Until my husband and I adopted, neither of us had given much thought about political correctness in reference to adoption. Prior to our adoptions, I made the same kinds of comments that I now hear from others. Some of these comments include”
“You mean they aren’t yours?”
“Where is their real mom?”
“Are they real brothers?”
“My (so-and-so) couldn’t have children of their own either.”
There are a couple different ways of handling these cases. You can choose to be offended, or you can recognize that the person really doesn’t understand, and be the one to educate them.
The day we got the call that we were selected to be parents, we were beyond thrilled. We went to Hallmark and bought our son who we had yet to meet a stuffed animal for babies. The lady at the counter asked if someone we knew just had a baby. We told her that we were just selected to adopt a one year old little boy. She lit up with excitement for us and said, “That’s wonderful. Wow, you guys did it the easy way!” No, no, no, it wasn’t easy! We didn’t get on any waiting list, we didn’t just get to pick out a kid, we waited to be selected for one of the many children we had our home study in on. To be honest, I don’t recall how I handled that situation. I know I was dumbfounded.
There have been numerous comments made by people who really don’t understand the process. Another one in particular was when my husband and I were at a jewelry store. I got to chatting with the lady about my son, and adoption came up. She automatically assumed that we were infertile because we adopted. Sadly, many have the attitude that choosing adoption is choosing second best. Yes, eventually we did learn that coincidently we were infertile, but that was never our motivation to adopt.
You might get tired of replying to ignorant comments. There may have been a time in your life that you too were uninformed. By taking the time to brush off some of the comments and educate on other ones perhaps we’ll see a new awareness of attitudes toward adoption.
Melissa is a Families.com Christian Blogger. Read her blogs at: http://members.families.com/mj7/blog