The New York Magazine had a long and wonderful feature article yesterday on adoption, featuring several different families who adopted from Ethiopia. The name of the article is "The Nuclear Family, Exploded" and it was written by Emily Nussbaum.

The article looks at a wide variety of adoption issues, and addresses them by sharing the experiences of several different adoptive families. The question is asked, "Do parents really love adopted children differently than their own offspring?"

Some of the issues addressed in the article include:


- The unexpected challenges that can go along with bringing home a new child. Speaking a different language, parents and child having different (sometimes clashing) personalities, the new child testing boundaries and having tantrums, etc. can all be very difficult for new parents, and can also affect bonding between parents and child. The article discusses how it can take time for motherly feelings and love to grow, and reminds parents to be patient and realistic.

- As I have recently written about, the article touches on the decision to bring along children already in the family on the adoption trip. The decision to bring along (or not) siblings on an adoption trip is a tough one for many families. In this article, one couple regrets bringing along six year old son because the trip turns out to be too emotionally difficult and overwhelming for him, and then another family shares their experience with leaving children behind with grandparents, who had a very hard time with their parents being gone for a week.

- Of course, Angelina and Madonna are both mentioned in the article. The attention that Angelina Jolie's adoption and birth have gotten, the affects that attention has on other adoptive parents and questions that have been raised by celebrity adoptions are all discussed.

- The author looks into how adoption has evolved from something secret and shameful in the 1950's, to something much more common and sometimes even seen as hip and trendy.

- The article addresses the newer "phenomenon" of big, multicultural adoptive families (although the "big" family in their article has five kids). I love, love, love this quote from the article, as it completely sums up the way I feel:

There’s a broad cultural assumption that there must be something wrong with this kind of family, a pathology tucked inside sainthood. Someone, somewhere, must have a martyr complex, be a “collector” or otherwise crazy (as opposed to small-family adoptions, which are castigated as vanity purchases, yuppies plucking one exotic accessory out of poverty).

The relationships between siblings created by adoption are discussed quite a bit, and it is shared that so far, research seems to show that there is no difference between the ongoing relationships between biological siblings and siblings through adoption. Some tips on helping parents handle adoption and sibling issues are given.

And the last topic that I am going to mention from the article (there are quite a few more) comes from the Orphan Doctor, Dr. Jane Aronson. She talks about the new concept of "optional family making" by parents who are able to have biological children but just want to adopt or want more kids, and she talks about how this is much different from the "desperate" parents who used to be the norm in adoption, and just wanted a baby and had no other options. Dr. Jane is quote quite a bit in the article about the changing overall feel of adoption.

The bottom line of the article is that parents can and do love adopted children as much and equally as they love their biological children, and yet there is often a lot more to it than just love and "happily ever after".

This is a great article that looks into some complex issues of adoption, and shares the stories of some great families. I hope that you can find the time to give the whole thing a read.