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Tisha

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About Tisha

  • Birthday 08/19/1977

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    Tisha9132

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  • Gender
    Female
  • Location
    Chicago, IL

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    Adopting Parent

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Amigo

Amigo (2/7)

11

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  1. My mother has gone from being fearful and opposed to open adoption to: "Have you seen R today? How is R doing? Can I bring gifts for R's kids? What would they like?" It moves me to see how far she has come in just a few short months.
  2. My university also offers a $5K adoption benefit, but when HR informed me that the university's very generous maternity leave policy is only available to mothers who give birth, I felt insulted. The university is self-insured, so pre-natal care, plus a hospital stay, plus a maternity leave would have cost the university somewhere in the neighborhood of $30K. But because I'm infertile they can kick me $5k towards adoption and feel virtuous about it. In the end, I don't feel like it's about me; it's about the adopted children, who had no say in the adoption plans. Why should children who are parented by their birthparents have time for bonding and financial security that children raised by adoptive parents do not have? Even if some families can save up for an unpaid leave, that's money that could have gone to a college fund or any number of things that could have benefitted the child, instead, families must use it so that adopted children get the minimum of what they are entitled to as human persons. Thanks for the link to that article, Sarah. I had not seen it. Let's hope that we can all agitate for changes soon.
  3. This is an issue that really enrages me, especially as I have a Catholic employer that claims to have a religious and ethical mission that is not just about dollars and cents. I spoke to the president of our university directly who said he was "open" to granting an adoption leave, but hasn't changed the policy yet. Many universities do grant adoption leave (off the top of my head: Northwestern, Boston College, and some smaller midwestern institutions). When I have more time (and when my job isn't so vulnerable), I plan to advocate for changes to leave policy. This isn't just about adoption. Right now, people have no paid leave to care for sick children, elderly parents, etc. We are, of course, almost the only country in the developed world that makes people choose between putting groceries on the table and caring for their sick children. Rhode Island, California and New Jersey have all passed caregiver leave laws that now require employers to pay for leave to care for a sick family member, or to bond with a newborn. This would apply to adoptive parents and to all fathers. So if you don't live in one of those states, this is a policy to advocate for.
  4. I actually liked the article. I'm not anti-adoption, but I am anti-looking at children as products, anti-treating birthmothers as walking uteri, anti-adoptive parents shutting out their children's birthfamilies, anti-policies that put women in a position of having to choose between parenting their children and the well-being of their families. In a better world, there would be fewer adoptions, not more. But we don't live in that better world, and we have to choose the kind of people we want to be in the context of this world. Hannah, thanks so much for your reflections. It helped me so much to read them today.
  5. We originally had thought international as well. My family is from Sri Lanka, and I thought that we could easily give a Sri Lankan child a sense of his culture and context. But the more I looked into it, I just started getting really uneasy. Sri Lanka is actually in the minority of countries where baby-trafficking doesn't SEEM to be a huge problem, but I started feeling really squicky about international adoption in general and being a part of a system that is so fraught with horrific abuses. And then we found Abrazo, and felt much better about Abrazo's commitment to ethical, transparent adoptions. Add to that the financial risks of international adoption, the fact that any country could close without warning, and that you don't get the adoption tax credit for international unless the adoption actually goes through, and it just seemed insane to gamble away tens of thousands of dollars. We have friends who have been waiting to adopt from Ethiopia since 2011. Every six months, they are told that their wait for a referral has been extended another six months. Adoptions from Ethiopia are slowing way down, for very good reasons, as the Ethiopian gov't tries to put a stop to the kidnappings and child trafficking. They might never adopt from Ethiopia. They are middle class folks who really don't have a ton of money to burn on an adoption that might never happen. We had to tell them about our match, and it was hard. We all know what it's like to get pregnancy announcements from ecstatic friends, which shouldn't make us sad...but they do. I never knew what it was like to be on the other side, sharing good news with people who have been waiting much longer than we have been for their own good news.
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