Email galore #2: the agency
Looks like that adoption agency is pretty desperate for families. Listen to this:
I just talked w/our director about your [financial] situation. As we currently need couples for our African American infant program, she is willing to get your application ASAP for the program and you can wait until the day before group and assessment to pay. Will that work better for you? I’ll let our social worker know of your situation. She’s the person you will be hearing from first after we’ve received your pre-app.ALL birthmothers in the special programs are on medicaid. In NEARLY all cases, we can also get the baby on medicaid so that there are no medical fees involved for you.
My word. How can we say no? Here’s how: Brett is freaked. Who can blame him? We talked (fought) about it last night. First we fought and then we talked. Noah heard us fighting before we took a breather. Brett went and sulked in his secret room (don’t ask) and I played the martyr upstairs. (As an aside, this morning I told Noah that we made up after he was asleep and he said, “Oh yeah. I’m not surprised. I had it in my mind that you two would get over it.” This inspired the essay I’m going to write about arguing in front of kids.) When we no longer had an audience, Brett and I thrashed it out in earnest.
Brett is a wonderful, gentle, kind, considerate man but he’s not the best communicator. I, on the other hand, could communicate with a wall only communication also means listening and while I’m a good listener when there’s something to listen to, I’m not so great at ferreting it out when nobody else is talking. In talking to a wall, I could go on for days before realizing the wall hasn’t said anything back. In other words, I very often think Brett and I have discussed something only to discover later that he has a whole world of words that he hasn’t shared with me yet. This was one of those times.
Brett wants to be a father again but he’s concerned about adopting an African-American child. Why, you ask? Don’t worry I asked, too. He’s bothered by it because he believes (and I agree) that racism is responsible for the fact that there are so many more black children up for adoption and that they are less wanted — that they are “bargain babies” with these special programs and fees. He says how can we as white people take advantage of this racist discrepency? Institutional racism, he argued, hurts African-American families and creates this “supply” of black babies. He said, would these women keep their babies if we just gave them the money instead of the agency?
Well, these are concerns that I share but I also really want a baby. My argument (and it’s flawed as all emotional arguments tend to be) is that we can’t do much about institutional racism and whether or not we like it, there are more black babies who need families so why not our family?
He also talked about this romantic ideal that we would “rescue” a child. He always thought that when he adopted it would be, say, a big-eyed 3-year old left on the church steps with parents conveniently not in the picture. In that make-believe scenario we wouldn’t have to acknowledge the tremendous pain that will inevitably be the birth mother’s. I told him that pretending it (parental pain) doesn’t exist isn’t realistic and that a very young baby is likely to fit into our family better.
Finally he said that he feels uncomfortable adopting a child *because* it’s black. That a black child is all we can afford, which puts an ugly dollar value on people. I hate that, too, but I can’t do anything about it. I said, “If we were rich, would we stipulate a white child?” (The answer is no.) “In that case, we would likely get a black child anyway because those are the babies who are needing homes. So let’s pretend that we said, ‘Whichever mother chooses us first, that’s the one we’ll work with if we’re compatible.’ And that the child we get is the one we were meant to have.”
Finally I asked him to look to his faith about this. We’re going to try to hook up with some adoptive couples informally so he can ask some of his hard questions.
November 14th, 2002 at 12:40 pm
Oh this is weighty, and heart-wrenching!
So sad, our society makes me so damn sick!
Looking forward, uh - with some trepidation (lol) for the arguing in front of kids essay.
We do this, sometimes, and i hate it, but not as much as the kids