Choosing Adoption

One of the best books I read in deciding to adopt was Adoption: Choosing it, Living It, Loving It by Dr. Ray Guarendi. He’s a psychologist who, with his wife, has adopted 10 children. While Guarendi focuses mostly on domestic adoption and the foster system, many of his chapters are still relevant to international adoption. The book is in advice column format tackling concerns such as deciding to adopt, perhaps adopting a special needs child, or taking on sibling groups. He also  discusses adopting older children, the search for birth parents and social stigmas. With wit, wisdom and lots of personal experience, he assures readers that adoption can be one of the most life changing and rewarding experiences in a family’s life.

Now that we have been officially placed with our son and he has been home for over 7 months, I have been re-reading the book. In reflecting on the experience, I am so happy that we adopted. Dr.Gurendi and his wife also suffered from infertility. While it was more of an instant decision for them to want to adopt, it took a little bit longer for me. I still had to grieve the possibility of giving birth to a biological child. Now that my son is home, I honestly feel like we’ve had him since birth. He is so attached to my husband and me, and we are so honored to be able to parent him. 

One of the biggest reasons people don’t adopt is because they’re scared. Fear is a huge factor causing people to not go forward with the process. There are so many what-ifs. What if the child rejects me? What if the child develops a medical problem I can’t deal with? What if s/he is a behavioral nightmare? What if I’m a terrible parent? What if s/he prefers to be with the birth mother? Will I love this child as much as a biological child? Just examining these questions listed, the only purely adoption-related ones are the last two. The other questions would pertain to any child adopted or not. Guarendi takes many opportunities in his novel to normalize adoption and encourage people to give it a try. Adoption can become a family’s whole life focus or it can just be another characteristic making the family unique. It all depends on your perception and attitude.

There are many uncertainties when adopting, particularly waiting time. There is no set in stone number of days in which you will find out if you’ve been matched; similarly it is unknown when you will get final approval. Sure the wait times are shorter in the U.S. foster system, but parents are often fearful that the birth mom will come forward and choose to keep custody of her child. Gurendi accurately assumes, If one wants certainty in life, having a child is not the place to start. Indeed during our wait to adopt I was a fearful wreck. We adopted from South Korea and the system and culture makes adoptions almost guaranteed and irreversible. Nonetheless I had thoughts such as, what if the Korean government finds something in our dossier that they don’t like and change their mind? What if we’re on the flight and the plane crashes? I could go into the multitudinous scenarios my mind created, all of which were cooked up by my own insecurities. And this is pre-pandemic. There are a whole host of extra medical measures families have to go through now to adopt from Korea so I am super grateful that we were placed with our child at that time. We simply cannot let our fears overrun our faith.

All in all, Guarendi normalizes adoption and assures his audience that there are just as many unknowns, joys, challenges, and funny moments in biological parenting as adoptive parenting. I’m sometimes nervous thinking about how my son will react when he fully understands his adoption story, but I’m trying to take things day by day for now and enjoy the simple early childhood moments. We have the patience and compassion to help him in whatever growing pains may come.