pat loughery

I’m listening to This American Life podcast episode #362, which is about how we judge people on the basis of surface issues.  Like every This American Life episode, this is well worth listening to.  Especially this act:

Act Three. Yes, No or Baby.

There are some situations where making judgments about people based on limited amounts of information is not only accepted, but required. One of those situations is open adoption, where birth mothers actually choose the adoptive parents for their child. TAL producer Nancy Updike talks to a pregnant woman named Kim going through the first stage of open adoption: reading dozens of letters from prospect parents, all of whom seem utterly capable and appealing. With so many likeable candidates to choose from, Kim ends up focusing on tiny details of people’s lives. (6 minutes)

This reminds me of our experience as adoptive parents. We wrote just such an introductory letter, agonizing over which pictures to select and how to describe ourselves. We included pictures of us with our dogs, in our house, me with my motorcycles – thinking that these things would help to distinguish us from other prospective adopting families. We wrote about our work, our hobbies (mountain biking and hiking surely included).

Our birthmom chose us because we were the first family that came up on the list in Washington. That was it. I’m sure she read our letter, but she made a big decision quickly, and was convinced. It happened so quickly that our attorney told us we should walk away; that she would change her mind and it wasn’t worth the risk. But she didn’t, and it was.

And we have a great ongoing relationship with her. She’s part of our family, and we’re part of hers. She now lives in North Bend where we live, and we see her every week or two. And when we introduce her to others – or when she interacts with our friends, or our extended family, there’s always this weird awkward dynamic where we know that they’re judging her but don’t really know her. For a couple of years, some of the extended family was pretty mean, actually, and we shut that down.

I can only imagine what her extended family says about us. We don’t get any sense of that from her.

However, our relationship, which began 7 months before Kaileigh was born six years ago, has been truly a blessing for each of us.