The Adoption Decision, by Linda Christianson, is not a how-to manual for adopting. He book’s subtitle, 15 Things You Want to Know Before Adopting, only hints at the insight contained within its pages. This book doesn’t just tell you 15 facts about adoption. Its 15 chapters deal with issues families who contemplate adoption must think about.
The issues include: attachment and feeling like a “real” parent, affording adoption, managing the grief of infertility, waiting for an unknown length of time during the adoption process, birthparents, open adoption, adopting an older child, international adoption, transracial adoption, integrating a different culture into your family, adopting children with special needs and feeling like you have to be a super-parent. T he author is an educator, a journalist, and a mother of two boys through domestic infant adoption. She tells her own story and also shares the words of many other adoptive parents, including those who’ve adopted from foster care and internationally.
These stories are perhaps the best part of the book. Christianson shares her story of infertility and longing for a child, of trying infertility treatment, then deciding that their real hunger was to parent a child. She mentions feelings parents often have around this issue and cautions parent to be committed to dealing with their lost fantasies of a child who looks like them or is good at the same things they are.
The book is hard to categorize. It is the author’s reflections on adoption more than data on adoptions. These reflections are accompanied by the real-life stories of the families. Some families’ stories are told in depth; other families share accounts of, for example, telling their extended family and relatives about their plans and helping older children adjust to their new home.
The book can help you anticipate problems your children may encounter, snide remarks you may get, and issues you may never have thought of. Christianson includes reflection questions on each chapter, designed for spouses to contemplate alone and together.
The book shares in detail about several experiences which are not often explored in depth in other books. These include the nitty-gritty of one family’s open adoption experience, including journal entries and comments shared by the birthparents of Christianson’s sons and by her sons themselves. Christianson explains that she initially agreed to a semi-open adoption with her first child—exchanging letters and photos through an intermediary without sharing last names and addresses. She shares how they eventually moved to complete openness and family visits.
The book also addresses adoption loss. Christianson and her husband had a nearly ideal adoption process with their first son, but then five prospective adoptive situations, usually involving a birth mother who decided to parent the child, and in one case a birth mother who decided to place the child with friends of her family.
The book has a Christian worldview, with Scripture quotes and spiritual encouragement throughout and one chapter devoted to spiritual adoption and Bible accounts relevant to adoption. However, the tone is not preachy and most of the material in the book will be very valuable to anyone considering adoption, no matter what their beliefs may or may not be.