A friend of a friend asked for some information on adoption, and as I was e-mailing her explaining the different options with my agency, I realized that it is really hard to talk about one’s choices regarding adoption without making statements that may be taken in a very negative way. This should not have been news to me, since earlier this week I pissed off some people by commenting on Julie’s blog that one of the reasons I had preferred international adoption to domestic was that I thought that most US birth mothers (who have a choice about who adopts their babies) would want to place their children with a couple who planned to raise them in a religious tradition, and it would be difficult for us to get a placement for that reason. According to Julie’s readers, there are some non-religious birth parents out there. I’m glad to hear that, and I’m sorry to offend any woman who has already made the painful decision to place her child for adoption, but considering that the majority of Americans practice a religion, I still think it was a safe assumption.

So you hear a lot about ignorant adoption comments from the general public (although I, personally, haven’t experienced that many), but there is a lot of room for conversations between adoptive parents to be misconstrued. I kept rewriting my e-mail with this in mind, imagining the worst possible construction being given to my words.

For example, you say, “We chose Korea because the children receive such good foster care.”

She hears, “Anyone who chooses a child who’s institutionalized is looking at a whole host of problems.”

You say, “We chose Russia because we thought it would be easier to raise a child of the same race.”

She hears, “Mixed-race families are too difficult.”

You say, “We chose China for our second adoption because we thought it would be great for our daughter to have a sibling with the same background.”

She hears, “People shouldn’t adopt children from different racial backgrounds, because each child will feel alone in the family.”

You say, “We didn’t want to specify a girl or a boy — you don’t get to do that with a pregnancy, why should you with an adopted child?”

She hears, “People who specify a gender are playing God.”

When you adopt, you are forced to make a lot of uncomfortable choices — age, race, gender, health status, the level of contact with birth parents. You may opt out of some of these choices, but not all of them. For Korea, for example, you have to fill out the dreaded health preferences form — and nothing makes you feel worse than saying that you would take a child with a heart murmur but not a harelip, with a club foot but not a Hepatitis B carrier, especially when you know you would accept and care for a biologically-related child with any of those conditions by default.

In order to make a choice, you need to have a preference. To have a preference, you need to view one choice in a more positive light than another choice. You can’t talk about your preference for one without implying your lack of preference for another. And by “lack of preference” I, of course, mean prejudice, a word that’s verboten in adoption conversations.

How can we talk about this without offending? I try to remember to use generic “social worker speak”: “There are many different options: you have to choose what’s right for you.” True…but not very informative.