A perfect parent is a person with excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.
--Dave Barry
...I'm pretty sure Mr. Barry meant those bon mots sarcastically, but with the week I've just had, I'm not inclined to take them that way. The social worker we welcomed into our home (on eight separate occasions) spent a good fifteen minutes telling us what wonderful people we were and how sound our philosophies on children were, before he left our dream of adopting children in tatters. Maybe we're perfect parents because we don't have kids; surely the only way to get truly meaningful experience parenting is to be a parent.
Everything we have done in the past four years has been geared towards getting children in our lives. We bought this house in no small part because it was in a child-friendly neighbourhood, across the street from a school. In what we once thought a happy coincidence and now see as a sad irony, our home inspector performs that function for Family and Children's Services. We had spent several years and a good deal of money amassing material possessions in full knowledge that the money would dry up with the arrival of children. And the adoption process, as far as we got into it, anyway, worked wonders to focus my attention on the joy--as well as frustration--we'd be facing.
Tom's rejection represents a brick wall. And after you hit one of those, changing gears isn't so simple. First you have to find and re-attach your transmission.
People have been wonderfully supportive, and I'd like to thank them here. Getting through this would be much harder without you all. It's nice to know that our indignation and confusion is shared. "Shared pain is lessened."
A few questions I have been asked:
Is there any appeal process?
Nope. Tom's decision was final.
What about private adoption?
Still requires a homestudy, done either by Children's Aid or privately (and private homestudies cost approximately $1000). The money wouldn't be a problem, but we've failed one homestudy already. Our file may be closed, but it'll magically open up again upon inquiry by a private adoption firm.
What about international adoption?
Maybe. All it would take would be a winning 6/49 ticket. And I don't mean the first or last number of the Encore, either. International adoptions cost between thirty and fifty thousand dollars in airfares, bureaucratic red tape, baksheesh, and miscellaneous hosedowns. And you still have to convince somebody, somewhere that you'd make a good parent. As of right now we lack the required confidence in ourselves to do that. Besides, I really don't like the thought of "buying" a child. Somehow it makes me feel dirty.
Fostering?
Done through Children's Aid, using the exact same homestudy process. And really not something we are interested in. Assuming we wanted to spend two or three years getting experience with children they want, and further assuming we were eager to start this whole thing over from scratch after that, with no guarantees they wouldn't find some other lame reason to reject us again, we'd be faced with an endless procession of social workers regulating our lives and invading our home...all for kids we'd spend just enough time getting attached to before they were yanked out. NFW: no effing way.
So: brick wall. We're taking a good six months off for repairs and then we'll re-assess. I'm trying to see the positives in a life without children, positives, ironically, that used to fairly leap off my tongue and now require just the slightest bit of thought. Ultimately, the biggest positives boil down to two things: time and money. Time to ourselves, money to travel, renovate, and enjoy the time to ourselves.
Oh yeah, and we're getting a puppy. Probably a Lab cross; we'll wait until one speaks to us to be sure.
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