What doesn't help.

I'd like to start by saying that this is not an angry post. I feel I should say that first because I'm fairly certain it may sound like one, no matter how hard I try to sound objective. I'm really not angry at all, because I'm sure if our positions were reversed, I might have said some of the same things to expecting adoptive parents out of sheer ignorance or carelessness.

This is a partial list of things you may bring up in conversation that really don't help adoptive couples who are in the "waiting" stage.

1. "You're adopting! That's great! Or... or was it a medical problem?"

Not that it's any of your business, but as far as we know we are biologically capable of having children. We have chosen adoption. Far worse than the intrusive nature of the question, though, is the assumption that adoption is only "great" if there were no fertility issues. While certainly there are couples who decide to adopt only after exhausting every medical option known to man, if they don't think it's "great" that they're going to become parents (no matter how), then they probably shouldn't be adopting. No parents should ever look at an adopted child as a "last resort" -- this could lead to resentment.

2. "You need to be really careful about that. I know a couple who adopted a beautiful little girl and then the mother came back and took her away."

I think every adoptive parent's greatest back-of-the-mind fear is that the birth mother will want to "take back" the child. However, we are going through a wonderful agency that counsels the birth mother throughout the process, and she even has her own advocate who makes sure that before she signs the papers she is absolutely sure about what she's doing. In Indiana, the current law makes that form final. The only way the mother could "come back" to try to cancel the paperwork is to claim that she was under duress, mentally unstable, or otherwise incapable of legally signing the contract -- and that's another reason the agency provides her with an advocate. That advocate doesn't care whether or not we adopt the baby, so he/she won't sign off as a witness unless he/she is positive that the birth mother is capable of legally signing. Yes, there are always other factors that could make things go wrong. But you probably don't know our specific situation, so telling us a horror story about someone else is completely unhelpful. What purpose does it serve?

The only thing that makes this worse is that some people who have said things like this to me wouldn't listen to my responses. If I told them that Indiana law makes the form final, they've responded, "Oh, no, the mother can come back until they're, like, two." If I told them that our agency, experts in this field, have assured us that this is not the case, they've responded, "You might not have the right agency, then, because the birth mom got the baby back when she was eighteen months old." If I questioned whether the baby was possibly a foreign adoption, or if this happened outside of Indiana, or if maybe there was some other unusual aspect to the story (to go way out on a limb here, something bizarre like "the baby was kidnapped at two days old and then sold on the black market and then dumped off anonymously at another hospital and then adopted and then a pediatrician happened to recognize the baby"), the answers always come back so that they perfectly match our adoption plan. I swear, if I said we were safe because we were planning to adopt a three-armed purple baby with built-in microwave oven, these people would swear that's exactly the situation their friends were in. But oh, yeah, they don't remember their friends' names, because it's really their brother's friend, well actually their brother's wife's friend, and he moved a couple years ago, so...

3. "Make sure you get a full medical history. My sister adopted a baby and they found out two years later that he was autistic."

Okay. Number one, we're already planning to get as much medical history as possible so that we can make the best decision for the baby and for ourselves. Number two, how exactly would this be different from us conceiving and giving birth to a baby and finding out later that he was autistic?

4a. "My brother adopted a baby. It took six years for the paperwork to go through..."

You know what? We know it takes a while. Our shouldn't be that long, but pointing out how long it can take doesn't really help us deal with the wait we're having. It's not exactly hurtful, and I know you're just trying to connect in some way with a process that you don't know a lot about, but it definitely doesn't help.

4b. "...and when it finally did go through, the baby turned out to look like a mutated German shepherd with crooked teeth and oppositional defiance disorder."

This goes back to an earlier point. Telling us horror stories doesn't serve a good purpose. It lets us know why you would be scared to adopt. Do you really think we've just blindly stumbled into this? This has already occupied over a year of our lives, full of prayer and discussion and meetings and training. We know the risks. We also know the rewards.

5. "Do you worry about attachment?"

The real irony of this one is that the three people who have asked me this all have children of their own, and in each case I happen to know that their first child was not anticipated. So they're asking me if I'm going to have trouble loving a baby that I have prayed for, longed for, and dreamed about for month after month after month, when as far as I can tell they've never had trouble loving a baby that "just kinda happened" to them.

6. "Do you plan to have any children of your own?"

Not your concern. Also, this baby will be our own. I dare you to tell me otherwise. Make sure you're not within swinging distance when you do. (Okay, this one is probably a bit angry.)

7. "Just watch, you two will be pregnant within a year after adopting."

It happens, but not in a statistically significant way. Also: so what's your point? Are you suggesting that we shouldn't go through with the adoption? Are you assuming that we're adopting because of infertility? Are you just lost for something to say?

8. "What will this cost you?"

Mostly? Headaches. Still, at least this question uses the indefinite word "this," which I will optimistically choose to believe refers to the adoption process. (The answer to this, financially, is: You have no business inquiring about my personal finances; if you want to know for your own purposes, it will be very easy for you to find out. But unless you're prepared to discuss all of your financial decisions with me, I'm not interested in answering this for you.) It's far worse to ask, "What will he/she cost?" The process costs money. The baby costs me nothing but love, and I've got plenty of that.


My point in writing this is not to chide anyone or to suggest that our friends and family are making our lives difficult. Most of the comments and questions we get are wonderful, thoughtful, and very open, like, "So how are things going on the adoption?" That lets us choose how much to answer. I'll warn you that most of the time, our answer will be a variation on "We're just waiting." I write this because I know it can be hard trying to determine how to have a conversation about adoption if you don't have personal experience with it. Obviously, I'm not an expert on all of this, as we have not yet completed our adoption, and there are some adoptive parents who might not mind these questions at all. But mainly, I just want to stress that you don't have to try to sympathize with how hard the waiting is by giving us other hard-luck stories about adoption, and you need to remember that this baby will be our child -- not our property.

--David