What All Families Need to Know about Adoptive Families

Every so often, the members of Renee Lubowich’s family – parents and children – pinch each other and say, "Yes, we’re all real, everybody’s real in this family."

What may sound like an odd custom to a non-adoptive family makes perfect sense to Lubowich, the adoptive parent of a daughter from China. Her family takes the pinch test in response to the kinds of questions many kids and their adoptive families field from classmates, neighbors and even complete strangers in the supermarket: "Is that your real mother?" "Is she your real sister?"

Lubowich and other adoptive parents say they’re often asked questions that they believe people would never dream of asking non-adoptive parents. What non-adoptive families may not realize is that these questions – however intended – may be intrusive or insensitive.

Susan Jordan, the mother of two children from Honduras, says that when her children were small, total strangers would stop her at the playground or at a store checkout counter and ask if she was the real parent or make such comments as, "Oh, his father must be Italian."

Leslie Swartz, the mother of a 9-year-old daughter from China, tells a similar story. "My daughter was 8 months when I brought her home. No one minded saying, ‘Is she yours? How much did she cost?’" Still another parent recalls being asked at the playground, "Why did her real parents give her up?

"Educating Non-Adoptive Families
It is important for non-adoptive families to learn more about adoption – and the appropriate etiquette for discussing it, says Kathryn Creedy, executive director of Celebrate Adoption Inc., a coalition working to advance a positive image of adoption. That’s because adoption is so common and because discussing adoption opens the door to understanding many kinds of families, she says.

"One-third of the nation is touched by adoption within their immediate families," Creedy says. "So the likelihood that a person will know someone adopted or that their child will be going to school with someone who was adopted is very high."

Adoption is only one way a family may be formed, Creedy points out. "By understanding adoption, we lay the groundwork for understanding all families," she says. "We need to help support children and help them be comfortable no matter what form their family takes, whether they are being raised by grandparents, by single parents or because they’re a child of divorce or in foster care."

Adoption professionals say non-adoptive families can learn more about adoption through books, Web sites and by talking with adoptive families in a respectful way. And adoptive families can help.