Search Results for: adoption about adoption adoption process issues

Open, Semi-Open or Closed Adoption

There are many women out there facing an unplanned pregnancy and if you are considering placing your unborn child up for adoption GOOD FOR YOU. As I am sure you know there are thousands of potential parents just waiting for a child to call their own. Before you begin deciding on the parents for your child you need to give some other issues some thoughts. Choosing the adoptive parents is an extremely important decision but there are other decisions that you need to make before you begin the process of choosing the family. First you need to think about whether … Continue reading →

Guiding Others To Adoption

Every time my husband or I hear that someone is considering adoption we jump in with our story through the adoption process. Now my mom is even starting to do it. A client of her has a daughter that is considering adoption and so now she passes my information on to them. She tells people about the wonderful children just waiting in the foster care system for a forever home. It was funny she calls me up asking me what agency we used, who our case worker was and how long the process was. Do you know what my answer … Continue reading →

Following a TV Show’s Adoption

I just watched this week’s episode of Army Wives. If you have never seen it before you need to check it out on Sunday nights on Lifetime. The last few weeks one of the families was working towards adopting an older foster child. The show has shown some of the issues that a family planning to adopt really do face. They did however make the fastest home study & foster approval in history, but other than that the emotional issues they discuss are real. The family met a child they wanted to adopt; they knew nothing about his history or … Continue reading →

Preparing for and Processing a Reunion: Expectations and Emotions

My last blogs talked about children’s experience of open adoption and possible advantages of a meeting between the child and birth family members. Counselors and social workers familiar with adoption issues can provide invaluable help in preparing for and dealing with such a reunion. Adoption workers may help birth and adoptive parents share and manage expectations, and help them process their own adoption issues so that they can be focused on the needs of the child. For one birthfather, these sessions covered the circumstances of his daughter’s birth and adoption, his feelings for her then and now, his relationship with … Continue reading →

Embryo Adoption, Part Two

My last blog was on a relatively new type of adoption, embryo adoption. The visibility of embryo adoption will, I predict, increase quite a bit for three reasons. The increased debate about stem cells will impact people’s awareness of and beliefs about frozen embryos, which are a main source of embryonic stem cells. Some scientists say that embryonic stem cells, which have not yet differentiated into different types of tissues, will be the most useful for treating diseases (although non-embryonic stem cells, obtained from blood, umbilical cords or other tissue, have already been used to treat aplastic anemia, and other … Continue reading →

Top Twelve Adoption Books of 2008 Part Two: Nonfiction

This blog is the second part of my “Top Twelve” of the books I’ve reviewed this year. My last blog reviewed picture books, including three from my Adoption Books with Great Art series, and also fictional offerings for pre-teens and early teens. This blog is on my favorite nonfiction about adoption. The Adoption Guide 2008 stands out as a compact yet comprehensive resource. It contains articles on infant adoption, international adoption, and foster-adoption. It has a summary of adoption trends and current regulations for twelve countries, a state-by-state listing of agencies and attorneys, guides for choosing an agency and/or attorney, … Continue reading →

Book Review: Katie-Bo–an Adoption Story

Iris Fisher’s Katie-Bo: an Adoption Story tells the adoption process from the point of view of an older sibling. The book describes the entire adoption process, with only a sentence or two for each step. It would be excellent for helping older siblings understand the process of adoption. I would say it is aimed at kids about kindergarten age. The narrator shares how his parents explain adoption to him and his brother. They make clear that the birthmother loves the baby, but because they can’t take good care of a baby right now she goes to an adoption agency, “a … Continue reading →

Book Review: Adoption is a Family Affair–What Family and Friends Must Know

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Prolific adoption writer Patricia Irwin Johnston is herself an adoptive parent of three. Her husband and sister-in-law were also adopted. Pat has been a writer, speaker, educator and advocate on adoption topics for nearly 20 years. While moderating an internet support group for waiting parents, she found many prospective adoptive parents reporting insensitive comments and myths about adoption that they were hearing from family members. Many waiting parents also noted that people didn’t seem to know what to say when they announced that they were adopting, and that before and after the baby arrived they didn’t have the traditional supportive … Continue reading →

Other Adoption Loss Scenarios

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My last blogs, What is Adoption Loss? and and Legal-Risk Placements, talk about the disappointment and grief that ensue when a planned adoption does not happen and describe some situations when this might occur. Other situations of adoption loss can occur when a child whose birthmother who had arranged to place with specific parents literally dies before or after the birth. A famous, thankfully rare, situation was the crash of a jumbo jet carrying several hundred Vietnamese children to the United States for adoption during Operation Babylift just before the fall of Saigon in 1975. A baby may be born … Continue reading →

Book Review: The Adoption Decision

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The Adoption Decision, by Linda Christianson, is not a how-to manual for adopting. He book’s subtitle, 15 Things You Want to Know Before Adopting, only hints at the insight contained within its pages. This book doesn’t just tell you 15 facts about adoption. Its 15 chapters deal with issues families who contemplate adoption must think about. The issues include: attachment and feeling like a “real” parent, affording adoption, managing the grief of infertility, waiting for an unknown length of time during the adoption process, birthparents, open adoption, adopting an older child, international adoption, transracial adoption, integrating a different culture into … Continue reading →