Adopting On Your Own

By Lee Varon

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If you're considering adoption, you have many questions to ask or fears to address. How do you know if you're ready? Is your reason for adopting acceptable? How much money will it cost? Here are some thoughts and stories to consider before you begin the adoption process.

Time for a Family

In my thirties, I really didn't think about becoming a mother. I was very involved in my career and happy working seven days a week. Then it suddenly hit me as I got close to forty. Suddenly I wanted to be a mother more than anything else in the world -- nothing else seemed as important.
-- Amy S., mother of Kate and soon-to-be mother of Alana

Claire is a forty-two-year-old physical therapist who also teaches at a large university. She is an independent, resourceful, and self-sufficient woman. She describes her life as hectic but happy. Yet despite her happiness, Claire has begun to feel a sense of loss as she approaches forty-five. "I always thought I would have a family. In some ways I still feel surprised that it didn't happen. But I guess over the last year I've been coming to terms with the fact that it didn't, and also that unless I do something, it never will." Although Claire was thrilled to receive tenure at the university where she teaches, she felt her promotion had a certain hollow quality when she weighed its importance against the satisfaction of being a parent. " I realized how much I'd always wanted to be a mom," she says.

At a conference Claire ran into an old friend who had adopted a daughter from Peru, and that meeting became the catalyst for Claire's exploration of adoption. After the conference, Claire stayed in touch with her friend, and her interest in adoption grew.

"I think when I was younger," she says, "I was not ready to get married and begin a family. My own parents divorced when I was still in grade school, and my mother raised my brother and me on her own. My father supported her financially but not emotionally, and I watched her struggle. I didn't want the same thing to happen to me."

As Claire has become closer to her former classmate and her adopted daughter, her feelings of loss over not having a child have intensified, yet she also feels some ambivalence about changing her life in such a dramatic way. She wonders how raising a child would fit into her demanding career and active life. In particular how would being a parent affect her extensive conference schedule? "I wonder if I can make the necessary changes to have a child in my life. Would I have the kind of quality time I would need to be a parent?" she asks, but then she concludes with this thought: "If I don't look into it, I'll never know."

There are many paths that lead single people to consider adoption. For some there is a precipitating event: turning thirty-five, forty, or even fifty, the end of a marriage or close relationship, a close friend's adopting or a relative's giving birth, the diagnosis of infertility. Some single people feel ready to parent but don't want to have a birth child with an unknown donor or with a person with whom they are not in a close relationship. For others, it is not a single precipitating event that propels them to consider adoption, but rather a growing desire to create a family and be a parent. Like Claire, I felt satisfied with many aspects of my life as a single person before I adopted my children. Yet I, too, felt that something was lacking. I knew I didn't want to be eighty and have missed the experience of being a parent. I felt strongly about wanting a child, yet my ambivalence was also great. I was so uncertain about adopting that even as I was about to board the plane to pick up my son from El Salvador, I clutched my friend's arm and asked, "Do you really think I should do this?"

Questions and Doubts
Once I began counseling prospective single adoptive parents, I discovered that this mix of fear and excitement wasn't unique. Like Claire, people come to me with strong and conflicting emotions, hope and fear being the primary combatants. They often say that although they long for a child, they are not sure that adoption will work for them.