t matter if the genetic makeup is different – I still have the same childhood- my parents would take me to the park, I learned how to ride a bike, you know, it’s not what people expect it to be.
At first, I didn’t quite understand why I didn’t look the same way that they did, so I didn’t really care because they themselves didn’t really care, so when I reached that age when people started asking me why I looked different, I started wondering, “well, am I supposed to look the same because everybody I know looks like their parents” and I went to private school with mostly white students so I didn’t really fit their profile of blonde, blue eyes, and tall, so for a while,
They didn’t necessarily mean it that way, but I took it that way
My parents assumed it was me going through the pre teenaged awkward phase where you just want to fit in with everyone else. Then my dads realized that it was a little more than that so they didn’t quite know how to deal with that- but what ended up happening was that they sat me down and had a little intervention with both my adoptive parents and my genetic siblings and so we were all kind of talking about it – and kind of accept it and it’s very important to know where you came from because you are given different opportunities depending on where you come from and you need to accept that – you need to help yourself because -I should be okay with what I look like and be proud of what I look like – and there’s nothing wrong with me because I don’t look like everyone else
I have a very open relationship with them. I know them all very well. I come from a lower class, poor Latino family that because they live in a dangerous area they are very much in the crime sector so for me, I had to have a rule established. There are some people in my family that I don’t see because it’s not- I don’t feel comfortable associating with people who are currently in gangs- I understand that we grew up in different ways, so finding that balance was difficult in that first stage, and my parents kind of implemented that, but as I got older, I was able to establish my own boundaries and relationships, so I’m very gratified.
I have 5 older brothers, so I have a strong relationship with two of them because all of us are trying to be accepting of ourselves instead of just dropping out of school because it’s easier to do than continue so we have to support each other in that realm. We have relationships with many family members- they accept me as family
In the beginning, I was more of a guest in that house. Over the years, we’ve been able to form a really great relationship. We meet up at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and holidays, so this open adoption was actually really cool because it made it so that my adoptive parents actually have a Latino family, and we enjoy them.
I had never lived with my birth family- I knew who they were, but I didn’t have a relationship with them normally. So, whenever I would go over, I felt like I was treated more like a guest, but as the years progressed, we got closer together and build our own relationships. It was kind of like, “take it easy, take a deeper breath” and accept the situation and accept each other as family, whereas, I was the only one adopted out of the family originally, so neither my adoptive or birth family really knew what that meant or how to deal with it so once we had a handle on that situation, everyone was better off.
Life, I think, is more confusing with these two different families. Navigating it is difficult, but it
I was basically raised by two families, with different economic backgrounds, with different genetic makeup and it gives you a bigger awareness of the world. I can say that it made relationships during my early teenage years kind of difficult because it’s usually the time where you’re fighting with your family and it brought up the idea – so I don’t really fit in either family because – we have a joke in our family that I’m too Latino for my adoptive family who are white and too white for my birth family who is Latino because I was raised with mannerisms and opportunities. It kind of started as a joke but became closer to reality and that’s kind of what it developed to.
The worst parts are worse than you can imagine and the best parts are better than you can imagine
If it weren’t for my adoptive family, chances are I would have been dead by now because I would have grown up in very dangerous neighborhoods where if you are a young woman, you’re in trouble- it’s not safe. Chances are that I would have dropped out of school.
Since I was adopted, I was able to be in a family with tutors, grow up in safe neighborhood, be given opportunities that my siblings weren’t, going to a private high school and I got a better education and I got a higher paying job and things like that
It’s more they’re very different, looking at things in different ways.
It’s double the amount of grief. If you have more family members that carry the same title, it gets very confusing especially if one of them dies. You quite literally have double the amount of family deaths than if you were in a sort of non-adoptive family…I technically lost a parent very young but at the same time, she wasn’t exactly a parent because that was at a time when it was more like a friend of family – so it’s sad because it complicates everything and almost nothing can be simple. I think it can be very emotionally taxing.
They both have different morals and economic backgrounds so my adoptive family grew up and got their education, their degrees, got a good job that pays- whereas my birth family, not so much…so I think that growing up, I was surrounded by two extremes- the “goody goodies” and for a lack of a better word, “the troublemakers.”…It was confusing for me.
It became this thing where families wouldn’t accept each other for certain behaviors and when they found out, we had a joint family meeting where we came up with ground rules. Eventually, they came to accept each other, but it took a while.
Usually, it’s like you have visitation rights, but for me it can be a couple nights at your house kind of thing.
My fathers kind of wanted to imprint me with the idea of adoption before I could speak, so they would make a point to daily use the word “adoption” or “adopted” so that way, I kind of grew up with an awareness of it and there has never been a point in my life where I didn’t know about it because it was something I started out with.
I grew up knowing both families so I could see the differences I’d gained in being adopted so I was able to figure it out on my own.
Yeah, I keep in touch with both families, but I’m kind of at a point where I needed a break and need to find myself and my own ground so I move out of state. I just moved myself out of the way of them, I’m outside of the chaos right now which is important.
Growing up with these two families, I’ve seen what’s great about them, but obviously, I’ve seen their flaws. I guess I tried to take something from both families. I think it’s important to know where you came from and learn.
I think that between these extremes, you kind of find a middle ground. That’s what I’m working with right now
Because being a parent, I think your responsibilities are the same regardless of whether your child is adopted or not adopted.
I think a lot of people don’t realize that adoption happens to the child as well as the parent, so they go through something mentally when they adopt a child and as they’re raising the child. If the child is being bullied because of it, the parent goes through that too. they have to navigate that together. What I try to do is to make sure future parents are sort of aware of what situations are similar and different and there really is no 100% correct way to raise a child and that’s something adoptive parents are even more worried about because they may feel an obligation because in a way they were chosen.
[About her work at Adoption Connection…]
It plays that way where they think that because another woman trusted me with her child, I have to do right by them. The emotional difficulties go both ways in a two way road-
Sometimes they are so caught up in the moment of getting the child that they don’t think about what it means to have an adopted child, or sometimes they are so caught up in thinking about how to raise the child that they don’t think about the positives.
I make sure that they are in the realm of reality so I can help them be the parent they want to be. They can learn from my experiences because I can walk them through, for instance, certain ways I reacted to situations
They can form their own idea of how they want to raise their children
I really love talking to parents, seeing how excited they are is really uplifting. It’s great to know that these children are going to be adopted and they aren’t going to be placed in foster care – they are going to be in a great home. That might be something I’m going to be doing on the side but not as a full time occupation
Because I grew up this way, I like helping people in any way possible; I’m not 100% of what I want to do but it definitely will be somewhere in helping people – doctor, psychologist, or something.
[About her family life…]
It started out being every month- then it switched to every 2 months, then a year- then it changed because I grew up- and then i went back to seeing them a couple times a month
When I was older, I would stay the night and hang out on the Fourth of July or whatever, but that was by my teen years, but before, it was more that I’d go there for a few hours, do an activity- we’d go out, have dinner, it was like an event, we went out and did something
Socially, I would say that you are no different from everyone else; the only reason why they are putting this on you- you grew up on a happy family, I’d hope- but if you are starting to feel negative about it, it’s not because you were raised in the wrong way but because people around you are putting that on you. So you are no different than they are- you’re still human, I promise.
When it comes to family, there’s really no such thing as perfection when it comes to a family. Don’t let it get to you.
Family is your base; your family helps create who you are and your abilities – they your base and you can always get back to them- family is almost like a guardian angel where you might not always agree with them, but they will always love you and protect you despite any mistakes you make.
Verducci, E. (2015). Telephone interview.
Wong, D. (2015). Personal interview.
Outlook–How did you get to know that your parents were adopting a sister?
Wong–“They sat down with us during dinner and just told us that we are planning on adopting another child”
Outlook–How did you feel about it?
Wong–At first I did not know what to feel, like I never knew what another presumably sister would be like because we were going to China to adopt her. I don’t know we were going to magically get a new sister
Outlook–Were you excited?
Wong–I was optimistic. It was more on my parents because they ended up doing half a year of paperwork. Outlook–During this process of filing the paperwork how did you guys prepare? Wong–We set up a bed and all that stuff, we got stuffed animals for her.
Outlook–Can you describe your journey to China to pick up your new sister?
Wong–The adoption agency sent a picture and some details of Megan and gave us like 48 hours to determine whether or not we wanted her. We decided to take her and that was that we just had to go to China to go pick her up. We went during the winter of 6th grade, and we flew into beijing for and visited a couple of attractions there. We then went to nanjing and the first day we were there we went to a building where my parents had to fill out a bunch of paperwork do a bunch of paperwork and do the final preparations. The following day we went to the actual building and we waited for half an hour until then a giant bus came with a bunch kids. Her caretaker was holding her. It was super cold outside , like 20 degrees Celsius. Megan had 7 layers on and I was like OMG, she is so big, but then we took off all the layers we saw how small she actually was. She was given to my dad and she cried for 5 hours straight. We did not know what to do, she was scared because she was a group of strangers. We were snacking on some stuff and we have her one knott’s berry cookie. She stopped crying for a little bit and started to lick the jam and eventually ate the whole thing and stopped crying.
Outlook–How do you think your sister has fit in ever since she came over?
Wong–When we first introduced her to people, they were surprised she was adopted. I mean my parents treated her like one of ours and we treated her like one of our own. Megan was not allowed to go into Marissa’s room anymore because Megan came over and farted on Marissa’s lap and then left. So we treat each other like family.
Outlook–Did she come here knowing Chinese? Wong–My mom knew enough Chinese to get by. My dad knows Cantonese but not Mandarin. My sister and I only knew the basics to get by. She knows English now but not Chinese. One of my friends who is fluent in Mandarin comes by once a week and teaches her.
