We’ll be talking about birth searches & reunions, and/or sharing some resources for adoptees, such as traveling to your birth country (whether you are searching or not).

If you would be interested in attending, please let us know and we will send you further details as they become available.

*Here’s some links to some articles and blogs that have come out recently in the New York Times:

Relative Choices: Adoption and the American Family

New York Times Magazine: Looking for Their Children’s Birthmothers

Being in charge of a reality show must be hard work. Just when you think it’s all been done, your bosses expect you to come up with some new way to exploit… I mean entertain, the American viewing public.

I’m sure it makes some TV execs want to quit reality and go into game shows. But not the producers of Wife Swap, ABC network’s “critically-acclaimed” unscripted reality show that furthers understanding among disparate cultures by pointing out how extraordinarily different families live their lives. They’re not panicking over content. Instead, they’re taking a page from the Extreme Home Makeover playbook. They’re appealing to emotion. They’re seeking to reunite an adoptee with her birth mother. Isn’t that nice?

Question: Isn’t the name of the show Wife Swap? How does the adoption reunion come into the equation?

Apparently, the producers would like to cast a female adoptee who wants to be reunited with her birth mother. The network will conduct the search on her behalf and approach her birth mother with the intention of a reunion, but more importantly with the idea that they, mother and daughter, would switch places and be recorded for one week.

According to Molly Sebastian from RDF Media, who wrote the announcement that appeared on Adoption Week’s web site, they are “looking for families who consist of two parents with at least one child living in the home full time. Families who are chosen to participate on the show will receive a $20,000 honorarium.”

Adoption web site Harlow’s Monkey, and others, have pointed out that “this would mean the adoptee would be “parenting” her half siblings and her mother would be “parenting” her grandchildren. And the adoptee would be living with her “stepfather.”" Ironically, this catastrophic side-effect may have been thought out and intentional. Or at least, that’s my cynical suspicion.

I can only speculate that the producers at ABC would be hoping for an international adoptee to volunteer, because of the inherent cultural hilarity that would inevitably ensue. Because we know from watching television that laughing at other cultures is, indeed, quite funny. And if it’s on television, then it must be true.

Although, considering, for $20,000… I’m half-tempted to get a wig and and some lip gloss and give it a shot anyway. Umma, are you reading this? Give me a call!

Wife Swap is in its third season on Mondays (8:00-9:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network.

via Harlow’s Monkey via Adoption Week

In the upcoming film, Martian Child, John Cusack laments, “I don’t want to bring another kid into this world, but how do you argue against loving one that’s already here.”

In the film, Cusack (Say Anything, High Fidelity, Being John Malkovich) plays David Gordon, a widowed science-fiction writer who seeks to adopt a little boy named Dennis, an awkward child who believes he’s from another planet.

Yes, the film isn’t about international adoption, but anyone who has met and spent time with adoptees know that there are striking similarities (and equally striking differences) that are common to all adoption stories. The fact that domestic adoption is different, does not exclude it from being special and part of the adoption community.

The website teases you, insinuating that, perhaps, the boy might not be entirely making up his Martian personae. Whether or not this is a marketing ploy will have to wait until release. But I, for one, would welcome the twist. After all, the best “adoption” stories really don’t focus on adoption at all: Superman and Tarzan come to mind. These stories highlight the great things adopted kids can do. People initially relate to the central figure’s character, and then discover, yeah… they were adopted, too.

The fact that the child in the story is “different” or “unconventional” echoes the kinds of issues that you would face in an international adoption, albeit without confronting race. But togther, like adoptive families all over, they confront what it means to “fit in” as the trailer poses, “It doesn’t matter where you come from, as long as you discover where you belong.”

If that line doesn’t also have international adoption written all over it, then I don’t know what does.

Martian Child also features Amanda Peet and, of course, John’s sister, Joan Cusack. It is based on the Hugo and Nebula Award winning short story by sci-fi luminary David Gerrold and directed by Menno Meyjes. Depending on who you ask, the film opens October 26 or November 2 and distributed by New Line Cinema.

Official Website: www.martianchild.com

Our hope is to educate and provide opportunities for discussion, learning, and sharing the international adoption experience with both the adoption and non-adoption community; while working towards a better understanding of adoption from the adoptee perspective and fostering a sense of unity and empowerment amongst all adoptees.

We apologize for our absence, but we are back on track with a brand new website. The overal look is likely to change somewhat as we modify things, so please bear with us.

Thank you for understanding. It’s good to be back.