When writer and sex advice columnist Dan Savage and his boyfriend decided on open adoption, they figured it would help answer the questions that adopted children always seem to have later in life about why they were put up for adoption and who they "really" are. After seven years of sporadic, sometimes difficult interaction with their son DJ's homeless birth mother, though, they seem to have traded one set of questions and challenges for another.
The NYT has an excerpt, "DJ's Homeless Mommy," from Savage's upcoming book, The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family. I'm assuming this is a revisiting and not a reprint or repurposing of material he used in his previous book, The Kid : What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant , which came out in 2000.
I usually lurk here, but wanted to thank you for posting this. I have read "The Kid" (more than once, actually) and this is new material. "The Kid" only goes through about the first year of DJ's life. I'd also head a bit Dan Savage did for "This American Life" during one of the times when DJ's mom was missing. I'm glad to read an update. There is so much one can say about it, but the most compelling message is that no story has a simple answer. Unfortunately the legislators who need to get that message probably don't read Dan Savage's work.
[Here's a link to that This American Life episode, which is about absent parents. -ed.]