Adoption Is a Family Affair!
What Relatives and Friends Must Know
Revised Edition
Patricia Irwin Johnston
Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia
First published in 2001 by Perspectives Press
This revised edition published in 2012
by Jessica Kingsley Publishers
116 Pentonville Road
London N1 9JB, UK
and
400 Market Street, Suite 400
Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA
www.jkp.com
Copyright Patricia Irwin Johnston 2001, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 610 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owners written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.
Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84905 895 7
eISBN 978 0 85700 619 6
Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB
Adoption Is a Family Affair! is dedicated to the thousands of would-be adopting parents and adoptive families that I have come to know over more than 35 years of living and working in the field.
About the Author
Patricia Irwin Johnston (Pat) is the granddaughter of a birthmother, the wife and sister-in-law and cousin-in-law and great-aunt of adopted people, and the mom, through adoption, to three now-adult children.
For over 35 years she was a prodigious award-winning volunteer within the infertility and adoption communities, serving on the boards of directors of several influential organizations including Resolve, Inc. and Adoptive Families of America. She also authored several books and was the founding publisher at Perspectives Press, Inc., a niche press in the U.S., which published exclusively on challenged family building and its alternatives. When she retired at the end of 2011, so did Perspectives Press. Some of its books, like this one, found homes at Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Pat and her husband Dave live in Indianapolis, Indiana where they are enjoying grandchildren!
Acknowledgments
The original 2001 edition of this book came about because the participants in the online Adoption Waiting Room, which I was moderating for the International Council on Infertility Information Dissemination (INCIID), felt it was urgently needed. I had thought so, too, for quite some time. As the then-Publisher at Perspectives Press I had encouraged several authors who had come to me with the idea for such a book, but no manuscript ever materialized.
The INCIIDers and I took matters into our own hands. We brainstormed online at www.inciid.org/forums/adoption_waiting/index.html on and off over several weeks about what topics belonged in the table of contents for this book. Participants shared anecdotes that found their way inside these pages. We talked about possible titles. Eventually a small book was developed to fill the need these waiting parents had for something to share with their friends and families to help them get with the program of bringing a child into the family by adoption.
Eleven years later, the bones of that book are still strong. This new version has been updated to reflect a decades worth of changes in how adoption is working in the world today. While the different structures and procedures relating to adoption mean that some of the material will not reflect the experience of readers outside of North America, my hope is that there will still be much useful adviceparticularly regarding family relationships and how best to support your loved oneswhich will be helpful wherever you are.
Id like to thank my own extended familymy parents and Daves, our siblings and aunts and unclesfor not needing such a book in their time. On Daves side of the family, adoption was already firmly entrenched and understood. His parents and one of his aunts and uncles adopted all of their children, so that his generation of cousins included four by adoption and just two by birth. My family had not (we thought then) experienced adoption before, yet they embraced it with absolutely no reservations from the beginning. There has been a stumble or two along the way, but the Johnstons and the Irwins have dusted themselves off quite well, thank you! Thanks to these two wonderful wide families, our kids (now adults) always belonged in every way.
NOTE: The families mentioned throughout this book are representational fictionalizations of real adoptive parents and would-be adopters I have known. While they have given me full permission to share their direct quotes and their family stories, names and some circumstances have been altered or left out to protect individual family privacy.
The Announcement
Melika and Ahmad and Nancy and Fred are two couples I know well. Both families hoped for a child for years and worked actively on that. Melika and Ahmad got pregnant several times, but were unable to carry a pregnancy to term. Nancy and Fred had never been pregnant, despite medications and invasive procedures.
Margaret is a member of my church. Despite the fact that shed like to have found a partner and married and had babies, at 35 she was single and childless. Sam and Stewart are gay and had lived together in a committed relationship for ten years. For both Marcia and Erv, in their late 40s, theirs is a second marriage. Erv had nearly grown children from his first marriage, but Marcia had no children. Ruben and Anita have given birth to three healthy children but had room in their hearts and their home for more.
What these folks have in common is that the reaction of their families to their decision to adopt a child surprised and disappointed them. They expected joy! They expected support! What they got (at least what they felt that they heard) was shock and fear and apparent disapproval.
Oh no, honey! Why would you want to do that? followed by
Just keep trying; youll get pregnant again, or
I read about this great doctor over in Big City. Have you thought about seeing him? or
But youre not married! Children need two parents. You cant do this alone, or
You know we love Sam/Stewart, darling, but your life is hard enough. How could you do that to a child? or
At your age? You were out of college and Mom and I were almost ready to retire when we were your age! You cant start parenting now! or
But you have such a lovely family! Why would you want to risk exposing our grandchildren to the dangers of adopting one of those kids? or
Adopting! Why everybody knows that adopted kids have all kinds of problems. What kind of person gives away his own flesh and blood? or
