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KB4b posted the following in a comment to the Arkansas post:

however, i could not agree with you too much on the adoption requirements on your other post. i think the two are very related since they are both barriers to persons being APs.

you should ask yourself if the process and hoops in Ontario and Canada and for that matter in the US create similar barriers to access to adoption as legislation such as this.

when it comes down to AP’s or prospective AP’s, if we are not criminals in the area of child related offences (i can list off the ones that any person would think are obvious), the hoops we should jump through to be AP’s should start and end there.

at that point, we have just as much right to be parents…PERIOD (gay, bi, hetro, rich, poor, in OK health or not great health, fat, skinny, trained or untrained in the area of adoption) as much as you are offended by putting up a very fine line, hoops are just another form of systematic discrimination.

any hoop that is there just because, is just as bad. this is my opinion and i most certainly will do something to change it.

It is an interesting point and I thought worthy of a response and maybe some discussion. Let’s me start with the premise that there should be as few barriers to “creating” prospective adoptive parents as possible as outlined by KB4b. I agree in principal, while disagreeing as to what the barriers should be. But let me pose this question. If such a system as he contemplated existed…where only the lack of a child related criminal record disqualified someone…what criteria or mechanism would be appropriate for matching children with parents.

For private adoptions, should prospective birthparents not have standardized information on adoptive parent candidates with which to make the most informed decision?

For public adoptions, should the guardian of the child (the state and its representative) not have more information that just a criminal record check with which to make the best possible matches? What other mechanism would be defensible. Surely not a “first come…first served” system.

For International Adoption is the issue not the same as for public adoptions? With most programs having far more applicants than there are children, isn’t it in the best interests of the child to do better than just a criminal record check. As subjective as the criteria might be and as much as it would be fair to argue which criteria is best, isn’t that better for the children than just finding the lowest common denominator in prospective adoptive parents?

Maybe I am elitist, but I think it is perfectly fair to look at health, income, preparedness, etc… when making these matches. Have we not all made this very assessment, using the same sort of criteria,  when choosing who we would name as guardians for our children in the event of tragedy? Aren’t the situations essentially the same?

Tags: Uncategorized // 3 Comments »

So the US Election wouldn’t normally be fodder for a blog about adoption in Canada, but the ballot measure of the title deserves comment.

This was the measure put on the ballot:

An act providing that an individual who is cohabitating outside of a valid marriage may not adopt or be a foster parent of a child less than eighteen years old.

And the result. Passed by a margin of 57%.

Yes you are reading it right. Over 570,000 people voted to say that it is better for a child to stay in foster care than to be adopted by two loving parents who don’t have a piece of paper saying they are married. Of course the further injustice is that a gay couple aren’t even allowed to get the required piece of paper.

I would like to say I am speechless at the injustice of this, but I am not. Bewildered…yes. Horrified…yes. Embarrassed for them and us as a society…yes.

One of the things that I don’t understand is that this Act seems to have become known as the “Ban on Gay Adoption Act”. Since the act is likely to affect far far more than just gay couples why was it characterized like that? Was this Act simply a way to try to avoid the legal pitfalls of an approach that more specifically targeted gay couples? If that is the case, as I suspect it is, then every single one of those who voted for it and every single eligible voter that didn’t vote should be deeply ashamed of themselves for allowing such a thing to pass.

Now let me say that I understand the realities of the world and that not everyone agrees on issues relating to family structure. I could even buy the argument that preference should be given to “traditional” families. I still wouldn’t necessarily agree, but why punish the children with such a sweeping Act?

I can only hope that some way will be found to ensure that this new law is struck down before a single child spends a single extra day without a loving family.

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So I was on a discussion panel at the recent Adoption Resource Exchange saturday event down at the conference centre in Toronto. One of the questions asked was something along the lines of:

“Why oh why do we need to jump through all these hoops? Bio parents don’t need to do this. It all seems like too much and is discouraging.”

That is a paraphrase, but was my take away of his point anyway.

So how did I respond. Well I made two points.

1. In hindsight the paperchase is the easy part, so just put your head down and get it over with.

2. Adoption still has something of an image problem and taking care to make sure the “wrong” people don’t adopt is important.

That was what I could come up with off the top of my head, but I thought I would expand a bit on those answers here.

I believe the first of those two is even more true today than it was when we were paperchasing, but I also recognize that it is of little solace to those that are in the midst of paperchasing or trying to get started.

So what about the second point? Is the homestudy process really a useful screening tool? Does it help make adoptive parents “better”? I think the very short answer is yes. Could the process be improved? Most definitely!

So what do I believe is of value and not of value in the process:

• criminal screening…annoying, but essential
• references…questionable value, I wonder how many people picked a reference that resulted in a problem for them
• training…definitely valuable even if it could be done better
• homestudy interviews…valuable if only to get waiting parents thinking and talking. If only every couple had to sit through these before having sex the first time..well maybe not!
• health information…valuable to a degree, am a bit unsure of to what degree though
• financial information…same as health

So yes it isnt perfect, but I do think all the elements that go into the Homestudy do have value and improvements will continue to happen.

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Ok this was discussed in the Forum are, but in case you missed it the Adoption Council of Canada published the following response to the announcement of this Panel:

Panel Response

As an adoptive parent I was not thrilled with the approach this letter took and I have put together a response on behalf of adoptive parents that may feel the same way. If anyone else finds this letter does not represent their own views then please let me know and I would be happy to share the draft letter with you. My goal is to get as many names on the letter as possible. I will need an e-mail address though so would probably be easiest to send me an e-mail windthrow@adopttalkcanada.com

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Now that we have a “new” government hopefully it will be possible to further raise the profile of this issue on the political front and maybe even get some action.

Prior to the election, and even during the campaign, this issue was at least being mentioned in the press and there are certainly more than a few new MP’s that seem to understand the issue and be sympathetic.

So what more can we do? Well first of all I encourage anyone that reads this to send an e-mail (I will posta link to the addresses as soon as it is available) to your newly elected MP congratulating them on their election and explaining that one of the ways they can keep and or earn your support for the next election (maybe not far away) is to become a supporter of change on this issue. If you do get a positive response please let me know here and I will happily maintain a database of supporters that can be used in this effort.

As always this space and the Forum area are always available to try to advance this cause so if you have any thoughts or ideas let me know.

Tags: Advocacy // 1 Comment »

Anyone who follows my ramblings on adoption will know that I often talk about how much my thinking on adoption has changed over the years. Well today I came across the following on an Agency web site:

China’s Adoption Program …..:

* Many healthy children available between the ages of ten (10) months and two (2) years
* An easy paper process with our help
* An incredible trip of a lifetime to China with a stay less than two (2) weeks
* Comfortable travel staying in fantastic hotels, all arrangements made for you by the agency
* A guide available to help you 24/7 throughout your trip
* Being united with the child of your dreams

And then later on this:

When parents abandon their child they do not desert the child in a place where it could be hurt; the child is taken to very public areas where they will be easily found. Typically a child will be left on the steps of a library, a bus station, outside a factory or on a busy street corner. In these spots the child will be readily seen and quickly taken to the proper authorities.  When the child is discovered it is taken to the authorities who make sure the child receives medical attention and is placed in a secure home-like environment; a welfare home or foster home. There the child receives not only the essentials needed to grow; they are nurtured and cared for by dedicated care providers who want to help.

Back when I started my journey into the world of adoption this sort of thing wouldnt have bothered me in the least I suspect. Now…well now they…maybe not sicken me…but leave me incredibly disillusioned about some parts of the adoption world.

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I presented at an Intro to Adopt Seminar tonight and as usual suggested to the attendees that they seek out the recent BTDT crowd as a good way to collect info about the current state of IA programs in particular. So where are you in the online world, what sites/groups do you belong to or where have you visited to collect information. In particular, I would love to get a reasonably comprehensive list of yahoo groups together but any good place to get info would be a welcome addition.

Three ways to get me the info:

1. Post as a comment here.
2. Post on the thread in the Forum
3. Send me an e-mail (windthrow@adopttalkcanada.com)

List of Links

Yahoo, Ethiopia, Canada

RQ Blog/Forum, China+, Multi Country

Tags: Adoption links // Add Comment »

IA - Good or Bad, An “outsiders” view

Ok…first what prompted this particular thread. Two things:

1. The recent discussion relating to B. Stuy’s views on the state of China adoption along with discussion about how just these allegations may impact how China adoptees view their adoption story as they get older.

2. Comments in a couple of threads that bring up issues of how IA compares to other methods of family forming, both adoption and bio and how the media and general public view different forms of adoption.

As for the outsiders view…well I consider myself somewhat an outsider as I have not, and unfortunately likely will not, have the opportunity to adopt from China. I think I am something of a unique outsider though, in that I have a fairly high level of knowledge with respect to the world of adoption and more specifically China IA. For the purpose of this thread I am trying to look at things more from the perspective of a typical outsider, one that is honestly interested in adoption but is not particularly close to the issue personally.

So in trying to educate this “typical outsider” I use my own experience to explain the three basic ways to adopt where I am. Imagine that I have spent an hour or two explaining in painful detail all the ins and out of adoption and after that they try to summarize what I have told them. I imagine it would go something like this:

Ok so the first way you can adopt is to go through the local Children’s Aid Society (CAS)*. When the CAS has a child at the point where the bio parents rights have been terminated they then find adoptive parents to match them with. The CAS has a bunch of prospective parents to pick from and they have all gone through a CAS process that includes something called a Homestudy done on these parents and that includes all sorts of screening of the parents and also some training to make sure they are ready etc…, etc… All that process is paid for by the CAS. The CAS then decides which of the available parents is the best match for the child.

The second way is to complete an adoption privately. In that situation a pregnant woman decides to make an adoption plan for a child. Usually she is put in touch with an agency or social worker in the adoption field and will be presented with profiles of prospective adoptive parents and she can meet these parents and then decide which one she likes best. These parents will have gone through the same sort of Homestudy system as in the CAS method except these parents had to pay for it themselves. The parents have to pay all the costs relating to the adoption. Legally this can only include payments for a Social Worker and Counselors to assist the birthmom through the process along with all the other legal and paperwork costs of processing the adoption. The adoptive parents get an itemized bill for all these costs. The birthmom can not make the final decision on the adoption until 7 days after the child is born and she then has another 21 days during which she can change her mind.

The third way would be to adopt internationally from somewhere like China. Here the adoptive parents go through the same sort of Homestudy process that they pay for themselves but then their file is sent to China. China processes these files in the order received. A central body in Beijing collects files for available children all over China and once a month they match the available children to the parents on a first come first serve basis. There is a bit of flexibility in how specific children are matched to specific parents, but for various reasons (sizes of agency groups near the top of the pile compared to locations and numbers of children available for example) it is largely a random process in terms of which parents get matched with which child. The adoptive parents pay various administrative costs for their agency and to the Chinese authorities plus they had over up to $5000 when they pick up their child. The $5000 is called an “orphanage donation” but it is mandatory and no one is really sure what happens to this money. The children that are available have almost always been abandoned anonymously and virtually nothing is known about the origins of the child. There have been stories of children being sold to orphanages and then adopted internationally but generally the program is viewed being fairly well run and most people dont think this is a widespread thing.

Ok…so the above three cases might differ in the details if you changed the location of where the adoptive parents are from or if the IA country was changed and for the purpose of this discussion I have obviously also put a particular spin on the information to try to make my point, but hopefully everyone would agree that this is a reasonable presentation of the facts as it relates to the various processes by which people adopt.

So..what is my point. Well I guess what I have concluded is that it would be quite natural for an outsider to look at these three possible ways to adopt and see IA as being quite a bit different than the other two methods. The way matching is done is different, knowledge about how the child became available is different (except in rare cases) and the financial aspects are different. I am not in the camp that suggests IA is bad, very much the opposite, but as something of an outsider I think it is reasonable for people to reach the conclusion that IA might be bad. Does it matter what outsiders think? In some ways not, but unfortunately IA children will grow up in a world where people will think these things and say them…often in the media and in seemingly inappropriate ways.   So while I think it is important to try to educate and object when people make such comments, I think there is also a need to accept the that some of these comments can not simply be dismissed out of hand and it is important to give these children the tools to handle them.

This brings me to the whole Brian Stuy allegation world. Without getting into whether he is completely right or completely wrong, I think the consensus is that there is likely some ethical issues with some adoptions from China. Maybe this is only 1 in 100…maybe more, maybe less. No matter what you personally believe I do not believe adoptive parents can completely dismiss the possibility as it relates to their own child. What this means to me is that all parents adopting from China need to approach educating their child about their adoption story with this in mind. That isnt to say that I think anyone should feel bad about adopting from China or will have anything to apologize to your children about. On this I am in complete disagreement with Mr. Stuy.

Tags: Hard Thinking Series // 4 Comments »

The complexity of attachment

Ok so let me start of by saying that this is not my area of expertise. I know some of the basic theories, and I would probably pass Attachment 101, but that is about it really.

Intentional or not many people seem to talk about attachment as a binary sort of thing (sorry for letting the math geek in me out again). Their child is either attached or not attached, nothing in between. I know that most people probably don’t think of it that way, but i do sometimes wonder.

We adopted our daughter as a newborn (she is now 25 months) so my experience is really closer to what a bio parent experiences than what a parent adopting from China goes through. What I will say though, is that I  really have no idea what is going on in her head with respect to her attachment to us. She has always been a very social independent child, never shy around strangers and dealt with the transition into daycare with relative ease. Now, what I like to think and what I suspect the experts would say, is that she is a well socialized, securely attached little girl. What I absolutely know though is that we still have a lot of work ahead of us as parents. Really this is just plain old parenting of course, but every day and every interaction we have with her from today until…well for a long long time…is going to have an impact on her “attachment” to us. There will be added adoption related issues specific to our situation as well of course. How we help her integrate her adoption story into who she is as a person, how we help her manage and develop the relationship with her birthmom, and I am sure more than a few other things that I haven’t even contemplated as of yet.

Within the world of toddler adoption things are considerably more complex…there is anxious attachment, plain old attachment, secure attachment, and a thousand shades of grey. It seems remarkably complex to me actually and I think I would always be questioning and wondering…maybe the best I would be able to tell people is that things look good but it is a work in progress.

I would be curious what others think on this topic.

Tags: Hard Thinking Series // 4 Comments »

Another reprint from my RQ series. This one from last April so the 60 Minutes reference is from then.

Just going to throw these two questions out there and see if anyone has any deep or shallow thoughts.

1. Is it ok that some people see parenting an adopted child is less than equal to parenting a bio child?

I think most, but certainly not all, adoptive parents believe that it is equal. In terms of non-adoptive parents I think a significant number would say that it isn’t equal. This is obvious in terms of the way many adoptive parents are treated as evidenced by many many threads around here.

2. Should adoptive parents be held to a higher standard than bio parents?

Last night my wife and I ended up watching the last segment of 60 minutes. It was an interview with a US Supreme Court Justice (Scalia) and it was reasonably interesting. There was one very jarring part though. He and his wife have 9 children. They essentially said that they had 9 children, not because they wanted that many but simply because that is the way it worked out (both are RC). He then went on to say that he never went to any of his children’s extra-curricular activities. His reason? Well why would he…his father never went to any of his and anyway they were their activities not his. Finally on the subject of retirement (he is in his 70’s), he said he wouldn’t know what to do next. (He has 29 grandchildren ) I am not suggesting that he shouldn’t be entitled to live his life like that, but if I was the king of all adoption matching and I had a choice between lots and lots of couples/singles with all sorts of different attitudes about parenting, I think that sort of philosophy would never make it close to the top of the pile.

Tags: Hard Thinking Series // 2 Comments »