glasshouse

I've never cared much about the celebrity adoption stories before, but I have to admit the news that Future Hall-of-famer and Atlanta Brave Tom Glavine recently adopted a newborn made me very excited.

Maybe this is old news to y'all, but a few weeks ago there was a story on This American Life where one of their reporters sat with a woman planning to place her child for adoption as she sifted through profiles. I'm not sure her responses were "typical" in any way (if such a thing as 'typical' even exists), I found it to be really interesting. Their description of the segment: You can stream the whole audio of the show at their website. (Incidentally, I also recommend the first two stories in the episode even if they have nothing to do with adoption.)

Congratulations!

Thank you all so much. Words cannot describe how happy we are right now, enough so that I will even overlook all the emoticons and use one myself.

This is what makes us different. I don't give to charities because I get a tax deduction. I give to causes that I passionately believe in. My donation is my effort to make a difference with the limited funds that I can provide. I don't even keep records for tax purposes (sorry Anthony ). Much of what we give is untraceable, because it doesn't matter where it came from, as long as it helps. Wait a second...you are putting words in my mouth here. I don't give to charities BECAUSE of the tax deductions, and I didn't say that I did. I do take advantage of the tax deductions that our government offers as an encouragement to donate to charities, but that is something different. If anything, it allows me to give more money to my favorite charities to do good with. If you don't like that example, then think about some of the many other ways that society gives people financial incentives to help push them to do certain things -- tax breaks if you renovate your house in environmentally conscious ways or if you use your money to buy health insurance or to save for your children's college tuitions, for example. Many employers give people time off to give blood or help with Habitat For Humanity. Many school systems give prizes or rewards for good grades.... Maybe you really don't like this idea, but I can think of dozens of ways in which our society seems to think that financially incentivizing certain choices is completely ok, and an effective way of shifting societal attitudes. I have a feeling that you aren't quite saying what you mean, but if this is genuinely what you mean then I have to strongly disagree and say that NOT choosing a family based on what you can afford seems far more irresponsible to me. Ignoring the financial realities of one's situation when bringing a child into your family seems like the very definition of irresponsibility. d

I completely agree with this point, but I think that I draw from it different conclusions than you do. I think that all children are priceless -- or, said differently, all children have value well beyond whatever fees are being paid to an agency to assist with placement -- and this is why I don't think that having differential prices for different adoptions in any way implies that the children involved in those adoptions are less valuable. Put another way, there are plenty of adoption agencies out there that charge more than Abrazo does for their services -- is anyone arguing that this means that the children placed through Abrazo are less valuable? Or that Abrazo should raise their fees to avoid that impression? I doubt it. The issue of subsidizing certain adoptions based on the race of the child is clearly emotionally loaded for (at least) two reasons, but it seems to me that if people want to encourage multiracial families then there is nothing wrong with giving a financial nudge to encourage the adoptive families to do so. It may be sad or frustrating to you that some people need such an incentive, but I'm not sure I understand the argument that it is unethical. We as a society give people financial incentives to "do the right thing" all the time -- how many of us take tax deductions for our charitable contributions, for example? -- and I think that financial incentives are often more effective and more honest than emotional or guilt-based incentives.

Yeesh...you're so old fashioned, John. This is the 21st century!

I have to say that this wasn't my interpretation of what happened in the movie. Clearly he felt a connection with Juno and that connection helped empower him to leave Vanessa, and I agree that there was something creepy about their interactions, but I don't think he was leaving Vanessa to be with Juno -- he was leaving her to try to recapture parts of his youth that he felt he had lost and that his current situation wouldn't let him recapture.

I just have to throw in that i think that JK Simmons (who played Juno's father) seems to be perfectly cast in every role he does. From this role to his role as Garth Pancake in THE LADYKILLERS or J Jonah Jameson in the SPIDERMAN movies or his parts in many many tv shows, I think he is one of the more underrated character actors out there these days.

It's interesting that you bring up the question of "how true to life" it was, because lots of people talk about the realism of movies and other than certain scifi movies I'm not really sure how one could assess that. I thought that the writer and cast of Juno did an excellent job of creating the characters -- especially of Juno herself, but the rest of the cast as well -- and I can't immediately think of any parts of it where the characters did things that seemed implausible or unrealistic for who they were presented to be. There are obviously lots of different adoption stories out there, and I think this one was in many ways neither the stereotypical one nor an "average" story or even the story that some of us might want presented as anything close to an ideal. However, I would be curious to hear in what ways people think it didn't feel like it could be an adoption story (or, to be more precise, a 100 minute condensed version of parts of an adoption story -- it was definitely one of those movies where I want to know what happens with the characters five or ten years down the line. Personally, I thought it was very ambiguous whether Juno and Vanessa would stay in contact)