Argentina’s (and Latin America’s) first gay wedding

I saw this on the Spanish press today and then found that the Guardian had published the story yesterday. It’s a complete media circus in Argentina.

For the full story click here.

I guess gay adoption is not likely to happen any time soon... those of us who can should never forget how lucky we are to live in places where gay adoption is possible.

Updated information

I spoke to Miranda yesterday. She said she understood why we had turned down Boy J. She told me that she’d received an update from Boy H’s social worker and foster carer and she’d put it in the post for us. We received it this morning and after reading the updated information we’re still very keen to proceed. Miranda is working on preparation groups for their new intake of prospective adopters for the rest of the week and she told me to get in touch next Tuesday to let her know if we want to proceed with a visit from his social workers. She wasn’t sure if the visit will take place before or after Christmas as it will depend on how busy everyone is and their schedules. I know Christmas is only a month away but now that we’re geared up and things seem to be progressing we just want to get on with it! Still, we’re very happy with the way things are going so we’ll just have to be patient for a bit longer.

Decision

We spent last Saturday with some friends we hadn’t seen in a while. Their children (7 and 4) were great with us and although they are normally drawn to me and ask me to play with them, this time they were keener on playing with Glen. I was really pleased about this as Glen always thinks that he’s no good with children so it’s good for him to realise how much children like him. On Sunday we caught up with S&J, whom we met at a New Family Social get-together last winter, and their son. We chatted a bit about the latest developments and they agreed that the decision we have taken regarding the “boy J” (with the horrific circumstances) is the right one.

It took us 5 days of thinking long and hard about it, but we have decided not to express an interest in this boy. We really feel that we’d be forever worried about how to reply to questions about his background, and how he would feel later in life about his identity and family history. We don't feel we're qualified or experienced enough for the kind of support that this boy will need, as much as we would love to. I cannot give details but we haven’t taken this decision lightly and it’s been a very hard choice to make. Now we want to put the whole thing behind us and concentrate on Boy H.

One step closer!

We had an email from Miranda: the social worker for the boy we had enquired about and whose CPR we received on Wednesday will send her updated information. His CPR was over a year old, so a lot may have changed since. Also, after reading our PAR they want to visit us! We’re very excited but trying to keep calm. At the very least it’s one step closer. Miranda hasn’t mentioned dates at all, so we’re not sure if this will happen soon.

We have been thinking a lot about the boy with the horrific circumstances. I wrote to Miranda to ask her (assuming he was placed with us):

- Would our local authority provide some support for us past the adoption?
- Would they provide counselling for the child throughout his life? (his circumstances are likely to be something he will need to revisit in different ways at different times in his life)
- Has our local authority ever placed a child with a similar background with other adopters? Would it be possible to get in touch with them?
- Do they know of any research, case studies, or publications that deal with adoption in similar cases and the effect on the teenager/adult?

It somewhat hard to balance the positive news while dealing with the other child. To add to the mix, we have asked Miranda to enquire about another child that appeared in one of the magazines. We are very keen on the one we’ve made progress with, but she has stressed to us that we shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket and to keep looking and enquiring.

Just to recap on our enquiries so far:

- Boys A and B (siblings): Miranda found them for us but never heard back from their social worker after she enquired. She’s assuming that link is ended.

- Boys C and D (siblings): we saw them in a magazine and asked Miranda to enquire on our behalf. Never heard back from their social worker after she enquired. She’s assuming that link is ended.

- Boy E: Miranda sent us his profile but we felt he had too many health and mental issues for us to cope with.

- Boys F and G (siblings): we found their profile online and made an enquiry but never heard back.

- Boy H: we found his profile online and made an enquiry directly. We both felt a connection to him straight away, especially Glen. He is the one whose social workers want to visit us.

- Boy I: we found his profile online and made an enquiry directly. We felt he was quite a good ethnic match. His social worker sent us a fuller profile and we felt that there were too many health and mental uncertainties.

- Boy J: Miranda has asked us to consider his horrific family history before giving us any further details. We are still trying to find out more before making a decision.

- Boy K: We found him on one of the magazines. Have just asked Miranda to enquire on our behalf.

To be honest we’re only enquiring about boy K because we feel that we mustn’t get carried away and we don’t want to be left with no options or anything to look forward to if Boy H turns out not to be the one for us. In fact their profiles are quite similar!

A lot to think about

Miranda came to see us yesterday. She gave us a copy of the Child Permanence Report (CPR) for the boy we’ve been enquiring about, which is over a year out of date. Then she mentioned the mysterious child she wouldn’t talk about on the phone. The reason she wouldn’t talk about him on the phone is that he has a horrific family history. In fact, she didn’t really talk about the child. She just explained his circumstances to see whether we think we could cope with them, and only if we think we are prepared then she will give us more details about the child. All she would say about the child was that he is a boy and he’s under two.

After she left Glen and I were a bit numb trying to process this information. We talked about it afterwards, but will need more time to make a decision.

In the meantime we read the CPR for the other boy, which is not happy reading but at least doesn’t come with any shocking surprises. It was pretty much what we were expecting as far as his family history goes. This is actually the first full CPR we have had, so it’s a bit of a milestone. Miranda said his family finder was interested in us and that she’d liked the things I asked and said when we spoke on the phone. It was very strange trying to concentrate on this boy and the progress we’re making with him and at the same time still have the circumstances for the other boy in our heads, so we may have to read it again with clear heads after we’ve made a decision about the boy with the horrific story. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific, but all I will say it’s more than we ever thought we would need to consider or have ever read about in any of the books, magazines or websites.

Lesbians make better parents

The Telegraph ran this article on Sunday. According to a senior member of the Government's parenting academy, children brought up by lesbians do better than children brought up by heterosexual parents and are no more likely to be gay.

Link to the Telegraph article.

And Wales Online ran a nice feature last week to coincide with Adoption Week on a gay couple who have successfully adopted. Thanks to OJ at NFS for the link to the story.

Link to the Wales Online article.

We’re looking forward to tomorrow’s visit. We’re very intrigued by whatever news Miranda’s bringing!

Modern Family

I’ve been meaning to write about this show for ages and then keep forgetting. It’s on ABC in the US and on SKY 1 here in the UK (Thursday evenings) and it’s the funniest thing we’ve seen in ages. The show is a mockumentary about three families (who are all related). One of the families that the show centres on is Mitchell and Cameron, a gay couple who have just adopted a little Vietnamese girl. Although they are to a certain extent stereotypical (as is every other member of the other families: the stroppy teenager etc...) the actors, writers and directors clearly care about these characters. The gay adoption issue is a bit of a non-issue in the storylines in fact, and it’s for that reason that I think the programme should be applauded. Without being political, it presents a gay couple who have adopted as a normal thing (within the realm of sitcom families). It therefore gives visibility and a sense of normality to the issue of gay adoption without being preachy. And of course it’s incredibly funny, which helps a lot. It you have a US iTunes account (you can Google how to get one) the first episode is free to download from US iTunes. Otherwise you can buy it in UK iTunes or watch it online on SKY 1.

Lesbian adopters on This Morning

With everything that’s been going on, I forgot to mention that it’s adoption week! There was a very nice piece about a lesbian couple on This Morning which you can watch here. Amy and Angela did a great job. They said on the interview that they wanted to make a difference and I’m sure they will.

A mysterious visit arranged

Yesterday I emailed Miranda to ask if she’d heard from the social worker of the boy we’ve been enquiring about and also to ask her what she thought of him now that she’s had a chance to look at his profile. She rang me back a few hours later to tell me that she’s spoken to the social worker and they have agreed to exchange full profiles. They seem to have had a good conversation and discussed some of the issues that the boy’s social worker and I discussed when we spoke. Miranda said that she hadn’t heard at all from the social workers of the other children we’d enquired about and basically to forget about them, as it has been quite a while. So basically we’re only in the running for this child. It’s quite annoying to see that some of those other children we enquired about are still being profiled in the childspotting magazines. It means that the reason they haven’t got back to us is not that they’ve been placed, but that they are still family finding for them but we’re not being considered. It would be nice to at least get some feedback indicating why we’re not in the running, but I guess that’s too much to ask for.

Miranda then mentioned there was a child from our local authority that she couldn’t say anything about there and then but that she wants to speak to us about. She asked if she can see us next week so we’ve arranged a visit. She’s being very cagey so we have no idea what this is about. We can’t help wondering if the fact that we’re taking the other boy seriously (or that we’re being taken seriously by his social worker) has suddenly made her get in action. After all, she did say that our local authority wanted to keep us for their own children. Whatever the reason, we’re quite intrigued and looking forward to her visit next week!

“Billy is my boyfriend”

I was at the school where I volunteer yesterday and one of the boys really made me laugh but also wonder about what we’ll have to face as gay parents. At one point, one of the girls was hugging this little boy and I asked him (in a rather heterosexist way, I will admit) if she was his girlfriend. He replied “no, Billy is my boyfriend”. Billy is another boy in the class. They are all 4 years old. I had to really suppress a laugh. Then I started thinking: if a child of ours had said that, we’d we worried that his environment was making him have a “warped” idea of relationships. Or if he’d said that in front of other adults or a social worker we’d be worried about what they were thinking. As it is, it’s just one of those comments that kids make, nothing else. But I can just see me overthinking something like that for hours on end!

No contact between the social workers yet

I spoke to Miranda of Friday. She hasn’t heard from the social worker of the boy we’ve been discussing, but she will contact her to send our PAR. I told her they won’t be shortlisting for a while as they want to see if there is any interest from the feature in one of the magazines. She doesn’t think that he will attract many enquiries because of his age. I asked her about making enquiries about different children and she says that we should keep looking until something’s firmer. She didn’t say anything about anything happening on her side, so we can probably assume that the potential links she was following are not going any further.

A day full of possibilities

Yesterday I had an email from the social worker who looks after one of the boys we’d enquired about, the one whose cultural background we thought was close to ours and I mentioned last week. It turns out he may have an inherited mental condition as well as several cognitive problems and issues at school, but I forwarded the email to Glen to ask him what he thought.

I also rang the social worker who is family finding for the other boy we’d enquired about (the one that Glen felt quite connected to when we first looked at his online profile). I’d been trying to reach her for a couple of days with no luck, but this time I managed to find her. She gave me a lot of background on the boy and asked me a few questions about us. I told her we weren’t put off by some of the history and background that the boy has, and she told me that they were interested in us! She will ask Miranda for our PAR, but he’s going to be featured in one of the childspotting magazines and they’ll wait to see what the response is before making any decisions. She has promised to keep me informed of whether they decide to link him to any prospective adopters, though. On the way home I spoke to Glen to update him on my conversation with the social worker. I also asked him what he thought of the other boy whose details I had forwarded to him and we both agreed to let his social worker know we’re concentrating on another child.

To round off the day, when I got home there was a letter from the Adoption Register with the invitation to one of their exchange days! We have decided to go and have booked a day off so we can attend. I emailed Miranda to update her on the day’s events, but she hasn’t replied yet.

It’s quite hard not to count chickens before they’re hatched, but we’re trying to be quite rational about this. It’s the first positive response we’ve had to our profile. We’ll see whether they are still interested when they get our full report. Even if the possible link with this boy fails (fingers crossed it won’t!), at least it’s nice to know that people can be interested in you.

How do you define “culture”?

I recently saw the profile of a child that says that prospective adopters “must be familiar with North east England culture”. According to Wikipedia, culture is “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group”. Good. Glad we got that sorted. Are the attitudes, values, goals and practices of someone living in the North East of England really that different from those of someone living elsewhere in the country? Will a child from the North East of England really feel like he doesn’t belong if he is brought up in Devon, for example? Are the cultural differences between regions of the same country really that important? Is it really a hurdle that he won’t be able to overcome? I think it’s too restrictive and it’s limiting the number of potential adopters that could be offering that child a home. But what do I know?