30 OCTOBER 2023 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL We didn’t begin taking the formal steps until 2012, during the third and final year of Ted’s assignment in Jakarta. Knowing of our interest in becoming parents, a friend and colleague told us about a little girl who was born with fixable special needs and had been abandoned. She had been looked after in a hospital by friendly nurses for several months but needed a permanent home. We went over to the hospital to visit her. We visited a few more times, brought her gifts, and had an independent doctor examine her to see if there were any other medical concerns we should be aware of, following the informative briefing the hospital’s staff gave us about her special needs. Finding no other issues, Ted and I went about trying to figure out how to become the little girl’s parents. We already knew what her name would be. We had earlier decided that if we were to have a daughter, she would be Lucy, since each of us had a great aunt named Lucile. Because this little girl was Indonesian, we imagined spelling her name Lusi. We found, to our dismay, though, that we had several fatal strikes against us in trying to adopt Lusi: we were not Indonesian, we were not Muslim, and, of course, we were not a heterosexual couple. Happily, we later learned that another expatriate couple adopted the little girl, whom we believe now has the chance of the full and happy life we had hoped to be able to give her. The Home Study In the process of investigating whether we could adopt Lusi, we learned that there was a U.S.-licensed social worker based in Jakarta who could do a home study for us. Even though Lusi was not to be our child, we proceeded with the home study, which we understood we could update once we moved back to Washington, D.C., our next assignment. The home study, usually the first formal step in the adoption process, was extremely difficult—the emotional and personal baring-all that seemed to be a part of the process was not as onerous as the enormous amount of paperwork. The social worker required us to provide all kinds of documentation, including evidence of our financial situation, such as pay stubs, mortgage information, bank account statements, retirement accounts, and other investments. She required letters of recommendation from people who knew us and could attest to our suitability to become parents. We needed to provide addresses and police clearances from each of the places where we had lived since we were 18 years old, as well as FBI clearances. We also needed medical clearances, copies of our birth certificates, passports, and state driver’s licenses, as well as our marriage certificate. And then we chatted several times formally with the social worker, individually and together. We talked about whether and to what extent we would be interested in adopting a child with special needs, and whether we had preferences for the child’s racial or ethnic background or gender. Our social worker had questions about our relationship, about our upbringings, and about how we expected to raise children, including disciplining them. Since we had gone through the home study process once, it would be easier to update it, as needed, and to later complete a new home study, if nothing else, for the confidence gained from having gone through what at times felt like an ordeal. We knew that it could be done. So, when we moved to Washington, D.C., with one home study completed, we set about finding an adoption agency in the area to work with on updating it to reflect our new circumstances, which included a different home than the one described in our first home study, as well as new work positions for both of us. We searched for adoption agencies in the D.C. area that were friendly to gay people, and found one in Maryland. They had certain fees to pay and new forms to complete. Managing the Wait The agency connected us with one of their social workers, with whom we worked on our home study update. She was insightful about our strengths and weaknesses and offered useful guidance about how to manage the wait for adoption placement. The adoption agency organized structured social evening sessions with other waiting prospective parents, most of whom had been waiting more than a year already. The agency told us that, in some years, there are plenty of babies they are able to place, but that this was a slow period. Our social worker advised us to go about our lives as normal. She said that we may get a call about a baby, and at that time, we could run to a store, like Target, and get everything we needed. While we had designated a bedroom for our hoped-forThe emotional and personal baring-all that seemed to be a part of the process was not as onerous as the enormous amount of paperwork.
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