Adopting a Snowflake

[carnation]

A lot of these "snowflake" agencies have pages where you can look at the embryos' original parents' information to help you decide which ones you might like to give birth to. Interestingly, most original parents don't care very much which race the adoptive parents are; they're looking at other things!

Most states now require that potential snowflake adopters have a homestudy first.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by carnation

Sometimes intense terms must be used, and not only in the adoption field, to describe the depth of what has been done to some children. Although no one uses these terms around the children, they are certainly used because if you had seen what many of us have seen, you would not be able to come up with a synonym for it. If no one has tried to do that in the last several years of selecting better names for certain terms (i.e., "mentally handicapped" instead of retarded), it''s probably not going to happen.

I agree with you regarding the larger point. These are common phrases in the adoption world. Just as all of our fields of expertise/communities have common terminology and phrases that others hear or read and might say "that sounds horrible."

One thing that I have noticed is there are a lot of websites that describe certain types of adopted children as being in bad condition. That can be interpreted in different ways. Youth and young adults live on the Internet now so it is not impossible for them to read that stuff. That can especially apply to kids who grew up being treated as though they are damaged by either their families or their schools. That happens a lot. This doesn't make the terminology inherently flawed. This is about potential outcomes/consquences regardless of intent and every field of expertise, discipline, communities, etc. has things to consider in that regard.

That can be neither here nor there but, as with all fields of expertise and disciplines, there can be a shift in how adults-of-today discuss these matters in comparison to how the adults-of-tomorrow may discuss these matters.

[greekdee]

Honeychile and Pinkyphimu...you are both right on, thank you. Yes, there needs to be honesty and yes, there is a fairy tale ideal that some people get caught up in.

As for honesty: the woman who helped us facilitate the U.S. side of our international adoption got into that type of work because of being lied to when she and her husband adopted. They adopted a beautiful 7-month-old girl from Russia. They were told she had been born just a little premature, but was perfectly healthy. Got her back home to Atlanta only to learn that she had severe cerebral palsy. They were, of course, heartbroken that their little girl was so ill. They were also in no way prepared to cope financially and almost went completely under due to the massive medical bills that continue even today, over a decade later. Their financial condition has improved, but during the first five years, they were pretty close to living on a cardboard box under a bridge. Would they have adopted had they known the baby was so ill? I don't know, but can say that honesty in such cases would not stop everyone from adopting. While we were in the Ukraine, we met a family from Maine who were on their third adoption of a child with special needs -- a little boy about 3 years who was missing part of a leg and part of an arm. Adopting special needs children was where their hearts were led, and they were emotionally, physically and financially up for the challenges. Honesty is so key in making sure children are placed with the best families for their needs.

As for the fairy tale: my oldest son has a friend whose older brother was adopted from Russia at age 9 years. The family was so excited about bringing this boy into the family...couldn't wait to take this kid who had been dealt a bad hand and make up for his past. Pour on the love, give him every opportunity, make his wildest dreams come true. Their hearts were so very much in the right place, but their heads were in the clouds...as the mother finally admits now. Sad fact: not all adoptive children are sweet, sad, motherless angels who just need love. This kid was a cold, unappreciative, selfish, narcissistic, MEAN little shit who put that family through grief after grief. Did they love him? Yes. Get him therapy? Oh yes, lots of it. Last spring, he turned 18 and pretty much said, "kiss off -- I'm going back to Russia." And he did, as though the past 9 years never happened. He is living over there with a cousin, I believe. His family here in America is
shell shocked.

Okay, you guys need to clue me in -- I'm not getting what is so disturbing about the word "condition." I hear that all the time, in the schools, at the pediatrician, pretty much everywhere and applicable to everyone. When one of my son's dislocated his elbow during football practice, the first thing the ER doc said when he came in with X-rays was, "let's talk about your son's condition." One of my friends was just told by her son's high school counselor that he is in pretty good condition for getting accepted to UGA. I have always heard it as a word that merely references the state of someone or something. No more, no less.

Granted, I have not been on adoption-related websites in quite a long time. Is "condition" used in a negative way on them?

[Mevara]

Originally Posted by carnation

Most states now require that potential snowflake adopters have a homestudy first.

I find it interesting that to adopt a baby or to adopt a snowflake you need to have a homestudy but anyone can go willy nilly and have children of their own.

[carnation]

Originally Posted by greekdee

Granted, I have not been on adoption-related websites in quite a long time. Is "condition" used in a negative way on them?

No, pretty much same as always.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by Mevara

I find it interesting that to adopt a baby or to adopt a snowflake you need to have a homestudy but anyone can go willy nilly and have children of their own.

Because adoption is a formal process whereas conceiving through fertile-item-meets-fertile-vagina is an informal process.

The day that the North American government requires homestudies for traditional conception is the day that we should go back to sterilizing those who are deemed unworthy of conceiving. Mentally challenged, impoverished, physically disabled, and some racial and ethnic minorities--let's stop you now before you breed more of you!

[greekdee]

Originally Posted by Mevara

I find it interesting that to adopt a baby or to adopt a snowflake you need to have a homestudy but anyone can go willy nilly and have children of their own.

We were required to have a Home Study done. We also had social workers go through our house from top to bottom to make sure our home was safe and child-friendly. We were fingerprinted by our local sheriff's office AND by the FBI. (You would think the FBI check would kind of cover everything background-wise, huh?) Anyway, we underwent a full background check, credit check...bank statements and tax returns had to be handed over...employment and salary verification was required...had complete medical evaluations, including testing for HIV, TB, and every hepatitis in the alphabet... had to get mental evaluations, show proof of marriage and provide numerous letters of reference.

Meanwhile, our neighbor's 18-year-old meth-addicted daughter got pregnant and had a baby, no questions asked.

If the US foster care system and child service programs (which suck, at least where I am) were half as strict and in-depth as the Ukraine is about adopting, maybe so many American kids would not fall through the cracks..

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by greekdee

Meanwhile, our neighbor's 18-year-old meth-addicted daughter got pregnant and had a baby, no questions asked.

If the US foster care system and child service programs (which suck, at least where I am) were half as strict and in-depth as the Ukraine is about adopting, maybe so many American kids would not fall through the cracks..

I find tremendous irony in where this discussion is going.

[carnation]

Originally Posted by greekdee

We were required to have a Home Study done. We also had social workers go through our house from top to bottom to make sure our home was safe and child-friendly. We were fingerprinted by our local sheriff's office AND by the FBI. (You would think the FBI check would kind of cover everything background-wise, huh?) Anyway, we underwent a full background check, credit check...bank statements and tax returns had to be handed over...employment and salary verification was required...had complete medical evaluations, including testing for HIV, TB, and every hepatitis in the alphabet... had to get mental evaluations, show proof of marriage and provide numerous letters of reference.

Oh my gosh! When we were fingerprinted at the sheriff's office, half of the town wandered through and saw us there and wondered why! And for one adoption, we had to have our pictures made like they do for mug shots, holding those signs! (Immigration soon got rid of that requirement due to many complaints.)

And then when we went for the HIV test at the health department, the elderly nurse stepped out of the clearly marked HIV Office and yelled, "Mr, and Mrs. Carnation! We have your test results!" and we knew several people in the waiting room. My normally quiet husband said loudly, "Oh, for our ADOPTION!" and as we followed her into her office, she was saying, "You mean you don't need no counseling for how to avoid the need for another HIV test?" Um, no we didn't.

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by greekdee

Okay, you guys need to clue me in -- I'm not getting what is so disturbing about the word "condition." I hear that all the time, in the schools, at the pediatrician, pretty much everywhere and applicable to everyone.

Granted, I have not been on adoption-related websites in quite a long time. Is "condition" used in a negative way on them?

I'm not quite sure what the hullabaloo is either, unless people are just piling on someone.

With adoption, you have to be completely honest. Some people are not equipped (financially, emotionally, tempermentally, what-have-you) to have anything other than a drug-free infant of their same race. For some people, having an older child or one of a different race is a loud indicator to the rest of the world that they're unable to have a child.

One of my former co-workers and his partner are going through the foster care system to adopt. They're looking for kids of any age or race--his partner is a social worker and is familiar with resources available to them, and they're not exactly fooling anyone by having a kid of the same race. The funny thing is, they're getting nothing but requests to have them take in babies!

The family I grew up next door to adopted a daughter a long time before we moved in. She was 5 and had grown up in a brothel in England. They had the resources to take care of her, but back in the 60s there wasn't much education or support for children who had seen the things she had, much less for the families who adopted them. She ended up having terrible behavioral problems, along with a drug addiction in her early teens, and it almost ripped their family apart. For the sake of their three older children they ended up having her live with her grandparents in a much smaller town. Fortunately, she was able to thrive there. Horror stories like that are becoming much more rare because agencies are being more open and parents are much more educated, but not everyone has the time or patience to see something like that out. Today, people are much more open about what an adoptee's pre-adoption life may have been like so people can make an educated decision.

Originally Posted by honeychile

Fast-forward to sixth grade. Sister & Husband were called in to talk to the school psychologist. Daughter was high functioning, but would never be able to live alone. You see, before she was adopted, Daughter had never had anything to eat other than cold milk and orange juice. She had never been out of a crib. So, while she was healthy physically, the deprivation of much needed nutrition didn't allow her brain to function properly.

That actually sounds pretty tame for a Ceacescu-era baby. Remember, a lot of families brought babies and toddlers home who never quite started thriving and then learned that they had been given HIV through tainted needles (it was believed that giving blood transfusions to babies would make them look more "robust" to potential adoptive parents). Of course, anti-retrovirals weren't as developed as they were now, so the children more often than not died terrible deaths at a young age.

A few weeks ago, New York Magazine had an article about women having babies into their late 40s and 50s. Most of the women, obviously, had gone through IVF with donor eggs. I don't remember if any of them used snowflakes, though.

[greekdee]

Originally Posted by carnation

Oh my gosh! When we were fingerprinted at the sheriff's office, half of the town wandered through and saw us there and wondered why! And for one adoption, we had to have our pictures made like they do for mug shots, holding those signs! (Immigration soon got rid of that requirement due to many complaints.)

And then when we went for the HIV test at the health department, the elderly nurse stepped out of the clearly marked HIV Office and yelled, "Mr, and Mrs. Carnation! We have your test results!" and we knew several people in the waiting room. My normally quiet husband said loudly, "Oh, for our ADOPTION!" and as we followed her into her office, she was saying, "You mean you don't need no counseling for how to avoid the need for another HIV test?" Um, no we didn't.

Ha ha, I relate! Nothing quite like going to the county health department and mumbling, "I'm here for an AIDS test." Then we had to sit in the Communicable Disease area and wait to be called, praying nobody we knew would come in.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

I'm not quite sure what the hullabaloo is either, unless people are just piling on someone.

And which people are those?

This is not one of those topics where piling on someone is fun. Sure, the tone of some of these posts could have been better (including a couple of carnation's posts) but that does not mean the point of discussion is unfounded.

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

With adoption, you have to be completely honest. Some people are not equipped (financially, emotionally, tempermentally, what-have-you) to have anything other than a drug-free infant of their same race. For some people, having an older child or one of a different race is a loud indicator to the rest of the world that they're unable to have a child.

Adoption is not the only place in life where complete honesty is important. Adoption is also not the only place in life where people respond to commonly used terminology in a negative manner. For example, "special needs" is used in the adoption world and outside of the adoption world for a range of conditions. (http://encyclopedia.adoption.com/ent...eds/339/1.html)

Depending on where you are and who you are talking to, some people (including adopted parents, social workers, and community leaders) have an issue with categorizing some of these children in that manner. That doesn't mean people do not understand why that categorization and terminology is used. It means that people are challenging the implications and what is embedded in such use. People are also bringing attention to potential outcomes, including the process of labeling children as having "special needs" or "having certain conditions."

[KSUViolet06]

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

Fortunately, she was able to thrive there. Horror stories like that are becoming much more rare because agencies are being more open and parents are much more educated, but not everyone has the time or patience to see something like that out. Today, people are much more open about what an adoptee's pre-adoption life may have been like so people can make an educated decision.

True.

Adoption is MUCH more open now than it used to be.

Everyone I know who has successfully adopted domestically has some sort of relationship with the birth mom. There's no awkward "you're adopted!!!!" horror story moment because kids are raised knowing birth mom and adopted mom.

The level of openness is typically agreed upon by both parties. One friend has regular email contact with birth mom, sends pics, and has a visit once a month or so. Another actually has developed a friendship with birth mom (who was on drugs when her daughter was adopted, but ended up getting clean, going to school, getting married and having more children.) So they get together fairly regularly.

That type of interaction would have NEVER happened when say, my mom was a teen. They had the stories of girls getting pregnant and "going away" for 9 months. Then coming back after having given up their babies for adoption. No one ever talked about it. They never got to see their kids (until years later when they were adults.) It was all very hush hush and adoptive parents wouldnt dream of speaking to the birth mom. They got the bare minimum of info about the parents because everything was so discreet.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

I find tremendous irony in where this discussion is going.

Yep.

[AOIIalum]

Originally Posted by KSUViolet06

That type of interaction would have NEVER happened when say, my mom was a teen. They had the stories of girls getting pregnant and "going away" for 9 months. Then coming back after having given up their babies for adoption. No one ever talked about it. They never got to see their kids (until years later when they were adults.) It was all very hush hush and adoptive parents wouldnt dream of speaking to the birth mom. They got the bare minimum of info about the parents because everything was so discreet.

Well said Violet. I was adopted and it was and is still closed (my choice). I've always known it and it's as much of a part of me as my brown eyes. My parents went through the norm back in those days for adopting, which included the home studies, religious agency studies, applications and years of waiting time for a "healthy white infant". My parents brought me home two months after I was born. Is it easy to adopt, then or now? Of course not, just as it's not easy to give birth or to raise a child regardless of how they joined your family.