Coming to Adoption
How we came to the decision to adopt was a mix of long-time planning, common sense and luck.
Jill first brought up the possibility of adoption years ago, before we were even married. Since we met in high school, but didn't get married until after we were both out of college, we had a long courtship and plenty of time to talk about what we both wanted for our future. At that time, I was thinking we'd have one or two babies biologically and then adopt. Adoption wasn't a noticable part of my growing up as it was with Jill (although I later realized it actually was, just not in the traditional sense - my best friend and one of my cousins were both adopted by their step-fathers). Biological babies were the "norm" in my childhood, so I assumed we'd go that route first. Over the years as we talked about adoption more, I started to realize a biological link wasn't important to me and I'd be excited about either path we might follow toward our future family.
It wasn't until this last year that kids became a possibility, though. We'd spent the first couple years after college in low wage jobs and then for a couple more years Jill was in grad school to get her Masters in Information Science so she could become a school librarian. We never had the money or the time to bring a child into the picture. When Jill graduated and actually became a librarian suddenly we could start seriously thinking about having kids.
By now we were anxious to start our family. We talked about biological kids and trying to time the pregnancy so it'd happen in the summer and Jill would be out of school (of course we realized the chances of this actually happening were minute). We also started talking about adoption again. In the end, it wasn't a sense of duty or charity that interested us in adoption. We wanted to raise kids, a genetic link wasn't important to us, and there are kids in the world who don't have homes - adoption was just common sense. Unfortunately, the fees involved ruled it out for us at the time. Then a couple months later we lucked into a one-time windfall of money that suddenly made adoption possible. It seemed like fate.
Jill first brought up the possibility of adoption years ago, before we were even married. Since we met in high school, but didn't get married until after we were both out of college, we had a long courtship and plenty of time to talk about what we both wanted for our future. At that time, I was thinking we'd have one or two babies biologically and then adopt. Adoption wasn't a noticable part of my growing up as it was with Jill (although I later realized it actually was, just not in the traditional sense - my best friend and one of my cousins were both adopted by their step-fathers). Biological babies were the "norm" in my childhood, so I assumed we'd go that route first. Over the years as we talked about adoption more, I started to realize a biological link wasn't important to me and I'd be excited about either path we might follow toward our future family.
It wasn't until this last year that kids became a possibility, though. We'd spent the first couple years after college in low wage jobs and then for a couple more years Jill was in grad school to get her Masters in Information Science so she could become a school librarian. We never had the money or the time to bring a child into the picture. When Jill graduated and actually became a librarian suddenly we could start seriously thinking about having kids.
By now we were anxious to start our family. We talked about biological kids and trying to time the pregnancy so it'd happen in the summer and Jill would be out of school (of course we realized the chances of this actually happening were minute). We also started talking about adoption again. In the end, it wasn't a sense of duty or charity that interested us in adoption. We wanted to raise kids, a genetic link wasn't important to us, and there are kids in the world who don't have homes - adoption was just common sense. Unfortunately, the fees involved ruled it out for us at the time. Then a couple months later we lucked into a one-time windfall of money that suddenly made adoption possible. It seemed like fate.
posted by Jack @ 9:44 AM
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