Category archive: adoption

February 8, 2016

Medieval Orphan And Foundling Nametags

'This child is named Bartholomew': Erfgoed Leiden, HGW, Archiefnr. 519, Inv. nr. 3384, slip 1 (15th century) - Photo EK via Here is a poignant story by medieval schlar Erik Kwakkel about a rare collection of 15th century notes...
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February 28, 2013

That Is So Funny, Because I Left A Son On The Subway Once

We Found Our Son On The Subway [nytimes]...
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March 20, 2012

'The State Department Says The Donor Determines Citizenship'

I'm kind of amazed by this story. Maybe it's the way it's written. The State Department's regulations do not consider kids conceived in vitro and born outside the US to US citizens to be eligible for US citizenship themselves. The...
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January 2, 2012

Awesome National Geographic Story About Twins Studies

If you have or are having twins, you probably already know about it, but Peter Miller's National Geographic article on twins studies is pretty fascinating for anyone with DNA:"What I like to say is that Mother Nature writes some things...
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December 2, 2011

DT Friday Freakout: Lead Juicebox Edition

Here to ruin your weekend, a healthy dose of freakout headlines from the worlds of parenting, science, health, education, and safety: Not to freak you out or anything, just that Consumer's Union really wants something to be done about all...
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July 2, 2010

Christiania-ty

From Sightline's awesome round-up of cargo bike photos, comes this picture of Patrick Barber practicing for the impending arrival of his and his partner's first child by riding his covered wagon to church. Barber is the elder of the...
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June 26, 2010

DT Friday Freakout: Wows! Edition

If the heat doesn't getcha, maybe some sensationalistic news reports from the worlds of science, medicine, safety, and parenting will freak out your weekend: Kellogg's has recalled 28 million boxes of cereal in white foil bags, because of "an off...
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January 9, 2010

Actually, His Dad Was Gumby, Dammit

Art Clokey, who, with his first wife Ruth, created Gumby, died Friday at the age of 89. Clokey's parents divorced when he was 9, and he stayed with his father. For a year or so--but not two--when his father was...
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October 30, 2008

Quirky International Adoption Countries Have Own Complications, Laws

International adoption has been booming of late, and it turns out to be a complex, ever-changing landscape fraught with cultural differences, legal and ethical dilemmas, and emotional trials. So naturally, the best way to understand this phenomenon is through the...
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June 27, 2008

Alec Soth's Dog Days, Bogota

Alec Soth is a photographer of the studied mundane, a Minnesotan inspired by folks like Robert Frank or William Eggleston, whose images create a sense of overlooked place. When he and his wife went to Bogota, Colombia to pick...
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May 22, 2008

Surrogate Brokers To The Stars! Actually, To Their Gay Agents And Publicists

W Magazine has a long, glowing profile of Growing Generations, a pioneering surrogacy consultancy and fertility center that is one of the first organizations founded to help gay and lesbian folks become parents. With offices in Los Angeles, Boston, and...
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November 9, 2007

Start Pointing! International Adoption Study Shows Kids Learn Nouns First

A team of researchers including Harvard psychologists Jesse Snedeker and Joy Geren published the results of their study of international adoptees, whose English-acquisition technique, they figured, might yield some interesting insights on how kids learn a language. It seems they...
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October 28, 2007

DT Headline Roundup: Adoption, Boys Named Sue, Ramones & Flash Cards Edition

The DT browser tab clearance is on now: NYT Magazine: Looking for Their Children’s Birth Mothers Maggie Jones takes a personal look at the complicated emotional and cultural landscape of open international adoption. Though she and her husband decided to...
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July 26, 2007

BBC: It's Short For Busting Bulgarian Childsmuggling

Yes, it's that time of year, when someone at the BBC decides they'd like to summer in Bulgaria, so they arrange for a story about babysmuggling. This time, the BBC conducted a month-long sting operation that resulted in three...
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June 10, 2007

Post-Zaharan Ethiopian Adoption: Fast, Cheap, And Somewhat Under Control

I've had the NY Times article on the increase in adoptions from Ethiopia all week. Apparently, the process is so much easier, and the country has an existing infrastructure of internationally supported orphanages [or transitional homes, as the article calls...
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March 20, 2007

"But Daddy, I NEED To Watch It Again."

Oops. I made the mistake of inviting the kid over to watch this Chris Ware animation, which was released as a preview to the new This American Life TV show that starts Thursday on Showtime. I figured, cartoons, cute...
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February 28, 2007

If Found, Name "Steve"

For some reason, an excited article about new technology for abandoning babies pops up in the major news media every 13-15 months. It's like clockwork. If only birth control or social services protections for the young illegal immigrants from Eastern...
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February 13, 2007

To The Jews, The Gays, The Dads, Mazeltov!

During Hannukah, DT reader Marjorie became an aunt when her brother and his partner adopted a baby girl. [Namewatch Alert: Shirley, family name]. She wrote about the naming ceremony, known as Simchat Bat, that Shirley's dads and family crafted for...
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January 24, 2007

Testing Your Meddle

Some news links that almost warrant their own posts. If you need a theme here, how about meddling? If you want to keep believing that it's not her parents, no way, Marla Olmstead has been a genius painter since she...
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January 22, 2007

Baby-Smugglin' Romas Busted

A trial just got underway in France for 56 people--including 41 buyer/families--charged in a baby smuggling ring. For around $10,000, French Roma/gypsy families who couldn't qualify for adoption because of their itinerant lifestyle, would buy a baby from Bulgarian Roma...
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December 19, 2006

Chinese Regulations Changes To Affect Large Segment Of The Adoption Population

The Chinese government is tightening application requirements for foreign adoptions, according to the NY Times. For applications submitted after May 1, 2007, China's Center For Adoption Affairs will not permit foreigners to adopt if they: are single, are on anti-depressants,...
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December 15, 2006

Christmas Is The Time For Sharing

If this quote is abrupt enough to get you to watch Diane Sawyer just to see if that's really how Angelina Jolie talks, the USA Today's editors will bring home the prize Turkey in the Poulterer's window, not the little...
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November 20, 2006

NYT: Straight Men Losing Lock On "Slightly More Than A Sperm Donor" Market

Not sure if it's a trend or just an interesting reconfiguration of the family, combined with a largely undefined notion of gay fatherhood, but The New York Times Magazine has a looong article about how some lesbian couples are kids...
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November 2, 2006

Canadian Adoption Mess: Dad Wants To Keep His Kid, Money

There was a story a few months back about the US's confusing and misleading patchwork of laws covering a biological father's rights when the mother puts a kid up for adoption. And since Canada like totally copies us every time,...
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October 23, 2006

Two Words, Pal: Carlos Leon

The father of Madonna's newly adopted son said yesterday he didn't realize that the arrangement meant the boy would no longer be part of his family. "If we were told that she wants to take the baby as her own...
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October 16, 2006

"Cute Kid. What'ser Name?" "Travesty."

Uh-oh, the impossibly biased liberal media in Pelosi-land, that liberal hippie hotbed of San Francisco, is at it again, trying to brainwash everyone with their views of families and parenting. What're they up to this time? ABC News anchor and...
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August 17, 2006

Whatchyou Talkin' About, New York Times?

Mr. Drummond teaching gang signs to Willis & Arnold Whaddya know, here we are, 20 years after Diff'rent Strokes, and our culture still has trouble navigating transracial adoption. [Those Drummond kids ended up with pretty long rap sheets, though,...
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June 28, 2006

Q. How Does The Media Talk About Adoption? A. Awkwardly

Reporter Sara Kiesler takes a look at how references to adoption are and aren't relevant to stories in the media. And given that a third of the US population has adoption experience "within their immediate families," she has some suggestions...
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April 14, 2006

Now. There Is Another.

Adopted a four-year-old girl from Mongolia Ewan MacGregor and his wife, Eve Mavrakis just did. Some interesting birth order issues in the years to come it should make, since two daughters, 4 and 1 they also have. One More For...
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March 22, 2006

"Any Kids?" "Not That I Know Of."

When they're considered at all, it turns out fathers are little more than speed bumps to be driven over and ignored on the way to a smooth and uncontestable adoption. That's more or less my takeaway from the NY Times'...
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January 3, 2006

Italy Retakes Lead In Baby Dumping Technology

Fending off stiff competition from Czech babydumping startups, the Italians appear to have regained their longheld place as the technology leader in the baby dropping off industry. See, for centuries, until around 1888, Italian nun-run orphanages like the Ognissanti Church...
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Please, Sir, May I Have Some More Adoption Rights?

Gay, orphans, adoption, Britain. Quick, what comes to mind? Besides the Broadway musical version of Oliver Twist. In what's been called the most significant revamping of UK adoption regulations in 30 years, The Adoption and Children Act 2002 went into...
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January 2, 2006

Adoption Medicine: Diagnosis By Photograph

For parents seeking to adopt a child from a foreign orphanage, the question of undiagnosed medical conditions that might pop up later or that might cause developmental or behavioral challenges down the line haunts the whole process. Some pediatricians are...
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December 19, 2005

Don't Call Them Orphanages, Don't Mention Borat

The adoption business is like no other. Can you imagine a company that charged you tens of thousands of dollars for its services and then inflicted constant delays on you, all the while withholding the reasons for those delays? You...
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October 5, 2005

Forget The Infant Dumpster. What You Want Is A Baby Box

Hey, I can admit when I'm wrong. The Infant Dumpster was a bad idea, and I shouldn't have called for its return. Did I say bad? How about suboptimal. Optimal would be a clean room, with a hotline for the...
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September 10, 2005

Dan Savage's Account Of Their Open Adoption

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...
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August 19, 2005

Listening to Reason on Gay Adoption

If an angel has appeared to you and told you that children are somehow better off in the foster care system than they are with gay parents, please come forward now with such important information. Otherwise, based on the facts,...
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June 8, 2005

Paternal Instinct, or Gay Surrogacy Adoption: The Movie

The Times has a warm, fuzzy review of documentary filmmaker Murray Nossel's latest work, Paternal Instinct, which follows a gay couple of ten years in NYC and the Maine woman who helps them have a child through surrogate adoption. Nossel...
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May 27, 2005

The Surrogates Love The Gays

For a variety of logistical, political, psychological, and emotional reasons, a significant percentage of women who provide surrogate pregnancy services are working with gay couples, and they're preferring it. Apparently, gay couples are more sympathetic, they'll watch the surrogate's kids,...
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May 5, 2005

And Tango Makes Three: The Story of America's Most Beloved Gay Penguin Family

It's a story that kinda kicks the cinderblocks out from under the rusty ol' car that is "gays ain't natcherl." Tango Makes Three is the true story of Roy and Silo, two male penguins who've been in a committed, monogamous...
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November 23, 2004

The Headline Sounded Worse Than The Story

His wife's in on it, and anyway, the kid's only 3-months old. Before I read the story, I had these horrible visions of a musical remake of The Lover flash in front of me. Johnny Hallyday to Adopt Vietnamese Girl...
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November 3, 2004

X, Y, and Me: Story Books For Your Alt-Conceived Child

We've come a long way from the days when adults would have to confront their sobbing parents with, "Is it true? Am I adopted?" If you're wondering when the book industry would catch up to the myriad possible answers to...
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August 15, 2004

Cruising for, with, kids

So you just bought a brownstone, and you and your partner are starting to think about filling it with kids. How do you go about researching this major life decision? Take a cruise! That's what Peter Marchese did last month,...
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July 22, 2004

Adopt the kid, Adopt the decor?

Although you wouldn't know it from reading some websites [*cough, cough*], parenting is much more than buying gear and strollers. It's also decorating. And if you're adopting a kid from a foreign country, it means sprinkling token kitsch objects from...
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July 17, 2004

Chinese Bamboo Strollers, Orphanage Gear

Whoa. Meanwhile, on the other end of the technological spectrum from the Xplory and the Bugaboo: strollers and prams made out of bamboo, which are still widely used, it seems, in 2nd tier-and-below Chinese cities. The thumbnail at left is...
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June 12, 2004

California: Jurisdiction of Choice for Surrogacy

As California goes, so goes the rest of the country. Right now, the California court system's advanced case law makes the state the "epicenter of the 'surrogacy industry,'" according to the NY Times. The issues being grappled with in family...
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May 23, 2004

Adoption on the Web

Wired has an interesting overview of the web's impact on adoption. After a couple of cautionary scam and unethical broker stories, the story plugs Dept. of HHS's National Adoption Directory and AdoptUSKids.org, which helps place older kids by "marketing" them...
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April 22, 2004

The Agony and Ecstasy of Adoption

It's hard to listen to NPR anchor Scott Simon's at-once misty-and clear-eyed story of picking up his adopted daughter in China without thinking of the far different, gutwrenching experiences of the guys at fullerbranter.com (formerly homokiddosfo). Set aside for a...
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March 13, 2004

NPR, PRC, PRC, NPR

Just caught the end of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, where Scott Simon excitedly blurted out, "We're going to China to pick up our daughter. I-- am the father of Alice Sylvie Simon!" Related: FCC: Families with Children From China, a...
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