I read The Kid long ago, when children/family-building were far from my mind. In fact, I was on my way to Italy to see a summer fling of mine, but that's another story.... I remember reading it on the plane and crying my eyes out. The scene of the kid's mom in the hospital when Dan and Terry are looking in on her. Gut-wrenching. Still makes me cry just thinking about it. But even then the open adoption part of the story made sense to me.
I loved Dan Savage before I read the book, so that's why I read it then. When we were going through the process of adopting our first child, I gave the book to my parents and they both read it. For them, it helped to make several things "click" about open adoption. For example, I had told my parents that we didn't want to get too settled on names because we wanted that to be a discussion with our child's first parents. My mom wasn't too happy about that, but after reading The Kid she said she got it. She got the whole thing. I know Dan Savage can be pretty crude at times, but I highly recommend the book to people/relatives of people that are entering into adoption.
So when we decided to adopt, the idea of open adoption wasn't completely new to me because of that book. And I always knew that it's the kind of adoption that I wanted.
1 comment:
Funny. I didn't get a chance to respond to the Open Adoption Blogger question, but I too was going to write about first learning about open adoption by reading The Kid. It had a major impact on me. One, it showed gay men building a family without losing their personalities. Two, it helped me understand how we could adopt and more fully take account of our child's origins and connection. Anyway, thanks for sharing.
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