April, 1985"Any new messages?" I asked after returning to my Legal Aid office.
"Yeah, the clerk called again," replied Lavonne, handing me a sheaf of pink slips. "Another child abuse appointment."
"Goody," I muttered as I shuffled off to my office.
As a Legal Aid attorney, I was inundated with phone calls from the Clerk of Court. Y'see, anybody who is charged with a crime or who is sued in family court for custody gets a free attorney if they can't afford private counsel, and as a Legal Aid lawyer getting a paycheck anyway, I was forced by judges to represent many an indigent child molester. Good times. Understand that if I refused, I would lose my license to practice law and be placed in jail for contempt of court.
"You're going to love this," said the clerk. "Some guy hit his 7 year old kid with a wire hanger, they put her in foster care, and now she's saying that she was forced to have sex with men for money while her father watched. Say, have you seen Top Gun yet? It was awesome."
Yep, it turned out to be true, and the case uncovered a huge, multigenerational incest ring that was written up in the New York Times. Georgetown/Horry County, you can look it up. I'm too lazy.
Anyway, you might could say that I had a rather, um, pessimistic outlook on children in the foster care system after seeing the degree of abuse and neglect necessary to wrest a child from a biological parent.
However, I decided to apply anyway. So in 1996, I called the Department of Social Services and applied to adopt a child.
First, I was told, we would need to attend an 8 week course in parenting, etc. Well, some may have been daunted at this news, but (and I know you can't tell this from my blog) I actually LOVE talking, I LOVE "Sharing My Feelings", I'm the FIRST one to speak up in class, and yes, I am horribly obnoxious. Y'love me anyway, though, doncha?
Aside from the fact that the classes lasted from 6-9 after a long day at work, I actually sadistically enjoyed the classes. I had no problem writing long essays (another surprise, no?) and it was great fun to watch deer huntin' good ol' boys forced to Share Deep Thoughts with total strangers. The paperwork filled a notebook, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed reading my husband's praise of what a Wonderful Wife and Future Mother I was. I still remember one thing he wrote.
It went, "My wife was very supportive when she found-while we were dating-that I was infertile." I still chuckle over that. He's handsome, single, straight, has a job, no suspicious bumps or warts in strange places, is fabulous in bed, is funny, sweet, kind, a good cook, can install a ceiling fan and declog plumbing and actually seemed interested in maybe marrying me. Geez, y'think a little thing like INFERTILITY would throw me off the scent?
I think not.
Anyway, we passed our course and homestudy with flying colors. Now it was time to fill out a form listing what we could and could not accept in a placement.
I wrote, Under 5, no sexual abuse, any race, mild physical problems ok, no mental problems, no drug abuse in utero.
The social worker laughed out loud when she went over the form with me.
"You realize," she said, still laughing, "We have no kids that meet these requirements."
"None? Ever?" I asked. "We're in no hurry."
"We placed 7 healthy infants last year and we have a 7 year waiting list for them," she said. "You'll be too old to be considered for an infant when your name comes up. And, by the way, we prefer stay at home parents for infants."
"Can't stay at home, " I explained. "My husband is a state employee..."
"Say no more," she snorted. "I see here that he makes less than 40k."
"So this was all a waste of time, eh," I said. "Yes," she said sadly. "Look, you know the drill. Our kids are battered, bruised, tossed around the foster care system for years and years, 98% have learning disabilities, 90% have moms who used drugs...I'll keep your name on the waiting list. Say! I have a lady due to give birth soon. She's mentally retarded..."
"I don't think so, " I said.
So we stayed on the waiting list for 3 years.
After we returned home with Madeleine, the State of South Carolina Department of Social Services sent a letter to us which said: Now you have a kid. You're off our list. Good luck!
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11 comments:
You have beautiful little girls! 8-)
This makes me sad though, if I had been put into foster care or up for adoption as a child, you wouldn't have wanted me either....
Everyone has the right to decide what they are and aren't prepared to deal with as a parent. Do I wish that more people were open to older children, kids with physical and emotional problems, foster kids? Sure, in a perfect world. But is it fair to ask those kids, who have already been through so much, to go into a family not prepared to give them what they need? Clueless gave it a shot, which is more than most people do. It's more than we did -- we looked at the stats, looked at our lives and our extended family, and made the decision that we couldn't take an older child or one with mental or emotional disabilities. It wouldn't have been fair to us, and more importantly, it wouldn't have been fair to the kid. Yeah, if we gave birth, we'd take what we got -- that's the one I hear most often. "You couldn't pick and choose if you had a baby with problems!" But, if we gave birth, we wouldn't have to write long essays and take classes and open ourselves up to abuse from strangers about the choices we have to make to become parents, either.
What's my point? That we all can only make the choices that serve us and our families best. And no one has the right to make those decisions for us or judge us for them.
Becky, are you on the waiting list for an American foster child? No? Thats sad.
I realize that made me look like I'm just trying to instigate, but that is honestly how I felt when I read it. And that's all there is to it.
click on becky's picture, and scroll all the way down. there you'll find her blog name, Becky's ramblings.
You know, long-time infertiles and parents who adopt have a sixth sense about when someone is honestly (albeit clumsily) seeking information, and when they're passing judgement. Now, Becky has proved all the supposedly oversensitive commenters on the last post absolutely right.
And as for the "public blog" defense, we can also apply that reasoning to public comments: if you make an obnoxious public comment, expect some splashback.
Lorrie, THANK YOU for posting honestly about the joys and challenges of adoption!
I think it's pretty important to know what you are willing to ask for. I know that if my kid falls down the stiars and suffers brain damage, she is still my kid and we will cope, but am I prepared to ask for that? No way. I am not that mature (as we've already established).
It is very very tiresome--one other wretched thing you deal with when you are infertile and adopting-- to have people say "you should adopt an abused HIV-infected crack addicted 8 year old violent pyromaniac from America rather than being so selfish as to want a healthy baby from overseas."
Why should infertility make me such a saint that I should feel like I would ask for that child, when I can't be a SAHM parent which is what such a demanding child would deserve? Why does infertility mean that I should have to clean up someone else's horrible choices?
Why does wanting a healthy young child-- one who hasn't, I hope, been in an orphanage long enough to do lasting emotional damage-- make me somehow more selfish than everyone who just gets pregnant and has a baby? They didn't choose the crack baby either, and no one judges. Oh, it's because their reproductive systems work, so they are somehow more worhtwhile than I am?
Fuck that.
If I could have gotten pregnant, there are all manner of things that might have happened to my child. However, alcohol use, drug use, neglect, malnutrition, and abandonment are not on the list. If I would absolutely avoid all these things were I able to get pregnant, why in hell would I decide to ask for them when I adopt?
Sorry. I'm infertile, but that doesn't make me a good enough person to feel qualified to deal with our society's neediest kids. Really. Nor does it mean that I should have to.
Becky, you leave me speechless. I know a family that adopted seven children from the foster care system. Those children are so damaged, unfortunately, because they stayed in foster care for a long time before being released to adoption and several reunification attempts were made. Everything went reasonably well when they were small but now they're teenagers and they have so many problems. Now the mom has cancer and the dad is disabled. I'm currently collecting Christmas gifts and gift cards so they can have something under the tree so let me know if you'd like to send something.
Liz (eeb912@hotmail.com)
Lorrie, I got one of these awful questions yesterday at the doctor's office when I was getting my splints out from nose surgery. Small Asian girl and her Asian mom were waiting in the waiting room, too, and my FIL, who'd driven me there, struck up a conversation with the Asian chiild. He commented to her mother that she looked just like one of his grandchildren and whipped out the picture of dear daughter Madeline. The Asian woman nodded approvingly, and a bitchy young woman sitting a few chairs down piped up, "You adopted from China? How is that ethical?" I wanted to deck her. I really did. And I am NOT a terribly sensitive person.
I think passive-aggressive people are hardest to deal with. They say something nice like your children are beautiful, them come back with a slap.
I think what most people don't know (because people make assumtions all. the. time.), is that a lot of adopters researched the foster care and/or domestic before adpting overseas. And like you, they found out that if they adopted via foster care they would have to accept a drug baby or an older child with serious issues. As Ernie said earlier, it's not just about "just adopting", but what is right for your family.
I have several friends who chose not to adopt at all because they weren't willing to take on the judgement/ invasiveness of strangers, or the risk involved in transracial parenting. Maybe we should force them by law to "just adopt" anyways.** Afterall, there are orphans out there who need homes.
Marla
** kidding
I think what it boils down to with Becky's position is that she sees adoption as charity work. Sure, when I'm giving my time or money to a charity, I try to think about who is most deserving, least likely to get helped by someone else. But adoption IS NOT charity work. If you see your children as charity cases, you're really setting them up for some problems.
And what is it that makes adoptive parents responsible for doing charity work when biological parents are not responsible for it? If anything, I think you could make the argument that simply by not adding another child to the world population, adopters already are doing the planet a favor. Why does no one say to pregnant women, "Oh, so you're adding another child to the planet? How can you feel ethical about that?" They don't and shouldn't. But neither should adoptive parents be held to a higher standard than pregnant women. That's just not fair.
And even if I did rank where to adopt by who is most deserving, why oh why is one child more or less deserving than another? Aren't all equally deserving? Do Meredith and Madeleine have any less right to a home than an American kid with disabilities or whoever else you'd prefer get adopted? I don't think so. Every child equally deserves a home, and his or her race or nationality should not matter.
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