Building Families the Focus of Adoption

A nice down-to-earth story about adoption in the Sacramento Bee, profiling a number of different families, including a same-sex couple, and different kinds of adoption -- from foster care, sibling groups, special needs, international, older child.

The story doesn't shy away from the difficult aspects of adoption ("You can take the kids out of the trauma, but you can't take the trauma out of the kids"), though little mention is made of birth parents. Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, in talking about increasing openness in adoption: "We haven't leveled the playing field quite yet, but there is movement in that direction," he said.

I wish there were more stories like this during Adoption Awareness Month -- these are the stories that will really find the committed people who can make an adoption work even when it isn't all rainbows and unicorns.