When I put together my first adoptive parent profile, I made the mistake of seeing our connection with the placing mother as more of a “business arrangement.” She had a baby who needed a home, and I had a home that needed a baby. I would show the placing mother that our home was ready for a baby, and that would be all that was needed for her to match with us. I was baffled when a year passed with no interest shown by any placing mother.

What I failed to see was that this relationship was not a business arrangement. The placing mothers were looking to make an emotional connection with an adoptive couple, and I was not doing my part in making myself emotionally available through our profile. Patricia Dischler*, author of Because I Loved You: A Birthmother’s View Of Open Adoption, provides a placing mother’s insight into the emotional connection:

The bottom line is, this is not a business arrangement, this is an emotional one. Sharing information that is important emotionally is the key to finding those links that trust can be built upon. [Reprinted with permission.]

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I asked a couple of friends to help me redesign our profile. The first thing they did was to include information about our lives that might be interesting to a placing mother.

My friends are the ones who told us to add pictures of our dogs. I feared that telling placing mothers that we had dogs might exclude us from consideration by placing mothers who were not dog lovers. As it turned out, my son’s birthmother chose us, in part, because we had dogs. This was a piece of information about our family that mattered to her.

My friends included other details as well, such as information about what we did during our vacations at the beach and the fact that we like to read. They included pictures of my husband and me playing with my nephews. They shared that we fell in love while we were in graduate school.

My friends even included two-page spreads for each of our baby pictures with information about our childhood. I did not believe that our childhood information was relevant, but I now see that this information opened us up emotionally to the placing mothers.

Placing mothers are in a very vulnerable position, and they are being asked to make one of the most important decisions that they will ever make in their lives. Hopeful adoptive parents need to show some vulnerability themselves when they put together their profiles. Revealing who you are is the best way for a placing mother to determine that you will be good parents for her child.

*For more information on Patricia Dischler or her books, check out her website.

Related Topics:

• Being Empowered


• Choosing Adoptive Parents


• Adoptive Parent Profile Series