As you may recall, TODAY show host Natalie Morales was recently attacked by wild sextuplets running amok while she was interviewing the Masche family of Raising Sextuplets, in what I called a giant discipline fail.  And yet, her producers set her up again, this time with the task of interviewing a family with triplets.  Except this family, led by Darla and Jeff Garrison of Iowa, is perhaps the most charming, close-knit crew I’ve ever seen.  What’s more: of their triplet daughters, two were conjoined twins, who were separated after a 24-hour operation at Children’s Hospital in LA.  The twins, Mackenzie and Macey, shared a third leg and several organs.  They still each only have one leg, yet they are extraordinarily poised, self-possessed, polite 7-year-olds.

Take a look at their interview, and then let’s figure out what these parents are doing right!  (Oh, and did I mention these kids are adopted foster children???)  These people are saints: Continue reading »

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There is “no justification for denying lesbian and gay prospective adoptive parents the opportunity to adopt children.”  So say the authors of a study published in the August issue of the journal Applied Developmental Science, titled, ”Parenting and Child Development in Adoptive Families: Does Parental Sexual Orientation Matter?”

Researchers followed “preschool-age children adopted at birth by 27 lesbian couples, 29 gay male couples and 50 heterosexual couples,” and found that regardless of the sexual orientation of their parents, adopted boys and girls exhibited age-appropriate, “typical” behavior.  One can infer from these findings that being raised by gays doesn’t make a child gay, which is most likely the concern of conservatives in Florida, Mississippi, Utah and Arkansas, where laws are either on the books or being proposed to prevent homosexuals from adopting children. Continue reading »

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According to UK’s The Observer, biological parents are increasingly using Facebook and other social networking sites to track down the children they relinquished through adoption.

As I’ve written before on Strollerderby, it’s time for full disclosure in adoption. But full disclosure doesn’t mean presenting a child with information he or she never requested — or is not emotionally able to handle.

As an adoptee who did not want to be found by biological relatives, I can only imagine how upsetting it would have been for me as a teenager to be contacted out of the blue via Facebook. Adoptees had no choice in the matter of being relinquished for adoption so it’s important that they have control over the decision of whether or not to search for biological family or be found. Continue reading »

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“America’s got a bad case of gayby fever,” writes Thomas Rogers at Salon, who says that the gay parenting boom is reshaping the American family.

According to a 2007 study, more than one in three lesbians has given birth and one in six gay men have fathered or adopted a child. The same studied showed that more than half of gay men and 41 percent of lesbians say they want to have a child.

Pop culture is keeping up with the trend. The Sundance hit “The Kids Are Alright,” starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as gay parents, is already getting buzz as the “must-see” movie of the summer. Hit TV show “Modern Family” features gay parents. Dan Savage’s memoir “The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant” has just been turned into an off-Broadway musical.

And celebrities such as Ricky Martin, Clay Aiken, Rosie O’Donnell, Melissa Etheridge serve as the unofficial spokespeople for gay parenthood. Continue reading »

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A new summer horror movie is getting a deluge of negative publicity from adoptive parents and other members of the adoption world for portraying an older adopted child as a deranged would-be murderer of her adoptive parents and their (of course) biological children.

On the one hand Continue reading »

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I got a bit ferklempt watching the recent New York Times video of a May Lee Wong, a NYC principal who just adopted a little girl from Ethiopia after giving birth to three boys. Maybe it was the fact that the little girl, Mebrat, was thought to be three-years-old when she came to the Wong family but was, in fact, a malnourished six-year-old.

More likely? The fact that a family has adopted after having children “of their own.” Continue reading »

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