Book Review: The Adoption Decision

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 … Continue reading

How We Chose the Type of Adoption that was Right for Us

Last week I wrote on “Choosing the Type of Adoption that is Right for You”. Today I’d like to share how we (my husband Charles and I) chose the type of adoption that was right for us. Our biological son was a toddler. We wanted to adopt a child younger than he was. We knew that many of the children in the US child welfare system were older children. I also didn’t think I could handle a legal-risk placement. Regarding domestic US infant adoptions, a couple of agencies wanted “proof of infertility”, and we weren’t infertile. One agency told us … Continue reading