Grumble Grumble
Most of the time now, I'm just really excited and busy. Adoption preparation keeps me busy. Plus, this is beautiful weather and prime gardening time (last weekend I spent 4 hours every day ripping up sod and mulching). Work keeps me busy. Blogging keeps me busy. I've signed on to guest blog at APA for Progress as well as Rachel's Tavern.
Still, I'm going to take some time here to grumble.
I'm starting to tell more and more people about our adoption. The reaction tends to be what I consider normal, except for one thing. I've been getting a lot of "which country"? And then I have to explain that we're adopting a 5-year-old boy. I've started saying "we're adopting a very tall and active baby". It's very odd. The reaction isn't quite negative, just sort of bemused. Often people will say "my (insert relative) adopted a baby from (insert country)" and then just go quiet.
I think I must have gotten very accustomed to foster care adoption world. I realized this recently when someone told me "my 7-year-old was physically and sexually abused by her father" in a regular tone of voice and my only response was an equally regular "oh, ok". In most social circles this kind of dialog would be just plain weird.
In the predominantly white middle-class social environment that I'm inhabiting about 80% of the time, I guess international infant adoption is the default adoption. Frankly, that irritates me. I mean, I understand the reasons. I've written about many of them here on this blog. Still, encountering this in action is more affecting than I thought it would be.
International adoption has some horrendous problems but I'm not against it on principle, and we might have tried adopting from Japan if that route had fewer roadblocks. But I don't think it should be the default. I am not going to walk around with a holier-than-thou attitude because we adopted from foster care... but I will do my best to gently remind people there are a lot of kids in this country. Foster care adoption is not for everyone, but it should at least show up on the radar.
Foster Care System Perspectives
4 comments:
I'm delurking after several months to say hello.
First of all, I've got to say that I'm jealous that you're able to garden already! I've got to wait a couple more months.
Second, I'm so happy to watch you on your journey. We're in the classes and paper work stage.
Hehe, people still ask us which country we adopted Huckle from. And when I explain, most people seem suprised that you can adopt from foster care. Oh, well.
I was wondering, when you adopt from foster care, are you a foster mother first and then after a period of time you can finalize an adoption? Does the foster care system give you support (educational, emotional, resources, etc) during the pre-adoption period? Do you receive any financial support prior to finalization? What if problems arise? I am interested in the whole foster care system and adoptions from it.
"Foster care adoption is not for everyone, but it should at least show up on the radar."
I AGREE!
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