TV and Adoption Reality

One of the hot topic of discussions last week and this week on several China message boards has been about the accuracy of how adoption is portrayed on TV. I think about 85% - 90% of the time adoption is not at all accurately portrayed on TV or even in the news media. Just last week my mom called and said that one of her co-workers has a friend who wants to adopt from China but was told that China is closing its doors for good. This prompted my mom to be concerned that we wouldn't be able to adopt. I reassured her that this was VERY inaccurate information. China had not closed its doors to adoption. I told her that they had changed their policies on adoption, but because we were LID before the new policy went into effect on May 1st, we were not affected. I also explained to her that it is possible if this agency that her co-worker's friend was looking into using said that China was not going to allow anymore adoptions, it might be because they had lost their accreditation with China and China was not allowing that particular agency to do adoptions from China any longer. Wow, that was wordy. Hope you all got it.

So going back to the hot topic of adoptions on TV. The show the King of Queens had their series finale last night. I had watched the show off and on - more off than on. But it was posted on our agency's message board that the main characters Doug & Carrie were going to adopt from China. Of course I just had to watch and see how it happened. Of course the writers didn't do their homework - they never do. It pretty much went like this:


You could get all your paperwork together within a matter of days and send it off to China. Within another few days you would get a phone call and be matched with a 4 day old baby and you can get on a plane that night to China to get your daughter.

As I'm sure 95% of you who read my blog realize that China adoptions don't work that way, either because you yourself are adopting from China or have spoken to us enough to know better.

So I wanted to say how I felt about this whole adoption portrayal debate. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Adoption has been a big deal for me for several reasons. I've known since I was a teenage that biological children were just not possible for me. I met a man who has an adopted sister from Korea who was willing to accept things for what they were and didn't care whether or not I could "produce" an off-spring for him.

I am already parenting trans-racially, so adopting from China just seems second nature. My son's birth parents are Caucasian and Black-American. With the exception of his skin color, most people we met and know think he has very similar features to both DH and I. Lane still laughs at the fact that I was totally oblivious to Marla, his sister being adopted. I didn't believe it when they told me. She had her dad's very dark hair, she had slightly slanted eyes like he did. I see it now, but back then I didn't.

I've been extremely proud of watching TV and seeing trans-racial adoptions happen. I'm just happy that all adoptions are being acknowledged - Chinese, domestic or other. It makes me extremely proud to be an adoptive parent whether they portray an accurate story or not. It took us nearly 3 years and a very bumpy journey with several birth mom's changing their minds before we met them and a completely failed adoption before we became a forever family with our son. Do I wish I could've been on a plane that quickly to China to adopt a daughter and do I wish someone would've just shown up on our doorstep with a child in their hands to place with us, you betcha. Would I change the way the story really happened, even with the tears, the heartaches, and the frustrations?

...not in a million years.