Honoring National Adoption Month

Kaylee Swanson, 23, understands the importance of adoptive families.

“I feel like it is important for a child to be raised in a two-parent home and by parents that will be able to provide for all of the child’s needs,” she said.

But there is another reason.

“I also never wanted to look at him and think negatively toward him because of how he was conceived,” she said.

Swanson became pregnant after being raped. Unsure of what to do, she ultimately decided to give her baby up for adoption. 

“I don’t think I knew for sure until about seven months into the pregnancy,” she said. “But ultimately I knew I wasn’t ready to have a child and raise him or her on my own.”

Swanson gave birth to a son. She and the adoptive family chose an open adoption meaning Swanson is in contact with the family. Right now, Swanson receives monthly pictures of her son. After his first birthday, she will get pictures twice a year.

“Giving my son away was very difficult,” she said. “I had a C-section birth which meant I had to stay at the hospital for longer than when you have a normal birth. So I was only away from him one night before I had to make the ultimate decision.”

When President Gerald Ford declared the first National Adoption Week in 1976, his goal was to make sure women like Swanson could find homes for their babies.  

Ford understood the nuanced need for adoptive families from first-hand experience.

Following his mother’s divorce from an abusive first husband and her subsequent remarriage, Ford, born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., was adopted by his stepfather.

By 1990, Ford’s National Adoption Week had expanded into National Adoption Awareness Month. Since then, November has been dedicated to promoting adoption as a positive way for Americans to build their families.

According to the U.S. Department of State, Hoosier families have adopted 5,295 children since 1998.  

Erin Moore, special projects coordinator for Ball State University’s Emerging Media Initiative, hopes to soon be among those families. 

Moore and her husband, Jim, were married in December 2007. He has two children, ages 5 and 7, from a previous marriage but in early 2009, the couple began looking into adoption as a way to add to their family.

“My husband is adopted, my sister-in-law is adopted and my grandma is adopted,” she said. “So we have some history with adoption and have seen the amazing gift that adoption can be—both to the child as well as to adoptive parents.”

But Moore said the adoption process is not easy. 

She and her husband had to complete a mandatory home study of about 100 lengthy questions created to test their fitness as a family; they had to be fingerprinted and had to submit to a background check. 

“And there’s no guarantee as to the timeline,” she said. “Agencies usually say that if you’re looking for a Caucasian newborn, it may be two years of waiting.”

There is also the cost of adoption.

“To be quite honest, the cost is fairly expensive,” she said. “We looked at a variety of different agencies around Indiana and they all cost about $30,000.”

There are organizations that help families finance adoptions and there is a tax credit for adopting a child, but Moore said that sometimes the process seems like a transaction. 

“I think that’s one of the most difficult components about adoption,” she said. “It’s hard to get around the idea that you’re buying a child, that feeling that you’re buying a child. There’s also this sense that you’re trying to sell your family.”

Moore and her husband are in the process of finishing their “book”—a scrapbook that describes their family and acts as a way for birth families to learn more about them. They also plan to create a Web site about their family.

But for all its difficulties, Moore said she believes adoption is a miracle.

“Our family has been so blessed by my husband’s mother’s choice to carry him to full term and then to provide his adoptive parents with the opportunity to be his parents. We are humbled by that decision,” she said. “I so greatly admire those people who are able to make that decision for their child.”

Swanson agrees. She said women with unplanned pregnancies should educate themselves on all their options, but that for her, adoption had the most positives.

“Adoption is important because life is important,” she said. “It takes a strong person to go through a pregnancy and to give their child up for a better life. But when you look at the big picture, you are making a family’s dreams come true and even making the decision to give your child is such a great joy.”
 

2 comments

Your name

Sat Dec 5 2009 23:38

Thank you for sharing your story may God richly bless you and this family and the road ahead for all of you!

Love Mom

Mon Nov 23 2009 10:43

I know you will be wonderful parents and will love your miracle child as much as I do mine. We must all wait for God's timing in this process.

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