In my last post, Adoption: Does Reluctant Spouse = Reluctant Husband?, I talked about how most spouses who are reluctant to adopt tend to be husbands. However, I also pointed out that many reluctant wives never agree to adopt in the first place, which skews the ranks of the reluctant spouses, making it appear that men are more likely to be reluctant about adopting than women.

Why are some women reluctant to adopt? Some have not yet grieved the loss of experiencing... more

When couples decide to adopt, there is often one spouse who is gung ho about adopting while the other is less excited about the prospect. Of course, there are exceptions, but frequently one person is much more eager to adopt than his or her spouse.

When we talk about this phenomenon online, we often talk about the "reluctant spouse." However, with most of the adoptive and hopeful adoptive couples that I know, we are really talking about a reluctant husband. I know many adoptive mothers, and every single one of them wanted to adopt. Some of the... more

On my post, Adoption with an Unstable Marriage, Julia from the Parenting Children With Special Needs blog posted the following comment:

Several years ago I provided respite care for a teen girl in a preadopt home. The family ended up adopting her and her younger brother. She was in their church choir, maybe she still is. The parents got divorced after the adoption. I heard today that she gave birth... more

In a perfect world, every couple who decided to adopt a child would have a stable marriage, and the marriage would last forever. No adopted child would ever suffer through his parents' divorce. Unfortunately, in the real world, not every couple stays together. While many adoptive couples have very solid marriages, some do not. If a marriage is teetering on the brink of dissolving, moving forward with an adoption is a bad idea.

The adoption process is very stressful, and it can rock the most stable of marriages. Once the process is completed, many marriages become... more

If you are married and want to adopt a child, you need to make sure your marriage is stable before proceeding with an adoption. You do not want to adopt a child and then have the family split apart within a couple of years. While none of us has any guarantees about how long our marriages will last, you need to go into an adoption with as stable of a marriage as possible.

Adoption.com's Self-Assessment Adoption Quiz asks the following question:

11. Do you... more

When deciding whether to adopt a child, are you and your spouse on the same page? If your answer is no, you are not alone. My favorite adoption author, Jill Smolowe, wrote a fabulous article on this topic called The Reluctant Spouse, in which she explains the many reasons why couples often fail to agree on whether to adopt a child. Her writings helped me to feel less alone when my husband and I were in very different places regarding adoption.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how... more

We continued infertility treatments after I attended the adoption orientation. By now, my husband was eager to “get this show on the road” and “get this monkey off of his back.” He was playing beat the clock – get her pregnant before I have to shell out over $10,000 to “adopt a stranger’s baby.” Needless to say, we were in two very different places, and this put a real strain on our relationship.

We could not have been farther apart in our views on adoption or on our life’s goals in general. To comfort me, he would say things like, “Yes,... more

Unfortunately, my husband was NOT on the same page. Not even close. Throughout our 4-1/2 year journey to parenthood, he pretty much stayed 6 months behind me for each new stage. When I was ready to start trying to conceive, he tried to stall for another 6 months. When I was ready to see a doctor about why we were not yet pregnant, he was just getting ready to really “try” without medical intervention … and so it went. When I said I was ready to throw in the towel on infertility treatments and start researching adoption agencies, he was just... more

Here's something for me to be thankful for: that the door to adopting a third child has not been irrevocably closed to me.

I am thankful I have a reluctant spouse!

Because even though it's going to be years yet before we get bunde of joy #3, hope springs eternal for me that it will still happen. The crack is still in the door. The possibility is still there.

Operation get-a-girl is still underway.

Here was my plan of action:

1. Get a job so my husband's options... more

My 7 year old made a "to-do" list for himself the other day:

get out of bed eat brefkas go to school

come home

do homewrke eat a snake play or witch tv eat drnnir go to bed

He wrote it at the end of the day so he checked off everything but "eat drnnir" and "go to bed." From the looks of the spelling he needs to spend more time on the "go to school" and "do homewrke" part, but whatever. Spelling will come. If not, he can always... more