The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant by Dan Savage Page B
Authors: Dan Savage
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three months later they adopted her kid. Simple.
It wasn't always that simple, though. Sometimes women contacted the agency from the hospital after they'd given birth. In these cases, “Dear Birthparent . . .” letters and an agency counselor were hustled over to the hospital. The birth mom picked a family, and the counselor called and asked the couple if they wanted to take this child. If you did a hospital placement, you didn't get to meet the birth mom before the birth, which was a drawback. You were going to be in touch with this woman for the rest of your life, so compatability counted; also, she hadn't had any counseling and might not be completely comfortable about her decision to “make an adoption plan.”
“Once your paperwork is finished, your home study is done, and your birthparent letter is written,” Ruth told us during the seminar, “it's pretty much out of your hands. Once you're in the pool, the average wait is about nine months. Some couples have waited as long as two years.”
Apparently, the wait could be stressful: along with “10 Reasons Not to Adopt,” the agency gave us another handout listing ways couples could keep from going crazy while waiting in the pool: redecorate; travel; read; learn to bake. What you weren't supposed to do, however, was buy baby furniture, diapers, or booties, or decorate the nursery. Looking at an empty nursery every day for two years could drive a couple crazy. Since all indications were that Terry and I would have to wait a long time, we decided not to pass the time we were in the pool painting bunnies on the ceiling of our spare bedroom.
“Anyway,” Ruth told us on the seminar's first day, “everything you need for the first few weeks, you can pick up on your way home from the hospital.”
But before the hospital, there was the home study; a counselor from the agency would visit our home, ask us questions, and write up a report for the agency and the state assessing our fitness to parent.
I didn't mind the idea, but it was clear at the seminar that the straight couples minded it very much. In the first Q&A session most of the Qs were about the home study: how it was conducted,how intrusive it was, what the agency was looking for, were they trying to “bust” couples, how often did couples fail. Ruth assured us that there was nothing adversarial about the home study, and that while they would be visiting us at home and asking a lot of personal questions, they weren't out to “bust” anybody. There were no unannouced visits, no white-glove tests, no poking around in drawers or closets. And as for personal questions, they couldn't be avoided. The agency would have to vouch for us to the state and our birth moms, and to do that they would have to get to know us.
It seemed sensible that before the agency handed anyone a kid, they'd have someone drop by and ask a few questions. It would be in everyone's best interests for the agency to make sure we had smoke alarms, indoor plumbing, and a good reason for wanting a baby. Likewise, if we had pentagrams painted on the walls and dead chickens scattered around the living room, well, the agency might want to take that into consideration. The home study made sense to me.
But I'm not straight.
I haven't lived all my adult life with the expectation that when I decided to have children, only one other person would be in on the decision. Terry and I didn't regard having babies as our inalienable biological right. Even before we decided to adopt, we were having to answer a lot of questions from the people who could've made us dads: lesbians and next-door neighbors.
But the straight couples had expected to make the decision to have kids with absolute autonomy. When they tried to get pregnant and couldn't, they sought out fertility treatments. They lost some physical autonomy, and judging from what some of the couples subjected themselves to, they lost a little dignity. But they were still in charge, and when and how
It wasn't always that simple, though. Sometimes women contacted the agency from the hospital after they'd given birth. In these cases, “Dear Birthparent . . .” letters and an agency counselor were hustled over to the hospital. The birth mom picked a family, and the counselor called and asked the couple if they wanted to take this child. If you did a hospital placement, you didn't get to meet the birth mom before the birth, which was a drawback. You were going to be in touch with this woman for the rest of your life, so compatability counted; also, she hadn't had any counseling and might not be completely comfortable about her decision to “make an adoption plan.”
“Once your paperwork is finished, your home study is done, and your birthparent letter is written,” Ruth told us during the seminar, “it's pretty much out of your hands. Once you're in the pool, the average wait is about nine months. Some couples have waited as long as two years.”
Apparently, the wait could be stressful: along with “10 Reasons Not to Adopt,” the agency gave us another handout listing ways couples could keep from going crazy while waiting in the pool: redecorate; travel; read; learn to bake. What you weren't supposed to do, however, was buy baby furniture, diapers, or booties, or decorate the nursery. Looking at an empty nursery every day for two years could drive a couple crazy. Since all indications were that Terry and I would have to wait a long time, we decided not to pass the time we were in the pool painting bunnies on the ceiling of our spare bedroom.
“Anyway,” Ruth told us on the seminar's first day, “everything you need for the first few weeks, you can pick up on your way home from the hospital.”
But before the hospital, there was the home study; a counselor from the agency would visit our home, ask us questions, and write up a report for the agency and the state assessing our fitness to parent.
I didn't mind the idea, but it was clear at the seminar that the straight couples minded it very much. In the first Q&A session most of the Qs were about the home study: how it was conducted,how intrusive it was, what the agency was looking for, were they trying to “bust” couples, how often did couples fail. Ruth assured us that there was nothing adversarial about the home study, and that while they would be visiting us at home and asking a lot of personal questions, they weren't out to “bust” anybody. There were no unannouced visits, no white-glove tests, no poking around in drawers or closets. And as for personal questions, they couldn't be avoided. The agency would have to vouch for us to the state and our birth moms, and to do that they would have to get to know us.
It seemed sensible that before the agency handed anyone a kid, they'd have someone drop by and ask a few questions. It would be in everyone's best interests for the agency to make sure we had smoke alarms, indoor plumbing, and a good reason for wanting a baby. Likewise, if we had pentagrams painted on the walls and dead chickens scattered around the living room, well, the agency might want to take that into consideration. The home study made sense to me.
But I'm not straight.
I haven't lived all my adult life with the expectation that when I decided to have children, only one other person would be in on the decision. Terry and I didn't regard having babies as our inalienable biological right. Even before we decided to adopt, we were having to answer a lot of questions from the people who could've made us dads: lesbians and next-door neighbors.
But the straight couples had expected to make the decision to have kids with absolute autonomy. When they tried to get pregnant and couldn't, they sought out fertility treatments. They lost some physical autonomy, and judging from what some of the couples subjected themselves to, they lost a little dignity. But they were still in charge, and when and how
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