They Make Adoption 1st Option
Tiffany Taylor remembers when she and her husband, Brad Wines, first broke the news to friends that they had decided to adopt. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” was the typical reaction.
The couple were baffled by the response until they realized their friends “just automatically assumed we were infertile,” Taylor, 31, recalls. Despite her insistence that “this was our first choice,” she says that, even today, “they still don’t get it.”
There was no physiological reason that the two, both advertising executives in Dallas, could not conceive a child. But when they were ready to start a family after six years of marriage, they chose adoption. They brought home Inna Nicole, an 8-month-old girl, from Russia in 1996, and now they are waiting for their second--an infant boy, they hope--from the same orphanage.
Historically, starting a family through adoption has been almost exclusively a practice of singles and infertile couples. But now some couples choose adoption first--despite increasing opportunities for creating and sustaining pregnancy offered by recent high-tech advances in fertility.
Their feelings are especially striking, coming at a time when public attitudes--while positive overall toward adoption--continue to view it as less desirable than having biological children.
A survey of 1,554 adults conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates late last year found that 90% of Americans viewed adoption favorably. At the same time, however, 50% felt that “adoption is better than being childless, but it is not quite as good” as having a birth child.
“So often, adoption has had the stigma of being second choice, or last choice,” says Ann Sullivan, director of the adoption program for the Child Welfare League of America. “I’ve often felt that families who pursue years of fertility treatments at a high cost--to their bodies, their emotions and their pocketbooks--would be better served to consider adoption sooner.”
She welcomes the idea of adoption as a first choice and points out that the concept is not entirely new. Starting in the 1960s, many couples, concerned about global overpopulation and child poverty issues, decided against bringing additional children into the world and adopted instead.
She and others are delighted that such attitudes persist, especially at a time when so much attention is otherwise being directed at the burgeoning field of new reproductive options.
Since 1981, when assisted reproductive technology began in the United States, about 15% of American women have sought help becoming pregnant, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1995 alone, there were nearly 60,000 “attempts” to create pregnancies through fertility treatments, although only a small number were successful, the CDC says.
Adoptions are burgeoning too. But it is impossible to separate those who adopt by choice from those who do so because of infertility; researchers and others who compile adoption-related statistics typically don’t ask that question.
In 1992, the most recent year for which adoption statistics are available, 127,441 children were adopted in the United States, according to the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse. This was up from 118,449 in 1987.
Complicated, Varied Reasons
Overall, it is estimated that 1 million children in the United States are adopted.
Why do some couples make adoption, rather than biological birth, their first choice?
The reasons are complicated, and varied--when they can be articulated at all. Some feel, as those of three decades ago did, that there are too many children in the world without families and that it is irresponsible to create children when so many are in need. Others are inspired by religious reasons, believing that providing a family and home for a child who needs one is a moral imperative.
Still others were themselves adopted and believe in adoption as a way to build families. And some cannot explain it at all.
“We both have felt incredibly drawn to adoption; it was something we had always talked about,” says Wines, 35. “We adopted by choice, not need. I don’t know the exact reason why.”
“The drive to have biological children with one’s partner is very, very strong,” says bioethicist Art Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania, whose recent book, “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?” examines a range of reproductive technology issues.
“Most people see children as a way to have something that is both a reflection of themselves and as a way to share in a project with another,” Caplan adds. “Many cultures emphasize the importance of biology in doing this. But a few people seem capable, from ego or altruism, of transcending the biological pressures.”
Julie and Tim Shepardson, a Charleston, S.C., couple, are among them; they traveled to Russia six months ago to bring home identical twin boys, Riley and Tanner, now nearly 4 1/2 and thriving.
Julie, 35, a graduate student in psychology, says her husband, 36, the manager of a private club, is a strong proponent of zero population growth and that they never really considered having biological children.
“We’ve always been somewhat nontraditional,” she says. “We just wanted to give some kids a home. The more we got into it and learned what an incredible need there was, especially in Russia, the more certain we became that this was what we wanted to do.”
But “before the boys arrived, once in a while I would think--because I loved my husband so much--that it would be great to have a ‘little him,’ ” she says. “But now that my sons have been home six months, they are just like my husband--they are him--we definitely see us in them every day.”
No Need to ‘Continue Our Family Lines’
Martha Steinhart, 31, a soil scientist from St. Paul, Minn., and her husband, Jeff Bunkelman, 35, an architectural draftsman, are waiting for a referral of a toddler from Romania.
“A child does not have to be born to us to deserve our love and support,” Steinhart says. “We don’t feel any need to ‘continue our family lines’ or attempt to reproduce ourselves. I do not understand why people go to the extremes they do to make their ‘own’ babies. They want children; there are children who need parents.”
Most couples who feel this way look to international programs, in which the need is great and agencies usually do not ask questions about fertility.
In 1997, Americans brought home 13,620 children from foreign countries; up 20% from 11,340 in 1996. More children were adopted from Russia than from any other country, although China and South Korea followed close behind.
Many agencies that place American children, on the other hand, tend to favor couples who have trouble conceiving--in large part because the agencies are desperate for criteria in selecting who can adopt the small number of available healthy white infants. One exception is for couples willing to adopt children with special needs who are harder to place.
“One adoption agency told me my husband and I had no business trying to pursue adoption until we had our ‘own’ children,” says Cheryl Basile, 36, a marketing specialist from Glen Ellyn, Ill., who hopes to adopt from overseas sometime next year. “I couldn’t believe this was an agency I was talking to. They acted like there was something wrong with me.”
Caroline Kent, 45, a research librarian at Harvard University, and her husband, David, also 45 and an independent management consultant, adopted two children domestically. The couple are white; their first child, Jack, 4 1/2, is African American; their daughter, Desiree, 6 months old, is of mixed parentage--one biological parent was African American, the other from the Cape Verde islands off the west coast of Africa.
“I never had an overwhelming desire to be pregnant,” Caroline says. “By the time we decided to start a family, we were both 40 and didn’t want to risk it. We went through no fertility stuff; we were having sex but not trying to get pregnant. . . . I have two incredibly bright, beautiful children I was able to raise from babyhood, and I don’t feel as if I’ve missed anything. For me, there was no loss.”
But she adds: “The only loss I feel, sometimes, is that I wish I’d given birth to these children--because Jack wants it. When he was 3, he spent weeks crawling under my shirt wanting to be a baby in my tummy--and he asked me to be his birth mother.”
‘We Saw 22 Girl Babies Waiting for Homes’
Terri Lehman, an American, and her husband, Rama Modali, who is Asian-Indian, made their decision during a trip to India several years ago to visit his relatives. Lehman’s brother and 12 of her 25 cousins are adopted, so the idea seemed natural.
The couple, who live in Laurel, Md., and own a biotechnology company, visited an orphanage “and there we saw 22 girl babies waiting for homes, plus several older children,” Lehman recalls. “We immediately decided that we wanted to adopt from India, and the rest is history.”
Their daughter, Asha, who arrived in the fall of 1996, is now 2 years old. “We have no regrets whatsoever that we didn’t go the bio route, since Asha is more wonderful than we ever hoped a child would be,” Lehman says. “We are currently in the process of starting paperwork for a second adoption and hope for another daughter.”
Among the difficulties for many who choose this route is figuring out how to respond to friends, family and even well-meaning strangers who simply do not understand.
“I once had a boss who said: ‘Why don’t you just have them like normal people?’ ” recalls Elizabeth Green Streeter, a 39-year-old engineer from Madison, Ala. She and her husband, Gordon, a computer scientist, also 39, adopted two boys from India, now 9 and 5.
Taylor, who is involved with several adoption support groups, says she never knows quite what to say when other adoptive mothers approach her at social functions “and start talking about fertility problems, assuming that I’ve been there. It’s very hard to jump in and tell them that I really haven’t been down that road.”