A Mother’s Journey
Unexpected Questions
by Jane Castanias
I have a confession to make: Growing up, when I imagined my future family, adoption didn’t even enter the picture.
You too?
This is one of those moments when the old adage “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans” really hits home.
Now that my husband and I are adoptive parents, I can’t imagine building my family any other way. It was, however, a journey. And during that journey, I—and others who were walking the path with me—had questions, concerns, and doubts. So my purpose in writing this is not to convince you that adoption is amazing (it is) but rather to work through some of the common concerns those considering adoption have and hopefully provide some helpful insight.
What were you expecting?
When I envisioned my dream family, I’d be one of those glowing pregnant ladies. Lazily painting the nursery (no morning sickness for me) and gently teasing my husband as he struggled to put together a crib.
I did not imagine being told that I would be unable to have a biological child, nor did I imagine years of infertility treatment.
I did not imagine crafting a “profile” of my husband and myself, hoping to convince a brave young woman that we were the best option for her child.
Expectations are powerful emotions—and altering your expectations is a difficult decision to make.
But consider this: Did you imagine a career more glamorous than the one you ended up with?
How about when you fell in love with your spouse—did you imagine there might be days where Every. Single. Thing. They. Do. Is. Irritating? (Not that my husband is ever irritating.)
Parenthood is such a “big” issue that leaving behind your expectations is particularly difficult. Really, though, that’s most of life.
What if…?
My biggest hurdle in pursuing adoption was the loss of control. Control over the pregnancy, control over the process, and control over the future (putting aside the impossibility of controlling the future for the moment…). What if the birth mother smoked or drank during pregnancy? What if I needed biological health information that I could not access? What if the birth mother changed her mind? What if she showed up at my door demanding my child? What if we become a tragic movie of the week?!?
I turned to a couple of strategies to keep the catastrophic thinking at bay.
First, because of these concerns, we looked for a situation that gave us the most control over the process we could find, in particular, an agency that limited some of my fears.
Secondly, taking apart each fear, I found that when I really thought about it, it was nothing my husband and I couldn’t handle. For one thing, we are an entire generation of (relatively) healthy people whose mothers may have smoked or drank during pregnancy. Whole Foods didn’t even exist when we were in utero! And we turned out OK (for the most part, anyway).
In terms of obtaining health information from previous generations, while I certainly have some information about my biological family, I don’t have much beyond my parents. Generations of families before us have managed without this information.
As for the movie of the week, rarely do adoptions go so wrong that they are interesting enough to be in a movie. Hire a good lawyer or adoption agency to make sure everything is done right, and you are pretty safe here.
Oh—and one last worry—that my child would someday yell at me, “You’re not my real mother!” Well, I have news for you. Pretty much all kids, adopted or not, yell something awful like that at their parents. Maybe you didn’t, but I certainly did.
Kids getting mad at their parents is an ordinary part of parenting. It isn't an adoption issue.
When is it time to move on?
If your adoption decision is the result of infertility, you may have spent many years in treatment. You’ve learned about it, gone through difficult medical procedures, and spent a lot of money.
It’s so hard to give up the hope that just one more round of treatment will be the one. And now you have to go out and educate yourself about yet another way to build a family, when most people just get to have sex?
Again, it helps to break it down: What type of adoption feels most comfortable to me? What agencies appeal to me? What issues are of most concern to me? Then move forward.
For me the moment came after a failed treatment. I thought, If God himself sat down next to me and said, ‘You can get pregnant in two years, but you can adopt a child in one,’ I’d pick adopting a child.
I’d spent too much emotional energy, and too much of my marriage, on the treatment path. It was time to move on.
Will I be able to love a child not biologically related?
First of all, yes.
I have never met an adoptive parent who was unable to love his or her “nonbiological” child.
If you can, visit an adoption agency where they have adoptive parents speak. You can hear the absolute love in their voices.
Additionally, thinking of some real-life examples might be helpful. You love your spouse, right? I’m hoping that you are not biologically related. To me, that is the strongest example of a “nonbiological” love.
A lovely story a friend’s father told me was that when his daughter and her husband came through the arrival doors at the airport carrying their adopted babies, he felt the same as if they had burst through the hospital doors to show off their new biological grandchildren.
Shouldn’t I feel guilty?
What if you want to adopt a child who is the same race as you are? Or a newborn? There are so many needy children in foster care and around the world of all races and ages.
I was often asked by well-meaning people, “Why don’t you adopt from foster care? Or internationally?” And certainly Caucasian infants are available for adoption through both foster and sometimes through international adoption.
However, adoption, and family, are personal decisions. I wanted the control that our domestic agency gave us. I wanted a newborn. And I wanted to be able to walk into a restaurant with my kids and not immediately have to face questions about adoption—and I did not want them to have to face those questions.
A purely personal decision.
So when asked, if I was in a good mood I’d say, “We’ve looked at all the options and made the best decision for our family.”
If I was in a bad mood I might say something like: “I don’t know, why don’t you?”
Just because a family can have biological children does not preclude them from adopting a child from foster care or overseas.
How will I parent a child of a different race or culture?
Many of my friends have adopted children from a different culture or who have a different skin color than their own. And—just as in most parenting—these parents educated themselves.
Some make trips to the country of origin of their child. Perhaps they celebrate holidays special to that country or learn the language. They learn how to answer questions, both the rude ones and the polite ones, about their child who does not look like them.
There are so many resources: the Internet, adoption agencies, adoption support groups. You will find a wealth of information to help you navigate parenting your child.
And in this day and age, who can really tell if a child is adopted or biological just because his or her skin is different? Perhaps one parent is Caucasian and one is African American?
What if my child wants to meet his or her “real” mom or dad?
I worried about this one a lot more before we adopted our children. Now I know that the bond we have simply can’t be replaced, even by a birth parent.
My husband and I have been there for almost every day of our girls’ lives, loving and caring for them.
So I can honestly say that something I once considered a potential “threat” is something I no longer worry about. Our daughters may want to meet their birth parents at some time, and I expect that we will be supportive—while ensuring that our children are emotionally prepared and protected, because that is what “real” parents do.
Some adoptions are more open—which is a choice you can make. But even seeing a birth parent throughout a child’s life cannot replace the love and care you give that child. Before your children are old enough to even understand the difference between birth parent and adoptive parent, you will have been the one up with them at night, showering them with hugs and kisses, and being a “real” parent.
A Final Word
Decisions are hard. But consider this: You may make the right choice the first time, you may make a mistake along the way, but making no choice is, in fact, choosing not to adopt.
Agencies and countries have age restrictions, and birth parents may favor younger adoptive parents. The timing needs to be right for you, but staying too long in the land of doubt can be paralyzing.
Although it was a difficult journey for us, it was one that I can’t imagine having ended any better than it has. Our daughters are exactly that—ours.
Jane Hutchinson Castanias is a member of the board of directors of the National Council for Adoption and former chair of the board of directors of RESOLVE, a family-building organization that educates, supports, and advocates for those with infertility about their family-building options, including adoption.