I had to laugh when I read the title of Angela's post How to Include Adoption in Daily Life. For many of us birth parents (and some adoptive parents), we want just the opposite. At times, we feel constantly swamped by adoption references at and would like to banish them for just one day.

Last Saturday was a perfect example. My husband and I live in a small town in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains which you see in many of my photos. Our hometown newspaper is always on the look-out for big news, since there is not too much dramatic stuff happening in our area. The police force spends more time trying to control skateboarders than anything else. Recently, on the front page of our local newspaper was a brief article about a local man who is involved in town politics.

The short blurb said that congratulations were in order because Bob and his partner Bill, just became parents of a newborn. A little background information is in order. I am not fond of Bob's political leaning, so he is not my favorite person.

Normally when I see mention of an adoption, I do not get all warm and fuzzy as many people do. Inevitably, my thoughts are of the birth mother of the child being adopted. True, she could be someone totally unfit to parent, but there could be a different truth as well.

Back to the story at hand, somehow I was bothered by the thought that this short paragraph did not acknowledge that an adoption took place. Did the baby come from a cabbage patch perhaps? Or, did the stork deliver it? This is one of the situations that you know that something bugs you, but you cannot quite put your finger on why it does.

Open adoption? I seriously doubt that. If they do not even mention the fact that there was any adoption, it is unlikely that it will be an open one. Maybe the person who wrote the paragraph was just lame? I do not know and probably never will. I only know that this annoyed me.


Further Reading:

Adoption Takes a Holiday


Photo by Jan Baker 2007