Adoption on the mind

The world of adoption is complex, progressing and stagnant all at once

Nov 09, 2023

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It’s National Adoption Month! Lately, I’ve been discussing adoption a lot because of my upcoming novel. In fact, the inspiration for Not Yours to Keep came from five years of professional experience as an adoption consultant, and the lasting imprint of working with families desperate to adopt a baby, birth parents making grueling choices, and adoptees whose futures we all changed.

When I set out to write this story, my goal was to shed some light on the world of adoption. Part of its purpose was to show a human perspective I’ve rarely seen in movies, television, novels, and sometimes personal interactions. But as Not Yours to Keep evolved, it became much more than that. It’s a story about how even the right choices we make as mothers, biological or adoptive, can impact our children for generations. It’s a journey of discovering new definitions of family, with a heaping dose of suspense.

I’m definitely not an expert on how anyone involved in adoption or fertility treatment thinks or feels. My novel is a work of fiction that relies on my personal experiences with adoption and infertility.

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And Now For Something Completely Serious…

We begin making choices for our future child when we decide to become a parent or find out we’re pregnant. Once they arrive, the decisions become endless. We make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the moment. Only when we look back do we either embrace, or regret, rethink, and then make new or better decisions. But in adoption, adoptees don’t get to chose. And for biological and adoptive parents, the decision is final. Literally, the courts “finalize” an adoption. Whether before, during, or after, whether right or wrong, how can we know the intergenerational impact of the choices a mother makes?

Slowly, over many generations, awareness of the impact on all parties involved, particularly for adoptees, is emerging. Those of us working in adoption all those years ago thought we were very progressive in our viewpoints and policies. But in retrospect, there was so much we didn’t know.

I had some powerful discussions with adult adoptees who exposed me to more contemporary perceptions of adoption and the aim to shift focus onto the babies’ earliest biopsychosocial experience. The emotional impact on adoptees is far more profound than anyone could have imagined. And, even if they never meet, the adoption triad—adoptive parents, biological parents, and adoptees—share an interconnectedness.

Sources: Adoption Network’s US Adoption statistics & Child Welfare Information Gateway

I haven’t worked in the field for many years, yet the fight for legislation to give a voice to adoptees, to do more to educate prospective adoptive parents, and to improve the rights and support of biological mothers continues. In researching my book, it was surprising to find many adoption laws nearly unchanged from the late ’80s; waiting to adopt is just as strenuous; and it’s still difficult to access records or connect with birth parents despite the internet’s bandwidth.

In her essays, Mindy Stern, a screenwriter, candidly and beautifully shares her perspective as an adoptee.