Open adoption was designed as a way to benefit everyone involved, giving all parties (the birthparents, the adoptive family and the child) more information about each other. With open adoption, the birthparents and the adoptive parents meet each other prior to the adoption taking place. They share information with each other and can remain in contact over the years.
This may sound like an awkward scenario at first: Why would you want to remain in contact with the birthparents? Wouldn’t that create an uncomfortable situation for everyone involved? It may seem scary, but there are actually numerous benefits to open adoption. Some examples include birthparents having the peace of mind of knowing their child is being raised in a safe and stable home, the adoptive family getting more information about their child’s family medical history and the child having the opportunity to know more about his or her biological heritage and background.
The journey begins when the birthmother (and birthfather, if he is still in the picture) decides to place their child for adoption. After contacting an agency and completing an intake session with a counselor, the birth-parents choose the adoptive family they want to place their child with.
How do adoptive parents get selected by birthparents? After deciding on an agency, adoptive families complete thorough background checks consisting of mounds of paperwork, medical physicals, fingerprinting, credit checks, home studies, reference checks and more. Once approved by the agency, adoptive families create a “Dear Birthmother” letter. The purpose of this letter is to give birthparents more information about you and to convey how you will raise their child if you are chosen. A simple online search will show you numerous examples of various Dear Birthmother letters. Once completed, the agency sends the letters to various birthparents and the adoptive parents wait to be contacted. It’s a bit like online dating. You fill out your profile and wait for the perfect match to contact you.
There’s no telling how long your wait might last. You may get contacted right away or you may be waiting for years. While there are things you can do to increase your chances of getting chosen (check with your agency or lawyer since laws are different in each state), the timeline is really left up to fate. The lack of control and unknown future can be very stressful and can even take a toll on your relationship with your partner. Open communication and support for each other is key here.
After the birthfamily chooses an adoptive family and everyone agrees to move forward, they will meet in person and will most likely create what is referred to as a birth plan. This is where you decide things like who will be present during the birth, who holds the baby first and who cuts the umbilical cord. The birth plan is not a contract, but when the birthmother finally goes into labor, it will be used as a guide to help the day run as smoothly as possible.
With open adoption, the birthparents release all of their parental rights and responsibilities, but different states have different laws regulating timelines for when this can happen. They also have different waiting periods for when you can return home if you have an out-of-state adoption. Your agency or attorney can help ensure all criteria are met and the necessary paperwork is filed on time.
Becoming a parent can be a hectic and nerve-racking experience. Some challenges that are common to the open adoption path include unpredictable waiting periods, emotional stress, adoption scams and the possibility that a match will fall through. A qualified and reputable adoption agency can help alleviate some of the stress by weeding out potential scams and providing emotional support to help you get through the challenges that pop up along the way. This support could come in the form of a counselor or support group filled with other families in the same situation as you, sharing their experiences with each other.
This portion of the book will give you insight into what it’s like for same-sex couples going through the open adoption journey, while also touching on the many emotional complexities that people have come face-to-face with along the way.
What types of challenges do same-sex couples encounter when trying to obtain a birth certificate for their newborn? What is it like to actually go through a home study? What kinds of adoption scams are out there and what does it feel like to go through one? You’ll find the answers to these questions, and many more, after reading this section.
Mat and Eric Rosswood
BAY AREA, CALIFORNIA
On July 25, 2013, at 5:02 P.M., one sound changed me forever: the first breath of a new life. We had just walked through the door of a midwestern hotel room, not a moment too soon or too late. Our son was finally here.
Becoming a parent wasn’t something that generally came up in conversation, even with my best friends. In 2011, as our wedding day approached, I joked that I couldn’t possibly have a child outside of marriage—a reference to the ironies of the marriage equality debate more than anything else. Little did we know that soon after that magical day, Eric and I would indeed begin our journey to parenthood.
It still feels strange to talk about “options” when it comes to being a parent—one of many things that provoked unexpected feelings from the start. That’s not what they teach you in sex-ed class, but that was our reality and we reflected on them all. Adoption became our choice (a much better word) for two reasons: we would both be equal parents and it felt like the most selfless path to us. I wondered what the world would think of the choice—something I seldom cared about in my general journey through life. Was I really ready to be “that family”?
In June of 2011, we decided to find out and attended an information session at a nearby adoption agency. Every combination of family was present and, while we weren’t the only same-sex couple, we were not in the majority. But everyone was there for the same reason and that had a way of making the differences between us seem not so different after all.
As the session evolved, I realized that the other people in the room were about to embark on the same journey that we were. We all had the same goal and I started to think of them as competition. Did any of them have traits or characteristics that would help them match with a birthmother before we did? Instead of thinking about how we could match in the quickest way possible, I started thinking about how we could match before everyone else. How could we “win”? I wasn’t ready for that feeling, either. I found it uncomfortable that we saw others in the room as competition and not as comrades who could help each other out. Apparently this is a common feeling for adoptive parents, but knowing that didn’t make me feel any better.
The first step in the process was a two-day weekend intensive program. “If you are patient and do what we say, you will get a baby,” they told us in the opening session. I wondered again how many times I’d feel uncomfortable on this journey. We met our counselor for the first time and left with binders, books and contracts.
As I read through all of the information and started to understand the next steps, I felt another emotion I hadn’t expected in our journey to parenthood: anger. Reproduction is part of the natural order of the human race, a right acquired at birth that no law denies, at least in the United States. As I learned of all the hoops we were about to jump through, the thought did cross my mind: I’m a human being and I have the right to reproduce like everyone else. All I needed was a willing human of the opposite sex. Instead, we were about to take one serious parenting test: get fingerprinted, go through a background check by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have our financials rummaged through, get poked and prodded by a doctor, have our blood tested, provide references and go through an afternoon of interviews, all to become parents to the child of some straight couple who couldn’t fulfill the role that the natural order ordained them with. All they did was have some fun. That made me angry.
I know our son will read this one day. That is not how I think of his biological mother or father. I also know the beauty that is life can come from some truly harrowing circumstances, but at that moment, I was indeed mad at those who just “did it” without a care in the world or a questionnaire and then abused or discarded their chi
ldren, straight or gay.
Then we began to do all of our homework and that anger gave way to a much deeper emotion. I felt like a normal human being—more unexpected feelings. I realized I knew very little about being a parent, something I now know many first-time parents feel. Not that this made filling out the parenting questionnaire any easier. I was trying to answer questions I had never asked myself before: What is the difference between discipline and abuse? How am I going to talk to our child about sex?
Where does one go to find answers to those questions? In the modern age, online search engines aren’t a bad source of inspiration, but there was another place I could go to for expert advice—my own parents. I don’t remember when I first told them we were planning to adopt, but we were on a family vacation when I asked them about parenting. We explained all of the things we’d been doing to “qualify” as adoptive parents.
“What did you talk about before I was born?” I asked.
“The only real thing we’d decided beforehand was that we would always be on the same page in front of you, even if we disagreed afterward,” my dad said. There was that “normal” feeling again, along with the realization that all of this question asking and book reading was actually helping Eric and I, both individually and together, to prepare to be parents and to think about things we otherwise likely never would have thought about or discussed before. I wasn’t so angry anymore.
I’ve studied for plenty of tests, written plenty of papers and essays and given presentations on all manner of topics, but I was at a loss as to how one prepares for a parent interview. Is there a right answer to a parenting question? Did I say the right things in my biography? Was I too honest or not honest enough? What if my “discipline versus abuse” response wasn’t good enough? What if Eric said something different from what I had when he was interviewed or disagreed with me—what would that mean? I figured I would just go with my gut instincts—isn’t that what parents do? I didn’t know. But that made me no different from any other prospective parent.
We passed the interview. I wondered if people ever failed it but didn’t ask. The home study came next. At the time, we lived in a newly-built condominium that we had bought together shortly after our engagement. It suited us perfectly as a couple, although now we needed to make some changes—installing carbon monoxide detectors, buying a fire extinguisher and moving everything potentially harmful to an infant out of reach (even though a newborn couldn’t reach it for a number of years). We did everything we were asked to do. It seemed to take forever. Then the envelope finally arrived to say we had passed the tests and were now approved adoptive (and foster) parents. We were excited to be one step closer to becoming dads.
We spent weeks writing and rewriting and designing our Dear Birthmother letter, picking photographs and changing layouts. When it was finished, it looked like four pages from People magazine. We thought we had the best letter ever written—more enthusiasm than arrogance—and were convinced we would be picked almost immediately. We finished our online profile with the agency and set up the required e-mail address and 800 number so a birthmother could reach us anytime without cost to her. Then we were all set to start waiting for the call.
We wondered how we would feel when it rang for the first time and didn’t have to wait long to find out—about as long as it took us to learn that 800 numbers are recycled and otherwise prone to misdials. The first call I excitedly picked up was someone trying to get her cell phone fixed. These numbers also seem to get easily placed on automated call lists, so the phone rang at all hours, day and night. Each time we hoped it was “the call,” only to usually find no one on the other end of the line. Then we would wonder whether we should call the number back in case it was a birthmother trying to reach us, even though the agency told us not to call the birthmothers back—and for good reason. If the birthmother hadn’t told anyone about her pregnancy, you didn’t want to accidently unveil her secret if another family member answered when you called back.
Eric and I had said at the beginning of our journey that we were going to try to live a normal life during the wait. The agency told us the same thing and discouraged “nesting” or anything nursery-related before placement. For six months, nothing really happened, so we decided to try some new things. Eric started a few social media accounts while I tried my hand at website design. We talked about redesigning “The Best Dear Birthmother Letter Ever,” which had only been sent out once, and about whether we wanted to change our client profile.
The client profile sets out the adoptive family’s preferences regarding the birthparents’ racial heritage and religious background. It also specifies the behaviors they find tolerable in regard to smoking, drinking and drug use during pregnancy, as well as the level of physical and mental disability we would accept. Of all the forms we had to fill out, that one was by far the hardest. We were told that the more “liberal” we were on the form, the greater the chance of us being shown to a birthmother who had contacted the agency. We’d done a lot of reading on drinking and drugs—many of the people I know seem to have some form of fetal alcohol syndrome, the symptoms of which include being grumpy and angry—and so we weren’t too particular about those boxes. When it came to hereditary medical history, however, things started to get more complex.
Consider this question: If you could choose between an unimpaired child or a physically or mentally challenged child, which would you choose? Biological parents don’t have that choice, whereas adoptive parents do (to some degree, because nothing is ever certain). So what choice do you make and does it show you as a good or bad parent in the eyes of a birthmother? The options available on the form are not extensive: no condition, a mild condition of any type or any condition. Eric and I both have or have had close relatives with mental impediments. Would we pick a child with a mental impediment or a notable risk of one if we had the choice? What would we do if our child was born with an otherwise undiagnosed physical or mental impediment? Adoptions can be “broken” at any point before they are finalized by either party. Would we ever consider doing that? We talked about it for a long time, agreeing that the universe would grant us whatever it did. So we checked the “mild” box and entered the adoption pool.
After six months of nothing, I did start to wonder whether we had made the right choices on the form and whether we should have checked another box or two. It was around that time when we got our first e-mail. It arrived at about 11:30 P.M. one night. We both had our adoption e-mail address synced to our phones and so far had only received random junk mail. But this time, our devices went “ping” and it was a birthmother. We were excited, apprehensive and eager to respond, so we jumped out of bed to reply—and then realized we had no idea what to say! It probably took us two hours to draft a two-paragraph message, redraft it, bicker a little about what we were going to write, redraft it some more and finally send it. Then we forwarded our reply to the adoption agency and tried to get some sleep, wondering all the while if we had said the right things and when she would reply, if she ever would.
Two e-mails later, we realized we were being scammed. The person was just trying to get money from us. We had been warned several times that this could and would likely happen. Knowing how raw and vulnerable adoptive parents are during “the wait,” it’s hard to imagine how a decent human being could prey on that, but people do. One of the many benefits of working with an agency is that they are very quick to spot a scam and let us know before we become too emotionally invested. To be fair, though, after a six-month wait and a sleepless night writing perhaps the most important e-mail of our lives, we were up to our ears in emotional investment and it was hard not to be a little sad that this wasn’t the one.
We put it behind us, along with a few other scams among the random calls we got. Before we knew it, one year had passed and we became eligible for the “last-minute list.” This meant we would be one of the families presented to a birthmother who decided to place immediately after birth. If she liked us, we
would have thirty minutes to decide if we wanted to move forward. We tried to make that the positive outcome of a year spent waiting—we could now become a family instantaneously—and signed up.
Five days later, my cell phone rang while I was in a meeting at work. It was a number my phone didn’t recognize, so I ignored it. When I got home, we had a voicemail I hadn’t noticed earlier. It was around 9:30 P.M. when I pushed play in the kitchen and, after a moment of silence, we heard Stephanie’s voice for the first time.
“Hi, Eric and Mat…” There was a long pause. “Wow, this is awkward. My name is Stephanie. I saw your profile online. I’m thirteen weeks pregnant and I’m looking to place my baby for adoption. And I really liked your profile and would kinda like to get to know more about your parenting style and things like that. If you could please give me a call, I look forward to talking more with you.”
This was real and now it was our turn to be silent. From her phone number, we deduced that she was in the central time zone, so it was past 11 P.M. and had been almost twelve hours since her call. Do we call her back now? Do we wait until the morning? What would she be thinking? What do we say to her when we call? What are we supposed to do? We decided to send a text—that way she would know we got her message when she woke up. Stephanie replied in about fifteen seconds. After a brief exchange of texting small talk, we called her.
Our first call lasted close to two hours. We told her to ask us anything she wanted to know. She started with our views on pediatric vaccinations and circumcision. We were not prepared at all to start there, but were honest and answered every question she had as best we could. I took lots of notes. By the time the call ended, we were overwhelmed and could only imagine how she felt. Of all the things we covered that night—the fact that she was declared medically infertile after the birth of her second child, the night the baby was conceived (Halloween, Eric’s favorite holiday), her family situation, her decision not to terminate, her desire to have a home birth and her disdain for adoption agencies—the one that sticks in my mind the most is the response she gave to our question, “What drew you to us when you read our profile?” Stephanie said that she is a Capricorn and her best friend is a Libra. Since I’m a Capricorn and Eric is a Libra, she took that as a sign. The stars really were shining on us that day and they all seemed to be pointing towards Stephanie being the one.
Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood Page 2
