Adoption

The mother and daughter relax on a cushy sofa, laughing quietly as they speak of their unusual yet utterly normal life together. "Sometimes I get a little frustrated [with you], don't I, Talynn?" the mom asks. "Yes, but we always work it out," the 9-year-old replies, leaping onto Traci Lucien and applying a huge hug. "Nobody's taking my Mommy. She's tooken. We're together forever!" Talynn exclaims. It's an especially tender moment, considering the two met just two years ago. That was when Lucien, a single professional who was then 49, adopted Talynn (pronounced Tay-LINN )

The Supreme Court's ruling supporting Oregon's law allowing adult adoptees access to their birth records may have serious consequences for the future of adoption of American-born children. For decades, the prevailing practice in adoption has been to assure women who wanted to relinquish their newborn infants that, if they did so, their anonymity would be preserved. This promise of anonymity was also given to pregnant women contemplating adoption of their as-yet unborn. Their records would be sealed.

To save one life is to save the whole world. -- TalmudLike most people, I'm usually happy to encounter a pregnant woman, to be reminded of an expectant mother's luminous beauty and the miraculous way human life begins. But during the past year, whenever I've seen a woman who I know is expecting her second, third or fourth child, I wonder if she and her partner have asked themselves this question:''What if we added to our family by adopting a child?''I admit that after our first child was born, and while my wife and I were debating whether to have a second, we never considered adopting any of the countless love-starved kids here and abroad in foster homes and orphanages.

Vacant homes might be the most visible sign of abandonment and distress in a neighborhood, but vacant lots can cause problems, too. Or offer opportunities. Baltimore's "Power in Dirt" program aims to make it easier for residents to adopt empty lots near them, an effort Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake spoke about Friday at the U.S. Conference of Mayors' annual meeting in Orlando. By telephone just before the session, Rawlings-Blake said about 14,000 lots in the city are vacant, "and until recently, when community members were trying to get their hands on one of the lots, it was a challenge.

WASHINGTON -- Federal workers who have fertility problem or who wish to adopt children would get financial help under bills introduced by Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo.Ms. Schroeder sees the measures as a way of evening the score between federal workers who are able to bear children -- their obstetric care is covered by the Federal Employees' Health Benefits Plan -- and those who must seek other means to have a family."The average cost of adoption can quickly surpass $9,000," Ms. Schroeder said when she introduced the bills recently.

Think back to your childhood and remember what it was like to wait -- for a birthday present, for recess to come at school, for Christmas morning.Then imagine what it must be like to wait for years for something as basic as having people in your life you can call Mom and Dad.Fifty-four months -- four-and-a-half years -- is an eternity for a child. But eternity is what it seems to take for a Maryland foster child to be adopted.There is encouraging news in a recent report from Advocates for Children and Youth (ACY)

In 2002, the last year for which there are national statistics, 300,000 women between the ages of 18 to 44 were seeking to adopt a child and had taken specific measures to do so. It's not surprising that about half of the women preferred a single non-disabled child under the age of two. What is significant are the racial preferences of these black and white women toward the race of any future adopted child. Eighty-four percent of white women seeking to adopt would "prefer or accept" an African-American child as compared with 75 percent of African-American women who would "prefer or accept" a white child, a difference of only 9 percentage points.

...xTC Sen. Christopher McCabe, R-14B, received an award last week from a nonprofit child placement agency for his legislative efforts to improve the state's adoption process.Adoptions Together, Inc. honored the Ellicott City Republican, whose district includes Howard and Montgomery counties, for introducing or co-sponsoring four adoption-oriented bills, in the past four years. They include bills that would permit access to medical records for adoptees and reduce the amount of time birth parents have to revoke consent of their children's adoption.

AMERICANS USUALLY look to adoption to solve issues of childlessness. Historically, adoption was accomplished by "matching" parentless children with childless families. The hypothesis of matching was not only an act of racial equalization (a given until the late 1960s, early 1970s) but a process so copious that hair and eye color, skin tone, body type and, where possible, personality were matched, child to adoptive couple. Similarity of physical, emotional and cultural characteristics was naively seen as insurance against adoption failure.

In one room of Adoption Together's airy office suite in Kensington, an upscale community in Montgomery County, 15 white adults grieve childlessness and share stories about the stress of waiting for babies to adopt.In another room, social worker Esther Best makes appointments at two African-American churches and Howard University's radio station in her daily quest to find black families interested in adoption.The contrasting scenes reflect a sad fact of life: Healthy white babies are spoken for at birth, but it can take up to three months to place a black baby.