My last open letter is to the general populace. Unlike hte others, this one needs no warnings or preambles. Interestingly enough, a member of our local adoptive families group just had an article published dealing with much the same topic. So if you're interested in reading it, click here.
An open letter to the general populace about intercountry adoption
By Kevin Kreutner
The very fact you are reading this right now puts you ahead of the pack. Nonetheless, you could probably use a little bit of perspective.
There are thousands of ordinary American families each year that grow through this crazy thing called intercountry adoption. The people involved in intercountry adoption have gone to extraordinary lengths to become parents. They have endured infertility, miscarriages, stress beyond belief, and a whole lot of soul searching before finally bringing that adorable little foreign child home.
While most adoptive parents are very proud of how they grew their family, it was still a life changing experience and it can in some ways be a very personal and private endeavor. No matter how proud and open we seem, we also have a natural amount of insecurity and defensiveness about the whole experience.
You need to be sensitive about this!
This is not to imply that is wrong to approach someone and ask a question. Your curiosity and interest are natural and many parents love the attention. But you also have to do so with an aura of caution and the realization that intercountry adoption goes deep into our being.
You need to be sure to choose your words carefully so as not to offend. We realize that most of the time you intend no harm. But you can also be very insensitive simply due to the fact that you haven’t been though our experience.
So let’s embark on a little linguistics lesson…
Scenario one: You want to find out from someone how much it costs to adopt a child. Which do you think is the best way to ask someone?
a.) How much did you buy your son for?
b.) I heard it costs a fortune to get a kid. What did you pay?
c.) I have a friend that is interested in adopting. She mentioned that it can be really expensive. Would you mine telling me what the fees were like for you?
Scenario two: You are curious if a child was adopted and where they were born. How should you best ask?
a.) Boy does she ever have the most beautiful almond shaped eyes! Where was she born?
b.) Where did you get her?
c.) Is she yours? How’d that happen?
Believe it or not, there are people that use the obviously wrong ways to ask. And then they will likely find themselves making the adoptive parent uncomfortable and defensive. How you ask questions and reflect your interest can make all the difference to the well-being of the adoptive parent.
You must realize that our family unit is every bit as real and pure as that of a biological family. Don’t ask questions about the child’s “real mom” to her adoptive mother. Her adoptive mother is her real mother! The other lady is her biological or birth mother. Any adoptive parent can tell you that we don’t view our children as our adopted kids, they are just our sons and daughters.
Lastly, if you know someone who is in the midst of an adoption, give that person some space. Let them talk to you about it when comfortable. There is nothing more difficult for a person struggling with the emotions of being in process then to get asked fifty times a day whether they have any new news or know when the child is coming home. Each time someone does this, it is like a dagger being stuck in the heart and piercing straight into the soul.
We realize that you mean no harm. But you need to realize that there are limits to our strength. It’s okay to be curious and give us a second look. But don’t stare at us. It’s okay to ask us a question about it. But use caution with your words and feel us out for how much we are comfortable talking about it. Let us be if you sense an ounce of hesitance. And always, without fail, remember that we are just a normal family with parents who love their kids.
WARNING: this letter contains profanity that some may find offensive and inappropriate. The prologue of this book warned about this but I realize some may not have read that. As with the entire book, the language was used to express the energy and emotion felt by the author. So if bad language is hard for you to stomach, you have been forewarned that you may wish to skip this letter. But I also wish to remind everyone that this is one section of a much larger book that is being posted piece by piece. It is not a normal autonomous thread to Guatadopt and should not be read as such.
An open letter to the folk who adopt internationally
By Kevin Kreutner
We are not victims!
We are not helpless!
We have choices!
We have responsibilities!
We have rights, but they have limits!
It is not about us, it is about the children!
Despite the urge to write a warm fluffy letter to all the kind, wonderful people who have opened their wallets, hearts, and homes to orphans from far off lands where extreme poverty is the norm, we too need a deep look inside.
We all agree that adoption systems are not what they should be. Yet we also have a natural tendency to separate ourselves from all that controversial stuff. We are just the innocent people stuck on someone else’s chessboard.
“Nothing is our fault”.
“It’s the embassy screwing us.”
“It’s that damn adoption agency.”
“If only those dumbass human rights wannabees would just shut the fuck up we’d have our child home.”
It’s all about us and yet we are powerless. Bullshit my friends.
Adoptive parents share much of the blame for what has transpired in the realm of intercountry adoption. Let me preface that I don’t claim to be perfect. Like every other adoptive parent, I fell prey to some of what I will be writing critically about.
Ultimately, we control the whole ball of string. We are the ones who feed the systems. Corruption is a by-product of money. It is our money being injected into the system. So if there is a birthmother being paid, we’re the ones who paid her. If there is a government official being bribed, we paid that bribe. And if we as a community bonded together and demanded change, we could get it.
It is only through an acceptance of our role in the intercountry adoption process and the systems that exist that rational change can occur. Without us, the unethical adoption providers will either run rampant or governments will step in and ultimately make intercountry adoption impossible or illegal. Yet if adoptive parents take on the same accountability we complain professionals lack, we can control and severely debilitate the scumbags’ ability to operate.
Adoptive parents have the obligation to research and question those we hire to represent us in the process of an adoption. We have the obligation to emphasize ethical practices over the speed at which we can bring our children home. We need to realize that the lives of countless children yet to be born lie in our hands. Not because we will ultimately become their parents; because if we don’t take control they may lose their only chance to ever find a permanent family.
All too often adoptive parents completely separate themselves from the stark reality of what we are engaged in. We behave as if we are just children waiting for the teacher to tell us that it is time for recess. We don’t take the time to learn about the country we are working with or to really understand the intricacies of the process we are engaging. We just write our checks, get a bunch of paperwork taken care of, hope for updates, and wait for the call that we are now parents. As long as everything goes according to plan, we don’t ask any questions. This is wrong. We are active participants in the process and must behave as such.
So in order to best dive into how adoptive parents need to accept their responsibilities, it seems most logical to trace them as they would occur in a normal adoption process. This begins with choosing an agency.
My involvement in the community of families who have adopted from Guatemala has placed me in contact with many people going through horrendous adoptions. Virtually without exception this is because they did not do their homework before choosing whom to work with for their adoption. They didn’t ask questions, seek out references and past clients, or really get down to the nitty gritty policies with their agency. Virtually no families ask adoption providers during this process to explain how they ensure ethical practices are in place. Instead we tend to go to a local agency that offers a free information seminar or do some basic internet search and jump in from there. Or even worse, we visit on-line photolistings.
What agency or lawyer you hire to manage your adoption is an extremely important decision. Reputable adoption professionals rely on positive word-of-mouth as their primary marketing tool. Others who can’t rely on word-of-mouth have to try other techniques and photolistings are one. These professionals realize the emotional brainwashing these websites can achieve on unsuspecting parents.
I remember all too well how Sheila visited these sites as we were considering adoption. People have gone through years of unsuccessful attempts to conceive. They wish nothing more than to just be able to have a child. And then they find some website and on it is a picture of some beautiful, innocent child in need of a family. The listings have a tendency to either downplay the true availability of that particular child or to imply that homecoming would realistically be faster than expected. The prospective adoptive parents start to salivate. They believe they have found nirvana.
“Just look at those beautiful big brown eyes and that little button nose.”
“She could be ours in just a matter of months.”
“Look, it is a Christian adoption agency. They even support a bunch of orphanages.”
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happens next! The check gets written. The contract gets signed without anyone reading what the agency is actually promising. And two people get sent on one wild ride that usually does still ultimately end in a child coming home. But how much heartache did they go through? Was that child properly cared for along the way? Were those doctor’s reports authentic? Was the child really receiving the best formula?
I could go into more detail about far worse scenarios that I have encountered - things like babies being switched, questionable relinquishments, and forged documents. While not all of these instances were the by-product of poor research on the part of the parents, that is generally the case.
There are other things that prospective parents need to research before signing any adoption contract or writing any checks. They need to learn all about the adoption process and then test the agency’s knowledge in an interview. They need to understand how involved that agency is with the country being considered. They need to ensure that the people being hired know the system, have good relationships, and are experienced working in that country. The fact that you know someone that loved an agency for their adoption from China is not a good reason to hire them for your Guatemalan adoption!
Just as pregnant couples make birthing plans, adoptive parents need to develop an adoption plan. Different agencies have many different policies. These policies involve things like regularity of updates, facilitating contact with foster and biological families, direct lines into the foreign lawyers, visiting during the process, and even things as ludicrous as whether you can talk to other families about your process. Some policies, such as agencies telling their clients not to get involved with the internet adoption community, are sure-tell signs of an agency to avoid. But others, such as rules for visiting, are not this way. Nonetheless, they still are important considerations to ensure that the adoption goes as desired.
Another good idea is to talk about ethics policies with agencies while in the decision phase. Directly ask them to address things rumored to occur and see how they react. If they get defensive or try to claim that these things never happen, be wary! If they instead openly discuss concerns and measures they have in place to reduce the chances of your adoption being ethically challenged, you may have a winner.
Lastly, ask an agency to describe to you a difficult case that ran into problems. Have them describe what actions they took to get that adoption completed. Do the same when talking to former clients. Remember that the true test of a good agency is not how they handled smooth cases - it is how they reacted to a troubled one.
Once an agency or lawyer has been selected, a whole new ballgame begins. Now is when a delicate line must be drawn between being assertive and being irrational. There is a great line from the movie Bull Durham, “you have to play this game with fear and arrogance”, that very much describes how adoptive parents need to behave during the adoption process. You need to have a healthy amount of skepticism and not be afraid to ask questions or make demands. But you also have to be cautious not to become paranoid or assume the worst.
The adoption process is an incredibly difficult time in the life of adoptive parents. It is completely understandable why we at times become lunatics. We are sick of waiting to be parents and we want nothing more than to bring a child home to hold, kiss, love, smother, cherish, and become the center of our universe.
What could be more pure?
We have to take a step back and remember what it is that we are doing. Forget about the fact that you know you are a good, honest person and remember that you are asking a country to allow you to pay a lot of money in order to bring home an innocent child who lacks the capacity to care for himself. This is serious shit that we are involved in and it is wrong to take it lightly!
I have come across many families who unknowingly become the stereotypical “ugly American”. They all of a sudden develop an opinion that the two governments involved in the process have no right to delay the homecoming or institute any due diligence to ensure ethical adoptions are done with the child’s best interest at heart. They believe that everyone should accept their request at face value and just turn over the damn child. They convince themselves at this point that this is a humanitarian issue rather than just plain old selfishness.
I am not here to defend long adoption processes. I do believe that it is best for the children to find permanency as young as possible. And bureaucrats do prevent that from happening. But when has government ever been anything but inefficient?
The bottom line on intercountry adoptions is that we do not have a right to these children. The tens of thousands of dollars we send out buy us nothing so far as a guarantee to bring home any given child. The governments on both sides of the equation have a responsibility to do whatever is necessary to ensure that the child was legally relinquished or abandoned and that the child will become part of a capable, loving family. If we are to assume that just because we shelled out some duckets gives us an entitlement, then we are opening the doors to the scenarios that can lead to the demise of intercountry adoption altogether. As hard as it is to go through the process, we have to respect the systems that are in place to protect everyone involved. Even when they are slow as fuck!
Another manifestation of the ugly American involves a jingoistic perspective that everyone should praise the fact that children are going from “third world” countries to the Eden-like bountiful riches of the United States. Hand in hand with this follows a subconscious theory that these “third world” countries are nothing but stupid, corrupt, pathetic cultures not worthy of being treated with equality.
Let me tell you something folks… These children are doing us a favor. We are the blessed ones. Let’s not start fooling ourselves into believing that we are saving the world. Children can grow up happy and loved in poverty. Money does not buy happiness! All the toys and video games in the world do not mean that a child is being well parented. And neither does our U.S. passport. The United States is plagued with child molesters, random acts of violence, discrimination, drugs, and of course pitbulls just waiting to restart their revolution. In other words, we’re pretty fucked up too!
When dealing with a foreign country we have to respect their culture and ways of doing things – even when they seem whacko to us. When in Rome we must do as the Romans do and live by its rules. The same goes for Guatemala, China, or Ethiopia. Realize that we are ambassadors for our country and for the community of adoptive parents. If we come across vain or intolerant, it will result in negative perceptions about adoptive parents and that can fuel the fire of those opposed to intercountry adoption. We must understand the skepticism many have in foreign countries because their culture has yet to embrace the beauty of adoption. Because of socio-economics and racism in their own countries, many Guatemalans, for example, can’t believe that Americans would really adopt indigenous children to be a part of their family. It seems far more likely to them that we want servants or something of that sort. So when they come in contact with disrespectful adoptive parents, it adds to this impression.
Adoption systems do need to be regulated and that does mean we will have to endure the wait for homecoming. It means that we will have to jump through a bunch of bureaucratic hoops and have the limits of our sanity pushed. When people ask me how to handle it I reply with a simple answer, “for me, a glass or two of cabernet and some Grateful Dead always seemed to help”. The truth is that those things didn’t really help all that much and that the months we spent in-process kept me from concentrating on work, sleeping, eating properly, and being able to enjoy the simple things in life.
In many ways, our responsibilities become even greater once we bring our children home. Once we are done with the process, we are now in a position to help others and work for change.
There is a shroud of secrecy that often surrounds intercountry adoption. People become so intimidated during the process that they forget they can lose those concerns once their child is home. I have people not want to talk about their agency experience after their child is home because they’re afraid the agency will find out. So what if they find out! What the hell can they do to you once you are the child’s legal parent? If you went through hell with an agency or lawyer, you need to do everything in your power to put those bastards out of business and spare others the pain you went through!
Our adoption stories do not end at homecoming. We are a part of a larger community that we owe a debt to. We must stay involved and interested in what happens in intercountry adoption long after we’ve decided our families are done growing. This is not only for the sake of those just entering the systems, but also for our children. If we don’t fight the scumbags and corruption grows, what will we tell our children? How will we explain to them why it is that Americans can no longer adopt from their country of birth? How will we make them confident that their adoption was clean and that there is not some family in another country still trying to recover from the loss of their kidnapped child?
We also have a responsibility as it relates to the community-at-large. Like it or not, we are ambassadors for intercountry adoption. The general populace is interested in how we grew our families. Their curiosity is a byproduct of many things they have read, seen on television, heard third hand, etc. We have the responsibility to not be offended by their improper terms and innuendos. We have to be more open than others in how we deal with curious strangers. True, how we formed our families is none of their business. But on the other hand, it is something we should be proud of. We should use their interest and curiosity as an opportunity to educate them and make them more informed. While it may seem to be an inconvenience and breach of our right to privacy, in the end it will make the world our children live in more accepting of our families.
Lastly there is the responsibility to our children who have to grow up confident and comfortable with whom they are. Admittedly, I am no psychiatrist and there are probably studies contradicting some of my conclusions. So take them with a grain of salt but this is my chance for a soapbox. Obviously, parents in interracial families must at some point be open to their children about being adopted. But there is much more to it beyond just letting the kids know. We can make adoption an important part of their lives. We can make sure to keep parts of their birth country alive in their hearts. We can take openness to another step where we make them proud of who they are, how they came to our families, and where they came from. Remember that children take in an awful lot more than many give them credit for. When they see a parent open about their adoption, visiting their birth country, and remaining involved in the adoption community, they realize that they are special in a positive way. But if a parent takes the stance that strangers asking questions are a nuisance, paying no attention to their birth country and culture, and seemingly trying to “be like everyone else”, I believe it can cause or more likely enhance doubts and natural concerns about who they are.
In conclusion, we are very special people. We have opened out hearts, minds, and bank accounts to children we share nothing in common with. And we love them more than the average Joe could ever know. We go through an extremely traumatic process, suffer before entering it, and remain involved in it voluntarily or involuntarily for the rest of our lives. Being adoptive parents does make us unique. Having interracial families makes us even more unique. And we will be tested on these things for the rest of our lives. I always try to follow a rule where I hold myself to a higher standard than I expect of strangers. For this reason, we all need to realize the responsibilities we have. We are ambassadors to our children’s birth country, to the foes of intercountry adoption, to the general populace domestically, and most importantly to the psychological well being of our children. We’re not superheroes but at times we must behave as such. After all, it takes courage, strength, endurance, and a whole bunch of good karma to successfully navigate the path of the adoptive family.
Stay pure!
WARNING: this letter contains profanity that some may find offensive and inappropriate. The prologue of this book warned about this but I realize some may not have read that. As with the entire book, the language was used to express the energy and emotion felt by the author. So if bad language is hard for you to stomach, you have been forewarned that you may wish to skip this letter. But I also wish to remind everyone that this is one section of a much larger book that is being posted piece by piece. It is not a normal autonomous thread to Guatadopt and should not be read as such.
An open letter to the practitioners of intercountry adoption
By Kevin Kreutner
Let me begin by stating that I believe there are many fine intercountry adoption practitioners. In fact, I believe that the vast majority of people working in intercountry adoption are ethical and truly trying to help children gain much needed permanency. In addition, I take no issue with adoption providers earning good incomes. If I can make six figures marketing food items to restaurants, surely someone creating families deserves the same. I do feel that you can be a capitalist and watch out for your own bottom line without sacrificing your scruples or morality.
There are also far too many adoption providers who are complete scumbags and will certainly burn in hell eternally with the likes of those who molest children, and beat on puppy dogs. There are people who could care less about the children, where they go, the care they receive during the process, or whatever may have been done to get that child “available” for adoption.
This open letter is directed at the prior of the two groups. Because in the case of the latter, they are so slimy that surely no letter from me is going to shake their karma into becoming worthy of the air they breathe. But while this letter targets the ethical providers out there, its content heavily contends with their responsibilities to filter out their scumbag peers.
There is not one adoption provider who can claim that intercountry adoption systems are as they should be. There is not a single country program that could be used as a gold standard or benchmark for others. The reason for this is that those with the potential to be the best are also those with the greatest opportunity for corruption. To the good providers, this is not new news.
Because systems are not what they should, or could, be, everyone who is involved in it has the responsibility to root out corruption and exploitation. And by that I mean the exploitation of birthmothers, children, and adoptive parents alike. Only you have the ability to enact this type of change because only you know exactly the types of things that do occur.
It is not enough for you to run your own agency or law office by the letter of the law. You have a voluntary obligation to improve the systems you work in and the industry of which you are a part.
Voluntary obligation?
Why?
I can take this from a number of angles. The first being that of self-perseverance. If systems don’t improve and corruption, even if only in a miniscule percent of cases, is known, then you know better than I what will happen. The country will eventually close and the opportunity to provide homes for the majority of children in clean cases will cease. Look at El Salvador, Ecuador, Paraguay, India, Viet Nam and Cambodia to name a few countries. In each of these cases genuine corruption in a minority of cases resulted in a shutdown. Some were by the sending country and some by the United States. Either way the end result is the same – children no longer can find homes with loving parents in the United States. And if the countries close one by one because of a few bad apples, sooner or later you too shall rot. In short, at the rate things have happened in the last 10-20 years, your scumbag brethren are threatening genocide to your profession. No more open countries can only mean no more intercountry adoption professionals.
This rationale of self-perseverance is even more relevant to those working in the sending countries. Unlike the U.S. adoption agencies that can move on and start to focus on the “next” country, you are stuck. If the adoptions end, you need to immediately find a new way of earning a living. Please understand this because you may get a false sense of security if you rely only on your agency peers to keep things clean. Don’t forget, they have other adoption options for the time being – you don’t! This is extremely important because you more than anyone can help change the way adoptions are serviced in your countries.
The second reason why I call to a voluntary obligation to help improve adoption systems is because the fact of the matter is that human beings are frail and not deep thinking. This holds as true for adoptive parents as much as anyone else. As more and more stories of adoption professionals going astray become public, it places scars on all of you. Yes, we adoptive parents can stereotype you. We can come to believe that you are all crooked. We can begin to not trust you at all – even if for no good reason. And suddenly you can find yourself being persecuted and stereotyped even though you may have done nothing wrong. Not sure you believe me? I challenge you take an anonymous poll of adoptive parents who have synched into the adoption internet community. Even those of us who had positive experiences operate with a certain amount of distrust and skepticism. This is even true of me, someone who works closely with adoption professionals on advocacy efforts. Another piece of evidence to how you are all judged by your weakest link would be an analogy with politicians. Most elected officials are good people trying to serve their country and their constituency. But no one in his right mind trusts a single one of the bastards. So unless you want to be thrown into the same basket as the scum, you best do something about them!
My last reason for citing a voluntary obligation is the most important one – because it is the right fucking thing to do. Anyone who knows about true crimes being committed that hurt people and jeopardize children has the responsibility to do something about it. You can not just sit back aware of these things and take the stance that if it’s not your case, it’s not your problem. You know damn well that the scumbags who did whatever it was once will make it their mode of operation if no one stops them. Which means more victims. Call it religion, call it karma, call it humanity, but more importantly call the cops, call the licensing agencies, call the press, call the embassy – just do something about it!
This voluntary obligation is not being met today, not even by the most ethical and proactive of adoption professionals. While you wish you could do more, you have for some reason fallen prey to a faulty line of reasoning and a dose of denial. I don’t believe that you are intentionally perpetuating the problems. I believe you genuinely believe that you are doing all you realistically can. But I also believe in the grand scheme that this is essentially bullshit.
The faulty line of reasoning is one that leads you to believe that if you openly admit to the problems that do exist, you are setting yourselves up for disaster. You believe that doing so only hands ammunition to the enemy, intensifying the attacks on intercountry adoption and adding credibility to those seeking to end it. Instead you find it more prudent to operate underground in your attempts to eliminate the scumbags. You work quietly through relationships you have with this bureaucrat or that politician. You slowly manage to eliminate some of the bad seeds while leaving the systematic vulnerabilities in tact. And that is the issue. If you instead focused on the systematic issues, we’d be more likely to create better systems. No matter how hard other groups in the adoption community try to understand the systems’ vulnerabilities, only the adoption providers truly have a good grasp of the entirety of the problem.
So why did I define your reasoning as faulty?
Quite simply, it is at best a short-term solution. Eventually the powers that be will catch up. Some scumbag will make a mistake. Someone’s records will turn up evidence that will be construed as proof of institutionalized corruption. It is only a matter of time. In other words, by not being upfront and accepting some risk in order to bring attention to the issues, you are slowly but surely pounding in the nails on the coffin of that country’s intercountry adoption system. Once again, this is more so the case for the practitioners in the sending countries. The agencies can figure its best to milk each country as long as possible and then move on. By not openly attacking the corruption, they can avoid more challenges while the country is open. And then once it closes, they can jump ship. But to those of you in the sending country, you ain’t going anywhere! If you instead face the problems head-on, you can gain credibility with all the powers that be. Your suggestions and ideas will be able to be judged credible and objective. You will be able to become a part of the solution rather than a spectator to the problem.
I also mentioned that there is a real problem with denial. By this I mean that the best practitioners are the best for a reason. You know the people you work with. You have established policies for your cases that ensure little to any funny stuff occurs. You have no knowledge of any improprieties in any of your cases. This causes you to think that the same must be true of others. And when you do hear of problems, you minimize the extent to which you believe it is going on.
I think it is worth the time to give an example of how this denial occurs. Take the issue of birthmother payments being used to induce women to get pregnant or to relinquish a child. I have had good, honest adoption professionals tell me about how they have met birthmothers who are incredibly grateful that their child will be able to grow up healthy and secure. And after having met tens, maybe hundreds, of these women they conclude that the birthmoms’ sincerity was so pure that there is no reason to believe that adoption professionals would need to supply monetary incentives. The sincerity of the birthmoms unfortunately does not really lead to the conclusion – this is denial.
Another example would come from criticism I have shared about some adoption providers with other providers. My criticism has been based on personal contact with former clients that I know to be bright, honest, and sane. Yet the adoption providers will disagree with me based on some professional involvement they have had with the peer. Well I hate to tell you this, but very few of the scumbags will admit to being so while at a professional conference! They will all claim to be ethical providers. They will talk the talk even if they have yet even learned to walk. You are in denial because you have somehow rationalized a way to discount the true experiences of adoptive parents who experienced first hand how that person operates.
It is very dangerous when you get to the point where you have a natural tendency to believe the fellow adoption provider over the account of some former client who experienced their travesties first hand. The reason being that it creates a complacency that allows not only the provider peers to run free, but also the system as a whole. As soon as any chain in the link of involvement is allowed to weaken, it spreads like a cancer throughout.
I can fully realize the difficult position that you find yourselves in. And more than just about any adoptive parent not gainfully employed in intercountry adoption, I realize the incredibly difficult career field you have chosen. I do fully comprehend that you have to deal with difficult bureaucrats, crooked and incompetent governments, uncertain associates, and people who seemed normal until they officially became your clients. Yet you must realize that you have chosen an incredibly special career field – one that requires excessive consideration. Your jobs are not irrelevant like say someone who markets food products for a living. No matter how well or poorly I do my marketing job, no one will really suffer. This is not the same for adoption providers. In reality, your positions fit more in-line with that of doctors, teachers, clergy and police.
Now don’t start crying about the immense amount of responsibility I have handed you. I realize that I’ve compared you with clergy and they are charged with doing god’s work! But to this agnostic – your job is more important. If someone sins, they can get theirs in the hereafter - if adoption providers fail, innocent children and adoptive parents suffer in the here and now. Nonetheless you all should consider yourselves fortunate and I will not offer sympathy for your chosen field. You are blessed with an ability to do the work that many would claim only god can do – create families.
On one occasion, by sure chance, I was given the honor of telling a family that their adoption was completed. It only happened because I knew their foster family and got the news that the case was complete before the agency had the chance to tell the family. When I told them that they were done, I didn’t realize that they didn’t already know! When it became clear that I had just given them the good news, an amazing energy passed through me. I didn’t even know them – this was the first time we had ever spoken. I was only calling to tell them that they had the most wonderful foster mother in the world and that I had met their future son who was doing well. But as I passed on the good news I was able to feel the complete joy in the hearts of these strangers at the other end of the phone line. The experience was amazing and it is something that you get to do on a regular basis. I can’t imagine the wonderful karma you must gain every time you take a couple struggling to become parents and make that dream a reality. But I hope you grasp how fortunate you are. There are many of us who go through our professional lives with little to no spiritual satisfaction. We deal with the daily reality that the manner in which we earn our living is essentially irrelevant. You do not have that problem – appreciate it!
There is one other primary area that I believe all adoption providers could use a firm kick in the ass about – treating your clients with respect. Some of the best, most ethical adoption providers I know have a tendency to take their proper behavior and sterling reputations too much to heart and as a result do their clients a disservice (Hannah, if you are reading this, I am not referring to you!). Granted, this is not even close to the disservice unethical providers inflict on their clients. But if we are to be visionaries, we MUST strive for perfection!
Adoption is a very difficult emotional process for the parents. It is generally preceded by an extended period of suffering through infertility. Adoptive parents are scared, often having heard numerous stories about unscrupulous providers. We are also nervous. We haven’t seen hundreds or thousands adoptions completed and we understandably want everything to be perfect and smooth in our own cases. We also are privy to a plethora of differing sources of information. If we go to any public adoption internet list and ask about any agency we are likely to find some who love them and some who hate them. Ask basic questions about how long some step in the process should take and we likely hear anywhere from three days to three years. And we will most certainly hear from someone about how his/her agency or lawyer completely zoned out and dropped the ball, despite a stellar reputation, and as a result the child’s homecoming took much longer than necessary.
This is the environment your clients come from.
Empathize!
Nurture!
Communicate!
Tell us what is going on. Give us progress reports. E-mail us just to say “no new news” if that’s the case. We are scared to call you and bother you. We are afraid of what will happen if we piss off our agency or attorney. We are as fucking paranoid as a crack addict jonesing and waiting for a delivery at a hotel where the police are having a convention. Don’t bring us to the point of needing to worry about asking a simple question. And when we ask a simple question, answer us! Answer us quickly and clearly. Take a minute and a half to read our question and make sure you understand it. If you don’t, call us. I personally guarantee that we parents will get back to you with extreme speed. Also make sure you read the whole e-mail to be certain you answer all the questions we have.
I have personally experienced the occasional crazy client you come across. I do not imply that they do not exist. But you know what? Life’s a bitch and sometimes you have to contend with some psychos. It’s not fun but it also is not something that you can make your normal clients pay for. So just deal with them. I don’t mean to minimize the stress that these people may cause. And obviously you can’t spend all day answering one whacko client’s eight thousand questions. But I also believe that it is poor client management that causes many people to become lunatics. More often than not, clients become crazy because you are not delivering a satisfactory level of service. Adoptive parents get put in an atrocious situation when that happens. We are in for the long haul. We’re not done with you until we get our child home. And once we come to feel that you are not really representing us appropriately, be that a true or false judgement, we will go crazy.
To give an example to this I only need to look so far as our own adoption. We had a good ethical provider. But she was horrendous about answering calls or replying to e-mails. There were numerous occasions when she was posting to public internet lists, answering other peoples’ questions, while our questions were still unanswered. How were we to react? Would it then become wrong to start e-mailing daily, hourly, or by the minute? After all, we know that she’s on-line. We know that she’s reading e-mail. And surely if she’s reading and replying to a public list she is not so busy solving some other client’s crisis that she lacks the time to answer ours. But what do we do? We could bombard her with e-mails and voicemails. But then would she get pissed off and not push our case through? We could be scared and just bite our fingernails. But then the anger at her flakiness would cost us sleep and ruin our daily lives. We could, as we did, just try to remain calm and wait. Ultimately that worked and everything went fine. But you know what? That caused us a lot of stress that did not need to occur! If we almost turned into psychotic clients – anyone can.
You also have an obligation to treat us like adults. After all, you are aiding and abetting us in our efforts to bring a child into our home – forever. If we are not mature enough to handle anything that comes from the adoption process, then how could you even think of facilitating us becoming mom and dad? Seriously, think about it!
So why do I seem to have the impression that adoption professionals do not treat their clients like adults? Because often times you don’t! We can handle the truth. We can deal with any wrench that gets thrown at us. This doesn’t mean we won’t need some emotional support. It just means that providing that support is part of why we pay you. There is no need to soften the blows that can occur in intercountry adoption. There is no need to protect us from the truth. At the earliest stages of any issue you have the ethical responsibility to be upfront and let the chips fall where they may. Don’t protect us unless we have asked you to do so.
Despite much of what you may have just read, I believe that all in all you do a good job. And while I hoped I could write this only to the good providers out there, I will end it with a message to all adoption professionals. I do this now because frankly some of you probably believe you are on the good side when in actuality you really suck.
You work in an industry that does require special consideration. You are dealing with the lives of innocent children. You are managing a process that is unlike anything else your clients will ever experience. You must accept full responsibility for the actions of those you associate yourself with. If you are hiring someone to work on one of your clients’ adoption, then whatever they do is your responsibility. Just as it is complete utter bullshit when Nike claims that it doesn’t employ any child labor even though their contractors, who manufacture only for Nike, do hire children, you can’t get away with the “we can’t control foreign service providers” excuse. You hired them and your clients hired and trusted you. If you can’t find good people to work with then don’t do adoptions! It is that painfully simple. We all make mistakes. But when people don’t learn from them and continue to hand out cases to evil associates, they become as guilty as can be.
You also have a responsibility to the trade. Yours is a trade that is under constant scrutiny. You know damn well what I mean! And if the trade fails, children suffer. I know this a lot to place on your shoulders but tough shit, that’s the way it is. No one made you become an adoption provider. You could have taken the easy route and marketed food products if you wanted the simple, mundane way out. But you didn’t and now you have to pay the price.
Realize that while there are many good peers in your trade, there are also way too many slimebags. Despite whatever you may have experienced yourself with someone, remember that you are not experiencing that person as a client. As hard as it may be, be extremely skeptical about how your professional friends behave. As soon as you become trusting and sure, you become complacent and they may be making a fool of you. You must work hard to root out the scumbags in your profession. They are a malignant tumor on every good person who works in adoption.
Try to understand that your clients are good people who have been through an incredibly traumatic time in their lives and are heading into a more difficult period. Deciding to adopt internationally and following through on that decision are enough to drive anyone insane. In order to minimize the impact of this craziness, be extra honest and upfront. Grasp that once in a while, you’ll get a real loony tune that you will need to manage. But the other 99% of the time, we can handle whatever this stinking world can throw at us.
Intercountry adoption is not what it should be! To a large extent, you are to blame. So stop trying to protect your interests. Stop being afraid of what will happen. Become vigilant! Treat your clients with respect. And revel in the wonderful way you earn a living.
Well now that I've shared our adoption story with the world the book takes a decidedly different tone in the form of open letters to all the various consitituent groups involved in the ICA debate. The first is to the NGOs and humanitarian groups.
I warn you in advance that I held nothing back and this does contain some explicit language. Sorry, but that's me...
An open letter to the Non-Governmental Organizations and Governments involved with issues impacting intercountry adoption
By Kevin Kreutner
Get off your fucking white horses and out of your god damned ivory towers!
Children’s lives are at stake!
A year or two ago, I watched a very funny segment on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It was a spoof on President GW Bush’s “healthy forest initiative” that would allow trees to be cut down in our national forests in order to save them. The commentator explained that this is like much of Bush’s policies -- we have kill trees to save trees just as we had to kill Iraqis to save Iraqis.
The rationale being used in developing highly restrictive intercountry adoption systems is nothing more than this same faulty logic promulgated by Pres. Bush. When you create a system that claims to “clean up” intercountry adoption but ultimately results in making it next to impossible to complete an adoption, you are sacrificing some children to save others. No matter what else you may claim, you are turning some children into involuntary martyrs in order to serve the supposed common good.
But what common good is served?
We all know that there is only way to make sure that there is no corruption in intercountry adoption – end the practice altogether.
Yet despite this fact, every convention, treaty, or resolution reached by the international community has come to the conclusion that intercountry adoption is a viable option for some children and is preferable to things like institutionalization or living on the streets. Why is that? Quite simply because CHILDREN HAVE THE RIGHT TO A FAMILY!
The extreme poverty being faced by a huge percentage of the world’s population is a matter that should bring shame on every living adult who doesn’t know what it is like to go hungry at night, not be able to afford shoes for your children, or sleep without a roof over your head. Yet instead of feeling this shame and working to resolve the fundamental cause of why children enter the intercountry adoption system, you instead try to pretend that you understand the plight of the poor. You create the appearance that you are trying to defend their rights and protect them from exploitation. There is the old saying about how until you walk a mile in someone’s moccasins that you can’t judge them. Well in this case I’d go so far as to say that you, and I for that matter, don’t know what their moccasins look like, much less what they feel like! Extreme poverty is a valid reason for a woman to decide that her child is best off being relinquished for adoption. Extreme poverty could place her in a position where she knows that trying to keep a newborn child with her could likely result in her other children suffering or dieing. So please, DON’T TRY TO CLAIM TO KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR PEOPLE IN SITUATIONS YOU CAN’T COMPREHEND! REALIZE THAT THERE ARE GOOD, VALID REASONS WHY WOMEN DECIDE TO RELINQUISH!
As an adoptive parent, it is very hard for me to even support the idea that a child is “best off” with his biological family. I state that not as some sort of call that biological parents should have their children stripped away. I state it because it is hard for me to imagine that there could be any difference between the love and environment my adopted daughter will grow up with and what she would have experienced had she joined my wife and I biologically. This is not to say that as she grows up she will not face any emotional issues resulting from the stigma of adoption or from her own questions about her heritage and genealogy. But very few of us grow up with no such issues and it is dealing with them that makes us stronger. So please STOP TRYING TO DISCOUNT THE VALIDITY OF THE ADOPTIVE FAMILY UNIT – IT IS NOT SECOND-CLASS!
It is amazing to me how far the world has come in regard to racial equality. While huge disparities still exist, most of the westernized world (that being the receiving countries) realizes that race is insignificant. Whenever asked for my race on a form or questionnaire, I simply answer “human”. This is a key understanding in how you should view intercountry adoption. It is okay for a child to be a part of an interracial family. Overwhelmingly so, the children will not be penalized for having darker skin or different shaped eyes than their parents. Once again, this is not to say that the child will never experience any pain because of this. Once again, it is to say that it is something to make them stronger as adults. So please REALIZE THAT CHILDREN CAN THRIVE IN AN INTERRACIAL FAMILY!
Much of the “developing world” has different cultural norms regarding race and adoption. It is time for you to realize this!!! We can debate forever on whether it is “preferable” that a child remains in his/her country of birth. But that debate becomes irrelevant when there are no viable options for the child in his/her country of birth. Latin-American culture, for example, is not accustomed to formal adoption and as a result, very few of the families who might be in a position to do so would consider it. In addition, taking Guatemala as an example, most of the children’s biological mothers live in extreme poverty. Anyone who knows about the socio-economics of the country knows that this means the children are likely from an indigenous bloodline. That means darker skin, possibly a shorter stature, and more almond shaped eyes. The wealthy in the country still harbor much prejudice against the indigenous people and as a result, they would not consider bringing such a child into their family. Maybe this explains why the current President of Guatemala’s daughter has gone to the Ukraine to adopt – so that she can bring home a nice light skinned child! With this in mind, why do you try to push for outrageous legislation that delays a child’s right to join a forever family? Do you have any proof that children who could find homes domestically are instead being “exported” to foreign families? You seem to have plenty of money to research allegations of improprieties, yet I see none that looks at the fundamentals of why intercountry adoption is necessary. My point is that if we create cookie cutter schematics for how every sending country should shape their system we are likely to ignore the unique qualities of each individual culture. So please DON’T USE YOUR SOCIAL NORMS AS A BASIS FOR DEVELOPING INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION SYSTEMS. ALWAYS BE SURE TO BASE THEM ON THE REALITIES OF THE INDIVIDUAL CULTURE.
One of the things annoying me most about your agenda is the apparent criterion being used to define “success” when adoption reform has been achieved. I have read far too many reports that point to a huge decrease in the number of intercountry adoptions as evidence that “the rights of the child” have been achieved. These reports do so without researching child mortality, malnutrition, the number of children being abandoned, the number of children institutionalized, the impact on the quality of institutional care, rates of domestic adoption and a sundry of other things that would logically be used to define success. Instead you take what to me appears to be a negative statistic – that fewer children are joining loving permanent families – and paint it to be a sign of astounding success. This is appalling, deceptive, and quite simply ignorant. So please JUDGE THE SUCCESS OF REFORMS BY THE CONDITIONS CHILDREN LIVE IN, NOT BY THE NUMBER OF ADOPTIONS COMPLETED.
Human beings are imperfect beasts and there will always be some degree of corruption in anything that involves money and humans. Nothing will ever change this fact. So one of two things needs to happen. The first is that we can try to remove the financial incentives from the system. This makes great sense in theory but is next to impossible to implement because there is no pot of gold available in countries already dealing with a complete lack of social systems and an extremely impoverished citizenry. So unless the NGOs and governments of the world are ready to shell out the dough to provide foster care, medical care, food, etc to children before their adoptions are complete, there will need to be a cost to adoptive parents. And until the governments and NGOs are able to devote enough human capital to run efficient systems, there will be a need for private adoption practitioners who have the right to earn a living. Given that the governments of most third world countries have proven their affinity for incompetence and corruption, it is unlikely that this is soon to change. The other option is to realize that it is an imperfect world, accept that fact, and work hard to minimize the amount of improprieties that exist. Try everything possible to enforce laws that create a viable option for children while also ensuring ethical processes. So please, DON’T EXPECT COUNTRIES TO DO THE IMPOSSIBLE, WORK TO HELP THEM DO WHAT’S POSSIBLE.
All improprieties are not the same in intercountry adoption. There are such things as victimless crimes and it is wrong to create victims in the pursuit of ending victimless crimes. We need to focus on ending the crimes and improprieties that really harm people. We need to stop grouping those in the same line as crimes that only create an imperfect system. Let’s take some key examples. There are those that claim birthmothers are being coerced or paid to give up their children.
Are these equal sins?
Anyone with a sane mind would come to the conclusion that it is an absolute tragedy for any woman to ever have a child taken from her for adoption involuntarily or under duress.
Now consider an extremely poor woman who works as a migrant laborer harvesting crops. She has four children that she on her own needs to feed and care for. She finds herself pregnant and, realizing that she can’t earn an income with a newborn in tote, she decides to relinquish the child, who is subsequently adopted by a loving, stable family. There are a few different “facilitators” that she can relinquish the child through and one of them offers her some money to do so. Or maybe one offers her more money than the others. This is money she can use to take her daughter to the doctor for her ongoing cough as well as to buy her sons some shoes. Who is the victim?
Let’s change the above scenario only slightly. Let’s suppose that she has not decided to relinquish and that the offer of money makes her decide to relinquish voluntarily because she feels it would be the best thing for her family. Any victims yet?
One more modification to see at what point there becomes a true victim. Now let’s say this woman is not pregnant. But she hears from a friend of hers that if she gets pregnant and agrees early on to relinquish the child, the facilitator will give her some money and provide her children with food and shelter during her pregnancy. This would get them out of the rain and squalid conditions of the fincas and give them some much-needed stability their lives have been yearning. Any victims yet? Is the adopted child a victim? Is some other child who would have otherwise been adopted by the adoptive family a victim? Or does the fact that there are far more families looking to adopt newborns than there are adoptable children negate this?
I do not claim to have all the answers. But it certainly seems as though you have not been giving these issues the type of philosophical thought that you need to. Would it not be an improvement if all cases of coercion were prevented even if some other less-than-perfect conditions, even crimes, remained? Is it not better to have some payments to birthmothers occurring than it is to end the chance for thousands of children annually to join permanent families? So please, FOCUS YOUR EFFORTS ON ENDING ADOPTION RELATED CRIMES THAT INVOLVE TRUE VICTIMS. DON’T CONFUSE THOSE WITH DEBATABLY VICTIMLESS CRIMES.
Despite the profanity that started this letter, I do not believe that you have anything but the purest of intentions in your quest to curtail intercountry adoption. I believe that you, too, want to see a world where children can thrive free from exploitation. I believe that you at this moment truly feel that curtailing intercountry adoption is the best global solution. I believe that it pains you to know that this will be detrimental to some children but that you feel there is no choice.
I do not believe, however, that you have taken the time to play devil’s advocate against your position. I do not believe that you have been introspective and open to other points of view. I do not believe that you have really tried to grok the entire intercountry adoption environment, instead choosing to hold fast to first-world liberal ideals as your base for judgment. So I have taken the liberty in this letter to offer some points and advice to aid you in developing your positions and goals. At no cost to you at all I reiterate an eight-point plan to get you off your fucking white horse and out of your god damn ivory towers and I am always willing to discuss it with you.
1. CHILDREN HAVE THE RIGHT TO A FAMILY!
2. DON’T TRY TO CLAIM TO KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR PEOPLE IN SITUATIONS YOU CAN’T COMPREHEND! REALIZE THAT THERE ARE GOOD, VALID REASONS WHY WOMEN DECIDE TO RELINQUISH!
3. STOP TRYING TO DISCOUNT THE VALIDITY OF THE ADOPTIVE FAMILY UNIT – IT IS NOT SECOND-CLASS!
4. REALIZE THAT CHILDREN CAN THRIVE IN AN INTERRACIAL FAMILY!
5. DON’T USE YOUR SOCIAL NORMS AS A BASIS FOR DEVELOPING INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION SYSTEMS. ALWAYS BE SURE TO BASE THEM ON THE REALITIES OF THE INDIVIDUAL CULTURE.
6. JUDGE THE SUCCESS OF REFORMS BY THE CONDITIONS CHILDREN LIVE IN, NOT BY THE NUMBER OF ADOPTIONS COMPLETED.
7. DON’T EXPECT COUNTRIES TO DO THE IMPOSSIBLE, WORK TO HELP THEM DO WHAT IS POSSIBLE.
8. FOCUS YOUR EFFORTS ON ENDING ADOPTION RELATED CRIMES THAT INVOLVE TRUE VICTIMS. DON’T CONFUSE THOSE WITH DEBATABLY VICTIMLESS CRIMES.
This week's chapter is the actual story of our adoption. It is quite long and so to spare everyone's eyes, I converted it to a PDF. I do ask that no one print or forward it to the masses.
As I went through it yesterday and did some editting, reliving the experience and memories brought to tears to my eyes. I hope you enjoy it as well....
This weeks chapters may be abit of bore for many. They depart from our story and talk about the adoption process and that wonderful period known as the Hague Fiasco. Luckily they are not too long and I'll get the next good chapter up shortly.
Good reading...
Jumping Through Hoops
There are many great resources where one can find detailed information on the specifics of the adoption process in Guatemala. The website www.guatadopt.com is a perfect place to start. In order to have the joyful part of this story, our adopting Isabel, flow more easily, at this point it is probably a good idea to give some basic description of what goes on when one is adopting a child from Guatemala. This will prevent having to invade the story too much for process details and explanations.
Basically there are two concurrent processes taking place, one for each country. The United States process is to validate that the child meets the official criteria to obtain orphan status and thus be permitted to immigrate. It is worth while to recall that the adoptive parents have already been approved to adopt a child. The orphan status is by and large pretty straightforward and logical with a few notable exceptions.
Currently, a child does not meet the orphan status if the child has two parents or the birthmother is married. In theory this makes sense when we consider the conventional dictionary definition of “orphan”. But what this ultimately means in practical terms is that if a couple has a child and decides that the best interest for that child is to be relinquished for adoption, they best divorce before the child is born and not list a father on the birth certificate. Otherwise, the child can not be adopted by Americans. No such requirement currently exists for children adopted domestically in the United States. As this is written there are bills before congress that would change the orphan status requirements and allow married couples to relinquish their children for intercountry adoption to the United States.
In the process of validating that the child meets the orphan status, a few steps take place. Your Guatemalan attorney first presents numerous documents to the Embassy in Guatemala City. At this point the Embassy issues an approval to conduct a DNA test.
Once the DNA results come back and the maternity is proved, the Embassy goes through all of the documents in detail. If they have questions or concerns, they can take further actions to investigate the case. One common thing is that they require that the birthmother be interviewed by Embassy staff. It is rumored these interviews had at times been downright degrading to the birthmother.
Ultimately the Embassy does one of two things. Generally everything is fine and a Visa Pre-Approval is issued for the child. Occasionally, the Embassy will issue what is called a NOID – notice of intent to deny and, subject to appeal, that child can not be adopted by a US citizen. With a Visa Pre-Approval issued, the child is promised a visa once the adoption is complete.
The act of making the child legally your son or daughter is conducted by the Guatemalan authorities. Much of this work is done through what is called the “notarial” legal system common through Latin-America. In these systems, the notaries are sort of a mix between a lawyer and a judge. The idea is to allow non-litigious legal matters to be handled outside of the government bureaucracy. The adoption process is that once the birthmother formally relinquishes the child, the adoption of the child by the adoptive parents must be approved by two government offices.
The first stage on the Guatemalan side is to go through Family Court. The role of Family Court is to ensure that the birthmother is voluntarily relinquishing the child, make her aware of her rights, and deem that the adoption is in the best interest of the child. Most of this work is done by a licensed social worker from the Family Court. During this stage, the social worker interviews the birthmother and the foster mother. Then the social worker writes a report, generally recommending the adoption. Lastly a judge must approve the case based on the social worker’s report. The predominant issue with Family Court is generally that some of the social workers are not conceptually supportive of intercountry adoption. Often trying to get the interviews set up and the report written can take quite some time. In their defense, these social workers are likely extremely busy as they also work on more traditional non-adoption cases like domestic violence and neglect. In addition, for some time one of the six Family Courts, court three, was notoriously anti-adoption and cases could linger there endlessly. To which court any given case is assigned is a matter of chance, although lawyers are permitted to once pull a case and have it again randomly assigned.
After clearing Family Court the case moves on to the office of the PGN, Procurador Generál del Nación. PGN is in many ways similar to our Justice Department. Really their job is simple. They just go through a variety of documents and make sure everything looks kosher. The case file is randomly assigned to a PGN lawyer who approves the case. Then it must be signed by the head of the PGN. But as is always the case with intercountry adoption, nothing is so simple. Often it can take many months to get this done. If the PGN lawyer opts to be difficult, they can issue a “previo” stating some document that is incorrect, missing, or otherwise not acceptable. Sometimes this can be something as irrelevant as a minor spelling error. Other times, they decide to create some new document requirement with no warning or legal authority. Earlier I mentioned the document we created with every fathomable version of our names and salutations. The purpose of this document is to reduce the odds of being previod because of your name appearing somewhere in some document in a way that you have not legally defined as being yourself.
The kick in the rear about being issued a previo is not only the delay, but also that sometimes the PGN attorney does not go through all the file, list all of the corrections needed, and then previo the case. Sometimes they find one correction and kick the case out. As a result, people can be kicked out of PGN multiple times. Because of the time it can take to obtain new documents and have them blessed kosher by all the necessary pundits, each round of previo can delay a case by weeks or months.
Once the case has been approved by PGN, the notaries must obtain the birthmother’s final approval of the adoption and then the official decree can be issued, making some soul in the United States a hell of a lot happier. From there, a new birth certificate is issued with the adoptive parents names. This must be obtained from the Civil Registry in the part of the country where the child was born which can at times be challenging in a country where sometimes they run out of the tax stamps needed to certify the document. With a new birth certificate in hand, the child can be taken to get a Guatemalan passport.
The United States and Guatemala processes by and large take place independent of one another. One major caveat is an agreement between the PGN and the Embassy that PGN will not release a case until the Embassy has issued the Visa Pre-Approval. The reason for this is to avoid the possibility that the adoption is legal but the child still can not enter the United States.
Once the child has a Guatemalan passport, all of the Guatemalan documents are furnished to the Embassy and within a few days a “Pink Slip” is issued. This Pink Slip says that you are pretty much done. All you need to do is have the child examined by an Embassy approved doctor and then head on down to the Embassy for a quick interview and then the next day you will have a Visa for the child and at last the child can come home!
Halleluiah!
That Pesky Hague Convention
There was something else going on with Guatemalan adoptions in general that merits a book on its own rites. After much deliberation on how to integrate this into the story, it seemed most viable to describe it on its own and then just allow the emotional agony it caused to naturally make its way into the story itself.
This “something else going on” was Guatemala’s attempted accession to the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-Operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. The topic of international human rights type agreements as they relate to intercountry adoption will be focused on later, for the time being let it be enough said that these things can raise holy terror on the poor folks that get caught in the middle of a country trying to comply with one. The Hague Convention in Guatemala was no exception.
The Hague in Guatemala will be described as how it came to us as we went through it. To step back in time, unbeknownst to us, in November while we were in the middle of our homestudy, Guatemala essentially agreed to join this Convention. This in itself was not a major cause for alarm. Most countries take years to develop a system of compliance and formally accede to the Convention. Our adoption should have long since completed by the time this would happen. Then on March 13, 2003, the Guatemalan Congress made a surprise announcement that as of March 5, 2003, it had formally acceded to the Convention.
What this meant to families like ours was uncertain. Quickly, the in-process families were divided into two groups, “pre 3/5” and “post 3/5”. Determining which category you fell into was not clear for many families because of the official criteria needed to be “pre 3/5”. If the birthmother’s relinquishment, called the “first acta”, and the power of attorney were both formally registered before March 5, then you were considered “pre 3/5” and your case would be able to proceed according to the old rules. Because these two criteria were not normal milestones to parents in the process, they were generally not noted by the adoption agencies or communicated to the parents. As a result, it took many people quite some time to find out which group they were a part of.
We were clearly in the “post 3/5” group, which appeared a more precarious situation. For a few months, everything pretty much proceeded normally except for the fact that no one could ultimately get out of PGN, because there was no legal system in place for adoptions covered under the Hague Convention. The Convention itself is a bunch of principles. It is up to the country to work out the details of how to implement those principles. Guatemala had not worked out the details. So for the time being, until they enacted the new system, we were caught in limbo.
Early on in Isabel’s adoption, I wasn’t very concerned about this. The rumor in the adoption community was that a few new documents would be required and that it would all be put to rest within a couple of months. Since we were early on in the process, it would already be a few months before we got to the point of being stuck in PGN with no way out.
In June, UNICEF brought the head of the PGN (the PGN had been declared the official “Central Authority” for adoptions as is required when one accedes) to the Hague. Because of UNICEF’s public and covert attacks on adoption, we knew this could not be a good thing. When the head of the PGN returned, it became clear that he now had changes far greater than just a few documents in mind.
On July 1, a new adoption system was announced. Sort of. It was very clear on a few things. First of all, the notaries and lawyers were now out of the equation. Private foster care was to be ended and only four hogares in the country were authorized for housing children being adopted. In addition, all future referrals had to come directly from the government. All referrals for cases that were “official” (same standards as “Pre 3/5”) before 7/1 would be recognized.
Now the community was split into three groups. Even though months had passed since March, very few of the “pre 3/5” cases were being completed. Then there were the people like us who were no longer “post 3/5”. We were now “pre 7/1”. The new “post 7/1” group, while fewer in numbers, were in the worst situation. Because of what had been announced, they did not know if they would be allowed to adopt the child whose picture and vision they undoubtedly already loved.
What was not clear was how someone was supposed to receive a referral from the government, what would physically happen to the children currently in foster care, or how parents were supposed to complete the cases. We were told that all cases needed to be presented to the Central Authority, a new office located within the PGN. But since they were claiming that our lawyers and notaries no longer had any involvement and they had not made it clear what would happen next, parents realized that trying to have the files moved to this Central Authority could very well mean they were losing their only representation in Guatemala. Some lawyers did comply and turned over the files. But because of efforts underway to try to turn back the Hague altogether, most lawyers and parents waited to see what would happen to those cases that were given to the Central Authority before doing so ourselves.
A legal battle challenging the constitutionality of the Hague Convention in Guatemala now rose to new levels. There were a number of different fronts to this battle. As I understand it, one challenge had to do with the fact that the Guatemalan Constitution prevents the government from becoming party to international agreements that it was not involved in drafting. Another focused on Congress having overstepped its legal authority in acceding to the treaty. Yet another involved the fact that by naming PGN, which is part of the executive branch, as the Central Authority and leaving the implementation up to them, Congress had effectively granted legislative powers to the executive branch – an understandable no-no (except for in the United States where Congress seems happy to see the executive branch usurp its sole authority to wage war!). Finally, the Guatemalan Constitution, to its credit, is very specific in the rights of the woman to decide the course for her child. And the notarial system is deep rooted in its function and purpose. What was happening here went beyond just the adoption laws, it was setting legal precedent. I’m still not sure how these issues combined into different formal legal challenges. The bottom line was that there were a few different challenges being brought before the Guatemalan Constitutional Court that could overturn all this Hague nonsense.
There was another front to be waged in this battle. This had to do with the nature of the Convention and I apologize for the disgustingly technical details. By definition, the Hague Convention is only valid between countries that have implemented it. The United States had not implemented the Convention. The United States had signed on to it, agreeing to implement some day. But it had not implemented it and thus adoptions between the United States and Guatemala were not covered under the Convention even if none of the constitutional challenges worked. There was hope that if the United States officially declared its “Third Party” status, everything could go back to normal until the United States eventually implemented it.
A group of lawyers banded together into an organization known as the Associación Defensores de la Adopción (Association in Defense of Adoption) and sought out the help of a reluctant Guatemalan Bar Association. One notorious and brave attorney took the gutsy and unprecedented move of keeping the community of adoptive parents abreast of what was happening. I venture to say it was gutsy because by doing so she was to a certain degree laying the legal battle’s strategy out for all to see. Secondly, much of what she said was her best and honest opinion. But people desperate to get their children home took this as the gospel and were quick to jump to conclusions if things didn’t go as they should. In addition, for a time these updates were done on an e-mail list known as “The Big List” with over two thousand members. Inevitably, her voluntary updates led to some uncomfortable debate and endless questions being asked of her. I’m sure that she also got infinite e-mails from parents looking for help because of some intricacy involving their case. Lastly, it created an awkward situation where many parents knew more about what was going on than did the adoption agencies they paid to represent them. For many agencies, Guatemala was a very small portion of their operations and they weren’t deeply involved in the details. This I am sure led to some of sort of schism for her openness in an unfortunately secretive industry. Nonetheless, “Thursday Updates” became a ritual for many and about the only thing they had to lust for in the week. These updates, when copied and pasted into a word file, make up anywhere from seventy-five to one hundred twenty-five pages depending on the font size.
From July through the beginning of August, the adoption system for the most part came to a screeching halt. The US Embassy stopped processing cases, refusing even to grant requests to initiate DNA tests. The cases presented to the Central Authority weren’t going anywhere and the children were still in foster care. Cases were receiving Previos from PGN for not being Hague compliant and there was no known way to be Hague compliant. Even the “pre 3/5” cases weren’t being completed. An abyss for certain! The most difficult part for most people was the fact that there was no guarantee of any end in site. Something had to break sooner or later, but which it would be was unknown.
At one point of group of ninety-seven notaries filed a legal proceeding called an “amparo” (appeal), accusing the PGN of breaking the law by not allowing the notaries to perform their duties as defined by the Constitution. The courts agreed with the notaries and if everything proceeded according to law, cases should have started moving again even if the Hague challenges were still up in the air. In a symbolic way, this was also the courts agreeing that the Hague was unconstitutional in Guatemala. The only problem was enforcing the amparo. In order to do this, criminal legal charges had to be brought against those not abiding by the amparo. This took more time, money, and resources. It is worth noting that by and large the notaries did not solicit money from in-process families in order to fund these challenges, although some families did have to pay for incremental foster care as cases were taking much longer than expected.
On August 13, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala sided with the notaries that Guatemala’s acceding to the Hague was unconstitutional. The battle had been won, although it didn’t seem like it for quite a while. For starters, the decision would not be official until the day after it was printed in the national newspaper, El Diario de Centro América. Exactly one very long month of skeptical unease later, the decision became official. Because of the stand still that had occurred, even then it took quite a while to get past the backlog of cases that had been stockpiled.
In total, it’s estimated that 1500 – 2000 families were caught in the middle of what is now known as the Hague Fiasco. While it was a trying time, it was also a time of great solidarity in the adoption community. Lawyers, agencies, and parents were working together and much of the secrecy disappeared. Grassroots efforts of various sorts were organized. Elected officials were lobbied. Groups opposing intercountry adoption and supporting the end of adoptions in Guatemala were targeted with information campaigns and petitions. While all these efforts ultimately did not impact the outcome since the lawyers had really taken care of it unilaterally, it brought together many people, enlightened some on the politics of children, and gave others a new direction and outlook in their lives.
While the whole Hague Fiasco may only have been five months from start to finish, it seemed like an eternity to those in the eye of the storm.
Author's note: If you are at this moment inn a paranoid sort of state of mind about your adoption, you may not wish to read this chapter right now. As the chapter title explains, it deals with some exceptionally hard times in our adoption journey...
It was a normal afternoon in the office spent preparing for an important set of sales meetings in San Francisco and Orlando. Having a reputation for putting together fun Power Point presentations for these meetings; I did not want to leave my audience disappointed. I was introducing a new product I believed had great of potential for success. It tasted better than the entire competitive set. Consumer taste tests had proved that. It offered preparation advantages over the competitors as well. There was a large opportunity because most of the market used a competitive form. And the size of the market was growing. There was only one thing that I needed to ensure success and that was the support of the sales team. This presentation was my chance with them. I decided not to do a normal presentation and instead took the information and converted it into a game show. Members of the sales team would be contestants and the answers to the questions would all lead to the fact that this new product is just what we need.
Putting together these kinds of presentations takes a lot of time but it also one of the most enjoyable things I get to do because it is creative. The presentation was almost completed and I was feeling confident about it. In short, I was in a pretty good mood when the phone rang.
It was Carol Anne.
We had been trying to get an answer to some question and she was, finally, getting back to us. I can’t recall which of the many questions we had it was at this particular time. It is amazing how weird intricacies cause so many questions throughout the process. Carol Anne answered the question we had and then we were chatting a little bit. She sounded like she had something on her mind that she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell me. Adoption professionals are a weird sort. I think it must have something to do with the environment under which they operate. They have to be careful because they can get it from all sides. In any case, I didn’t know what was on Carol Anne’s mind so if there were something to tell me, she would get around to it.
There wasn’t exactly something to tell me.
There was, however, something to ask me.
An unexpected surprise
Alejandro was about four months old and was riding in a bad stream of luck. He had been referred to a family after he was born. He ran into some problems when a medical test said he had some form of rubeola. In the wake of discovering this, the family backed out of the adoption. It turned out that it looked like the test had been a false positive as subsequent tests had come back negative. It didn’t take much for me to believe there could be a false positive! He had been taken to see the man the adoption community considers the best pediatric doctor in Guatemala. Alejandro’s issue was his age.
Believe it or not, being four months old was a strike against him. This is one place the critics of ICA get the fodder for their fire because the kids do get to be like sports cars in a way. People want to adopt infants as young as possible so that they have that time with their child. While there were some waits for girls, there were not for boys. If Alejandro had been an Alejandra, four months would not be an issue. But if people could choose between the newborn and the child who is older, it makes sense that they would choose the newborn without realizing what that might mean for the other child. The reality is that all infants, newborn or not, and generally toddlers can be found a family. It just takes a little more work.
Because of Alejandro’s age, Carol Anne told me that the lawyer would give us the referral and then just wait until we got our INS approval to start the work. That way the lawyer would know he had Alejandro placed with a family. Carol Anne wanted to know if we were interested.
I was in a state of shock and almost speechless. It is true that things never happen the way you expect them to. I wasn’t prepared for this right at this moment. I think I babbled some question to Carol Anne to stall her for a minute and give me the chance to breathe. Then my mind cleared and I thought, “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Of course we were interested!
I didn’t have to commit or anything like that. Obviously I’d have to talk to Sheila first. We also would definitely want some time to look into this medical test thing. While Sheila and I would have to discuss it, I knew his age would not matter to either of us.
Five minutes later Carol Anne had e-mailed me Alejandro’s picture.
The sensation of opening up that picture file was amazing. I didn’t know what I was looking for and couldn’t quite capture the reality of what I was looking at.
Was this my son?
Is such a thing possible?
Could this be?
This is another adoption feeling that is difficult to define. In one way, you already love that child. In another way, he is a complete stranger.
For the shallow readers dieing to know, he was adorable. He was more Spanish than indigenous in his appearance. He looked like a stocky fellow with the potential to play linebacker for Notre Dame. He was very handsome and cute at the same time. Maybe he was my son.
After looking at his picture for a minute I forwarded it on to Sheila and called her on the phone with the news. It is very hard to sense emotion in Sheila, especially on the phone. She just doesn’t use lifts in her voice as much as most people. So I couldn’t really tell what was going through her head. I’m sure it was excitement, surprise, fear, and skepticism. Since I had been the one to talk to Carol Anne, I was naturally going to be more comfortable about the false positive. Carol Anne’s southern draw and soft voice makes it very easy to have faith. I gave Sheila the time to digest and we agreed to discuss it that night when we’d be together.
By the time I got home from work, both of us had already made up our minds. But we both wanted to give the other the promised discussion. We tried to make it sound like we were really thinking it all over. We even tried to play up concerns. But we both knew that unless something was not as Carol Anne described, there was no way we were going to pass on this referral. We did agree to talk to some doctors to get some more opinions on whether we should feel safe about his health.
Before we could officially accept the referral, we needed to get a series of documents from the lawyer in Guatemala. The usual referral package has a photograph, a copy of the child’s birth certificate, a copy of the birthmother’s cedula, the results of some blood tests, and a document certifying that both the child and the birthmother are HIV free. All we had was the picture.
Everything seemed positive and we were very excited. This adoption thing was for real. We now had a child. All we needed was the paperwork to prove it. So while the lawyer got us the documents we needed, we could verify the medical stuff. I had to leave for my meetings the next morning so I agreed to try to squeeze in the doctor stuff when I had time on the road. We didn’t have long to celebrate together, but we felt it inside.
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas
Some say that it isn’t smart to start showing pictures of the child to people and referring to him as your child until much later in the process. I can agree and debate with this perspective. While it certainly makes sense because many referrals do not result in adoptions, it is very hard to deny the adoptive parent the pleasure of finally showing someone a picture of “my son”.
On my business trip, I could not show the pictures of Alejandro to enough people. I was a proud daddy and no one was going to stop me from proving it. While on this trip, I was able to e-mail with the doctor in Guatemala and got his assurances that Alejandro was fine. I also managed to talk to a couple of specialists that did not seem to be overly concerned if I was confident in the second test. There weren’t any other tests we could have done to be more certain unless we wanted to request another retest of the original one.
Another important thing happened while I was on this trip. Sheila came home from work and low and behold there was an envelope in the mailbox from the INS. We had received our I171H. We had everything needed on our end to begin. But we still did not have all the documents we needed from Guatemala. Once we had them, we would sign a Power of Attorney to the Guatemalan Attorney, have it notarized, certified and authenticated and get it down to Guatemala with a check. Then we’d be official. But until we had the documents, we were not going to sign that Power of Attorney or send any money. Carol Anne agreed with us.
A little over a month had passed and we still did not have all the referral documents. We were getting quite frustrated with the delay. We did not know what the hold up could be. Carol Anne wasn’t exactly full of answers either. We starting to get a little bit concerned but were actually being pretty calm and patient.
My dad had arranged a family get together in Las Vegas. My elderly grandmother was going to be there as well. We were very excited to be able to show her pictures of her great grandson. Alejandro would be my parent’s first grandchild and my grandmother’s first great grandchild. My brother, the perpetual bachelor, was even going to let his girlfriend meet the family. My dad’s brother and my cousin would be flying in from New Jersey. It was something to look forward to.
There are no exciting stories to tell about a trip to Las Vegas with your grandmother. At least not mine. Needless to say, the baby, the pictures, and the ten-second video of Alejandro we had were the hot topics of conversation. My grandmother was the one family member we were concerned with accepting a child from another ethnicity. She comes from a much different time. Strange as it may seem it is very hard for a Jew who barely escaped the Nazis to believe that race doesn’t matter. She had seen that it does matter, on the receiving end. So it was a huge relief to see her smiling at the pictures and enthusiastic about the adoption.
When we returned home from Las Vegas there was a message on the answering machine.
It was from Carol Anne.
She was calling to tell us that she had lost faith in our lawyer. She said that he was a great guy and that he used to be on the ball but had just become incredibly flaky. She said this started with one of her other clients and was obviously apparent with us thus far. We had already talked to the other family she was mentioning and knew about what she was talking about. We had been trying to just hope something would get better with movement on our case. Carol Anne made it pretty clear she didn’t see that happening.
Her advise to us was to abandon this referral since we had not yet signed or paid anything. We could tell that she felt really badly about it. In fact, her reputation with the Guatemalan lawyers could be damaged for having one of her families back out. She made it clear that the decision was ours and that she supported whatever we decided to do. But she also made it clear to us that if we stayed with this case, it would be the last one she did with this lawyer. She also told us about a couple of infant boys through a different lawyer ready to be matched if we decided to make a change. She had e-mailed us their pictures.
We had a very difficult decision to make.
So many thoughts and emotions were spinning through our heads. We had become attached to Alejandro. At least we thought so.
Or maybe it wasn’t actually him but just what he represents?
We are not ready for a process that is going to be a struggle!
How we can leave him behind?
We should trust Carol Anne!
Should we trust Carol Anne?
Why can’t anything ever go as planned?
We started to make a big mistake by looking at the pictures of the two new referrals as we were discussing what to do. It suddenly became very bothersome. The reality of what we were doing started to settle in. Here we were looking at these three kids deciding which one we wanted. There was nothing commercial about it but nonetheless the futures of these three kids lied in the hands of a couple of gringos in California. We both agreed that we needed to step back for a minute.
Whether we had two possible referrals waiting was not what was important. The first thing we needed to decide was whether or not we were prepared to walk away from Alejandro because of the lawyer’s incompetence. So we placed the photos of the two children face down on the table. We then had to put the emotions and attachment we had for Alejandro in a prudent place. We needed to take those emotions and place them on paper as being one of the considerations that would favor continuing with his adoption, but we had to be objective about it and not let them control the other considerations. In other words, we weren’t going to try to ignore the emotions we both knew we had. We were going to stop them from being the whole enchilada.
We really did trust Carol Anne. I reminded Sheila of why it was that we hired her. It was because we felt confident that she was honest, would look out for our best interests, and have the knowledge to navigate the process. If that’s what we were paying her to do, then how foolish would it be not to follow her advise. She was basically telling us that she didn’t think she could get this lawyer to do his job anymore. If we were her last case with him, he might even go slower on our case just to piss her off. It did not sound like something to look forward to. As much as our hearts were sincere in wanting to adopt Alejandro, it had already been over a month and this lawyer couldn’t even fax us documents that should have been sitting in his office. This was probably a sign of things to come. If we had paid him anything, I would have been wondering if he was crooked. But given he didn’t have any legal commitment or payment from us, it seemed like real incompetence.
As we continued the conversation we realized that we should take Carol Anne’s advise. The prospect of being one of the adoptions that takes forever when we had the chance to prevent it was more humanity than we had in us. We felt regret and sorrow about it. There is no doubt about that. But we had to have the strength to remind ourselves that while we were being selfish in a way, we were also being honest about what we were capable of. Being put into these types of decisions is not what one imagines adopting will be like. Going in, we’re not prepared for them and yet when they come, you have to answer.
It is sad and wrong that a child like Alejandro should ever be the pawn in the chess game of adoption. I will always feel some guilt for having played in the game myself. We didn’t choose to ever have to make a decision like that. When thrown onto the chessboard, we did the best we could to look at the whole picture and develop our best strategy. In an unfortunate way, we had to realize that Alejandro was just one of many pawns on the board. We were not in control of the game nor could we understand everything our moves might mean. It felt like we just figured out how it is that the knight moves and we were playing against the famous Big Blue computer.
Rocket Boy
It was time to move on and leave the past behind. We still had those two photographs sitting face down on the coffee table. With the decision about Alejandro made, we now had to separate ourselves from it and move on to the next decision. As I sit here writing this, I honestly cannot recall how we came to which of the two children we were going to adopt. Maybe there was some reason or maybe we picked at random. After all, our heads were still spinning at the time. I know we didn’t choose by picking the cuter one or anything like that. However it was that we decided, we did, and his name was René Ottoniel.
He was a little guy with a very hairy face. He looked like a little baby wolfman. Behind the fur was what appeared to be a very handsome indigenous child with beautifully soft features. Rather than living with a foster family, he was living at a hogar in La Antigua. The hogar had been started and was run by an American and was known for providing a level care in line with “American standards”. The location was a plus because La Antigua was a very nice tourist area. It is where most Americans stay if they are fostering their child. It would be convenient when we visited. So while we knew he probably would not get the level of attention he might with a foster family, we were confident he’d be well cared for. We had done some research on the lawyer handling the case and had heard nothing but good things about him. We even came up with a nickname for him because it was so hard to say his names with the proper inflection. We called him “Rocket Boy” after a cartoon character whose name is Otto.
There was no wait for the referral documents this time around. But within a day or two of giving Carol Anne the go ahead, we had a new problem arise. Rocket Boy wasn’t sucking. The nurses at the hogar were using an eye-dropper to feed him because of this. The condition is not all that uncommon, so it wasn’t a something to worry excessively about. Usually children just figure the sucking thing out sooner or later. But to be sure he was okay, the director of the hogar wanted to have him checked out by a pediatric neurologist before we made anything official. This reassured us about the people we were working with and their integrity.
It took a couple of weeks for them to finally feel everything was okay with Rocket Boy. They had one of the hogar employees acting as a wet nurse and he seemed to be feeding okay that way. He must have been holding out for the real thing! The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with him. At last we were finally going to have an adoption officially started. So we signed the power of attorney and instead of using Fed Ex to get it certified and authenticated, we used Kev Ex. I got in my car and drove to Sacramento to get it immediately certified. Then I got back into my car and drove to the Guatemalan Consulate in San Francisco to get it authenticated. By noon I was at the bank getting a certified check. The power of attorney and check were in the capable hands of Federal Express later that afternoon and were in Guatemala sometime the next day.
Once you have sent in the check and signed the papers, you have one of the last moments of peace you will experience until your child comes home. It’s because you have nothing to be upset about so far as the pace of your case is concerned. This peace does not last long, as nothing is more unbearable than “nothing new” after a while. Because we had never made it official with Alejandro, we had not quite reveled in things like getting the house ready. That was different with Rocket Boy. We were enjoying these types of things.
We had some time to come to peace with adopting him. We received regular updates on him that we never received with Alejandro. We felt a part of his life. We even sent a care package out for him. It had a little soft photo album that said “My Family” on the cover. Carol Anne had sent us this photo album in the mail and we added the pictures. We, actually Sheila, also made him his first tie-dye. Babies in tie-dyes are a love of mine. So we also sent down some extra dyes for the other kids at the hogar. This whole thing felt real at last. You’ve probably noticed I had that feeling every time we reached a milestone. You are correct. This is, however, exactly how it felt to me. Maybe I should be saying “more real” instead. More accurately, “closer to real” is the best description.
Amongst our excitement we started to seriously talk about Sheila going to La Antigua to foster Otto. We weren’t sure if there might be some way to integrate fostering and helping at the hogar together. And of course, even if she opted against fostering, we were anxious to visit. Until the point in the process where you have had the DNA test completed, visiting is generally not much of an option. The reason is because the DNA test is the first and only time since the birthmother relinquished the child that she has to see the child. In fact, the laboratory that takes the saliva samples is required to take a picture of her holding the child. So the common logic is that if she has second thoughts and might reclaim the child, this is probably when it is going to happen. As such, best not to have parents visit the child until after the test has been done.
Our patience was running dry as we couldn’t see any progress on the case. Rocket Boy was six weeks old now and we really just wanted to visit him.
I had an interesting experience while at a trade show in Las Vegas. At one of the social events, there were tarot card readers you could sit down with. I had never had my cards read and I could certainly use a little look into the future on this unpredictable adoption thing. So I gave it a shot. The card reader impressed me. When the topic of children came up, she said the cards showed a child coming over seas. Guatemala isn’t across the ocean, but the prediction was close enough to keep my interest. She thought it would be pretty soon but couldn’t elaborate. She said the child would bring us great happiness and joy. And then she said it would be a girl. Hmmm. We do live in the Bay Area. Rocket Boy did have very soft features. I joked with Sheila that maybe the card reader could tell he was gay or something. Don’t take that wrong, Sheila and I would have no problem accepting our child’s homosexuality if that ever proved to be the case. But somehow with no prodding she managed to pick out the intercountry adoption thing – impressive even if she did get the gender wrong.
A short time later back in my office, it was another average late morning. Nothing special was happening worth noting. The next couple of days were going to be interesting. My company had hired some Harvard professor to conduct a seminar for the management staff. It was going to be a couple days back in academia where I’d be chilling with the big whigs. So I was trying to get things in order so that I’d be okay to be out of the office for two days. Like I said, nothing special was happening. I was on some business call when my administrative assistant came in to tell me I had another call I needed to take. There was only person that I had a “I can take a call anytime” policy for.
It was Carol Anne.
She was barely coherent and very hard to understand. She was obviously in tears. I couldn’t follow exactly what she was saying. She finally got her composure a bit and told me that Rocket Boy had a problem the night before. He had stopped breathing. The nurses had tried CPR. They had rushed him to the hospital.
Rocket Boy was dead.
Rocket Boy had a condition called hydroencephela or something like that. This condition is not normally detectable unless you’re closely looking for it and does not manifest itself until right around his age. She said that if they had been able to save him that night it would have only been a matter of months before he passed away.
Why?
I was not mentally in my office when I hung up the phone. I have no idea where I was at the time. I couldn’t feel anything. I was caught somewhere between shock and denial. I sat in my office for a few minutes, trying to shed the ocean sized tear I felt in my heart. The tear refused to flow from my eyes. I wasn’t sure what to do, how to feel, whether to lose it or try to keep my composure. I suddenly realized that what I needed to do was tell someone. I needed to share it. I needed a hug as soon as possible. I walked down the hall to a coworker’s office with whom I felt the most comfortable and told her what had happened. I’m a pretty open person so she had been keeping up on us since infertility. She had been supportively following our adoption path. I don’t remember what she said. It didn’t matter because I just needed to tell someone to let it out of me. The hug brought me back to the real world.
Obviously I had to tell Sheila. I had no idea of how to tell her. Nor did I know when to tell her. Sheila’s job at the time was not one where she could leave very easily. While under these circumstances I wouldn’t have worried about whether or not I had permission to leave, Sheila is more responsible than I and wouldn’t push it. So if I went and told her, she’d likely be at work for hours before having some time to dwell. On the other hand, could I really go home and not tell her until she gets home at around eight o’clock at night? Could I sit there for hours without being to able to hold my wife? In a completely selfish manner, I needed her!
After talking to a couple more people in my office, I realized I had to tell her. While driving to her work I tried to figure out how to do it. Keep in mind that I was struggling to keep it together myself. On the outside I seemed okay. On the inside I felt my anguish building up and it was just a question of when it was going to come barreling out. Determining the words to say was so hard that I couldn’t even get beyond trying to figure out what environment we’d be in when I told her. Sheila worked in the service department of a car dealership. I kept imagining the sounds of an auto shop like the drills used to take off lug nuts in the background and couldn’t get beyond that to think of the words to say.
I brought Sheila outside of the shop and told her there was something wrong with Rocket Boy. I didn’t need to say any more. I can still remember her looking at me and asking, “What happened?” in a very quick, almost stern matter. Her face looked normal, except for the pressure building in her eyes. They were already red. She did not have a problem opening the tear ducts. She already knew what was about to come out of my mouth so I think I just said, “he died.” Then I held her in my arms.
We went someplace less public to have a few minutes alone. I told her everything Carol Anne had said, which I was only beginning to be able to remember. Really, we didn’t talk much. I do remember a few minutes just pondering how such an innocent life could be taken like this. We were not just mourning our loss, but also his. We held each other for a while but mostly we just stood there together in awe, unable to connect with what our lives had become. I think that for both of us all the pain we had ever experienced in this simple desire to be parents came thrashing back at us all at once.
There is supposedly a point in torture where a person has been beaten so badly that he ceases to be able to feel any pain. This was Sheila and I. The upside is that as long as you can stay in that state, you function pretty well. After having only about fifteen minutes together, we both somehow managed to feel we were okay and Sheila went back to work. I went home, had a beer, and listened to the Grateful Dead.
When Sheila came home from work, I was amazed at how strong she was being. She said that she had to step away from her counter a few times during the afternoon, but overall was able to handle being at work. I felt so absent that I don’t think I could have done it. I think being at work would have forced me into reality and the workplace would be no place for that. We sat down and talked for a while, chain-smoking cigarettes as we did.
The next day we tried to go back to normal. My boss had left me a voicemail the prior afternoon to offer his condolences and let me know to take as much time as I need. It was very kind of him and the organization. It occurred to me that in the workplace, the higher you are on the chain of command and the more you get paid, the better you get treated in times like these. Poor Sheila didn’t even feel comfortable leaving after she got the news and I was being offered as much time as I needed. Despite this offer, I decided to attend the Harvard professor seminar as planned.
There was some part of both of us that felt that because this was an adoption and we hadn’t met Rocket Boy yet, we somehow we weren’t entitled to much personal grief. It was as if we felt like it should be taken in the same light as if some child in your neighborhood that you don’t really know passed away. It would be a tragedy and you would feel bad about it. But you wouldn’t be taking off of work. We were definitely in a state of denial.
Toward the end of the first day of the seminar, the pain I had been holding inside of myself started to manifest. I lost my ability to pay attention to the seminar. This is a scary thought when you have a Harvard professor talking business strategy. My mind kept moving to Rocket Boy. All the obvious questions that have no answers filled my mind. I felt the pressure building in my eyes. I’d try to contain it and would manage to for a moment. But I knew that wasn’t going to last for long. I got up, whispered to my boss that I had to leave, and got in my car as fast as I could. I was about to explode. A logical person would have probably parked somewhere. I, instead, got onto the freeway. As I got my car into a steady position, my face turned red. Tears flowed down my cheek. Every muscle in my face tensed. All the pain rushed out of me at once.
I let out in an extended roar, “WHY!”
Recovery
Just a few days after Rocket Boy passed away, we had plans to go to North Carolina for a wedding. In order to explain what this entails, I’ll spell it out. I’ve mentioned my group of friends from high school and that I originally moved to North Carolina because a roommate from college lived there. Over the years, my group of best friends from high school and my college roommate’s group of best friends had become the best of friends. Weddings are one of the precious few times that we all got together. So four days in North Carolina actually translates to four days of partying, bonding, and jubilation. We may be a crazy group at times, but we always have a great time.
Sheila and I had to decide whether or not we should still go to the wedding. We weren’t feeling very festive. We already had the plane tickets and we had already taken the time off of work. If worse came to worse we could always stay camped in at our hotel. We decided to go and hoped it would prove therapeutic.
At some point before we left for North Carolina, Carol Anne called to see how we were doing. She also had something to ask us that she once again wasn’t comfortable with. It was a referral. A little girl named Isabel. Carol Anne explained how she totally understood if we wanted to wait a while. But because she knew Sheila had originally preferred a girl and she had received this new referral, if we were interested she would forget about the waiting list for girls. The kicker was that we couldn’t wait too long to decide because there were families waiting for girls. This made it hard but we understood. We both knew that our misfortune shouldn’t delay someone else’s blessing. We told her to e-mail us Isabel’s information and picture and that we’d let her know when we got back from the wedding.
It was very difficult at that moment to think about another referral. It was hard to look at the photo and believe that there was a real future child of mine on it. We hadn’t been given very much time to adjust and accept what had happened. I had cut myself off from it for part of that time. This was so soon after that I wasn’t sure if we were ready. I was pretty confident that I wasn’t. When we boarded the plane for Raleigh, my heart was telling me to wait. It would be interesting to see what the trip would hold.
A good friend picked us up at the airport. In fact, she and her husband were named as godparents for our home study. They were one of our references as well, and not the one who screwed up. Asleep in the back seat was her infant son, who we were meeting for the first time. The little boogers that make you angry at other people’s joy were not taking over luckily, though it was hard to enjoy him like I ordinarily would a friend’s child. She took us straight to our hotel, where we would have a few hours before the camaraderie would begin.
Without going into detail about everything that happened, the trip brought us back to life. We had a wonderful time and felt the love of friendship. We didn’t dwell on what we had been through. Instead we enjoyed the moment. We put it all aside and appreciated where we were. In a way, we came to terms with our sorrow.
Sheila even danced, wore funny hats, and acted goofy.
Following the wedding reception, the party moved to our hotel where many of us were staying. Sheila and I were sitting in our room before joining the crowd. We were looking at Isabel’s picture. I think Sheila had made up her mind earlier than me. For me, it took being around all these friends and enjoying the precious moments of life that made me realize we had to move on. Rocket Boy’s death did not change the fact that we wanted to be parents. Waiting for some comfort level to arrive that we haven’t felt since Stage One of infertility didn’t make any sense.
We decided to accept the referral.
We were going to adopt Isabel.
At least we hoped so.
Despite having previously made the decision to continue our IUI treatments until the end of the year, once we had gone through the "what next" process and landed on Guatemala we opted to end infertility treatment a few months early. We did not feel comfortable going down the two paths at the same time and worried that we could end up in a situation where we were committed to an adoption only to find out we were pregnant. In reality, that could not have happened because of the time required to get to the point of accepting the referral of a child. But we were new to the process, still learning, and if nothing else, while it may take some time for a referral, the adoption costs start to incur very early in the process.
We realized that the first thing we needed to do was hire an agency to conduct a home study, essentially showing that we are fit parents. The larger decision of who would handle the Guatemalan side of the equation did not need to be made yet. Since your home study agency has to be licensed by your state, you generally have only a few choices of agencies that operate in your local area. So we attended an introductory meeting at one local agency to learn a little bit more about it. They seemed nice, honest, and capable so we went ahead and hired them.
I could be a good daddy, really
The home study process is when you first start to realize the frantic and paranoid mindset that will guide you through the entire adoption process. While the home study is actually a very simple process, it is hard to believe this to be the case while you are going through it.
First of all, all of the forms and explanations seem to have been written by someone whose last job was writing the instructions for how to install a new dishwasher. They are very vague and don’t seem to make sense given some unique thing about your situation. What you don’t realize at the time is that you don’t need to think about it so much. There’s no need to try to analyze exactly what they mean by something. We could really just answer off the top of our minds based on a first read of the question and be safe. But because of the mindset you are in, you study every question as if you were trying to understand the federal income tax code.
We gave deep thought to who our personal references would be. We had to make sure that these references would show what good, well-adjusted people we are. How many of them needed to be local? How long do we need to have known them? How closed-knit should they be? Yeah, let’s throw in a pastor. That would be impressive! Wait, we better have people with kids. What about an employer to show we’re responsible and hard working?
How were we supposed to be able to pick three people or couples that represent all the wonderful reasons why we deserve to be parents?
Pure frustration! Unnecessary, pure frustration!
There are also a variety of medical tests you have to go through. There were two issues with this. The first was the fact that our HMO (Kaiser Permanente) may have been great for IUI, but they are not supportive of adoption. You can’t just march on down there with a letter from the home study agency and have them give you the tests you need. It is really a shame. It took us a bit of creative maneuvering to accomplish, and would take much more later on, but we got them to do the tests. The other issue was once again the ambiguity in the forms. It wasn’t clear what exactly they were supposed to be testing in some cases and calling the agency didn’t make it any clearer.
One example was the urine analysis. I’ll admit, the Deadhead in me heeds caution to piss tests. Maybe it is just a scar from my youth. Maybe I had spent so much time trying to cover up things I was doing that there was a Pavlov’s Dog reaction. Even when I have had to take drug screens for employment, knowing darn well that I’m clean, I get nervous. Whether it is the fear of a false positive, a nested psychological reaction, or the feeling of an infringement on my civil liberties, these things make me nervous. The medical form didn’t say what they needed to test for. Did I need to avoid going to a concert or other place where someone might be smoking a joint? I’ll admit it, I live in the Bay Area and I come in contact with marijuana. Heck, using the restroom at PacBell Park during the World Series probably put enough ambient THC in me to trigger a positive! There are many questions you can get answered by asking someone who has been through it already. But it is extremely uncomfortable to ask someone you don’t know well if the urine test includes a drug screen. It turns out, no drug screen. I guess we can place civil liberties in the win column on this one.
The last major part of the home study is the home visit. This was one where we really had no idea what to expect. We had gotten the scoop of what was required if you are being approved by Social Services, but this was entirely different. We didn’t know if we had to put covers over all the outlets and kid-proof the cabinets. We decided that we probably didn’t need to go those lengths now but did make sure we had more important things like a lock on our Jacuzzi cover. How spotless did the house need to be? How much of our clutter should we hide? We don’t want to appear disorganized. Yikes, do I need to take down the American peace flag from the kitchen wall? Maybe they think pacifists make bad parents!
Physical inspection aside, we really didn’t know what kinds of questions we’d be asked by the Social Worker. This could get very personal and while we had nothing to hide, there were things from both of our pasts that we’d rather not get in to. The adoption mindset made it so that I was unsure what a proper response to some of my teenage indiscretions would be. We of course wanted to appear perfect in every way. What if she somehow asks us both the same question and we answer differently? What if she finds things where we don’t see eye-to-eye? Do we need to act cuddly and cutesie to show we’re happily married?
As it turns out, the home study is not something to fear. It really seems to serve the purpose for which it is intended. In reality, the home study process seems more like a driver’s license or gun permit. You have to give them good reason to reject you. The argument can be made that there should be more to it. A few months ago there was a tragedy that occurred when a father killed his recently adopted child from Guatemala. Apparently the child had a bout of diarrhea and the father freaked out after having to repeatedly clean and diaper the child. The father dropped the infant boy into the bathtub three times, fracturing his skull and killing the child. I read one account where it said that this couple had actually been rejected in the past but somehow they got one agency to approve their home study. Maybe there was some signal that this man, who had no record of violence, had the potential to crack? Maybe they should have dug deeper to see the potential that lurked within him? Most likely, there was nothing to clue them in. But because of the adoption brand, this instance will be judged in that regard separate from all of the other fathers who do the same thing.
We were asked some very personal questions. There were things that came to light that we were glad to have discussed with the Social Worker. Those things are too personal and not necessarily my own so I can’t go into detail. But we had one situation caused by one of our references who stupidly put something down he shouldn’t have. It wasn’t anything that would impact our ability to parent, but it was something that had to be carefully crafted into the home study report so that it would not be misunderstood when translated into Spanish.
It was just about Christmas now and we had a notarized copy of a home study report conducted by a licensed social worker recommending us to be approved to adopt up to two children up to two years of age from Guatemala. (Even though we were only planning on adopting one child who was much younger than two years old, it’s best to widen your approval just in case. You never know what will happen along the way.)
Now all we needed was the approval of the federal government.
The Feds