As much as we like to say things like, adoption is a very individual decision, or adoption is a wonderful way to grow a family, or even, adoption is a good thing, there are those people who won't agree with us.

I'm not talking about the anti-adoption movement. No. I'm talking about our nearest and dearest, our friends and our family. Like it or not, their attitudes, both spoken and inferred, often have great impact on what we do. That includes our plans for adoption.

I'll give you an example. When we adopted Little J we got almost nothing but positive support from our friends and our family. But before we'd made plans to adopt, deep in our throes of fertility treatments and miscarriages, a few select people said some really subtle, but unmistakeably negative thing to us.

Them: "Are you going to try invitro next?"
Us: "No, we don't think we'll go that far."
Them: "So I guess you'll just have the one."
Us: "Well, we think we'll find a way to have more kids."
Them: "What, you're not going to adopt, are you?"

Or how about this conversation, in regards to some relatives who had just had a baby after 5 years of fertility treatments:

Me: "Do you think they'll have any more kids?"
Them: "Oh, no. Not after all that mess they went through. I don't think they'd go through that again. And there's no way they'd adopt. No way."

But why? I wanted to ask. Why wouldn't they adopt? What's wrong with adopting? But I didn't, cause I'm chicken and a certain segment of my family already thinks I'm too confrontational. I try to avoid putting fuel on that fire - and for this issue I would probably get too confrontation and p*ssed off to deal with it rationally. So I just sit and stew...and remember these details for my blog!

We also took our family in mind when we chose what country to adopt from. My husband felt very strongly that his family would not be very accepting to a child who was not Caucasian. Having been around them for various racial tirades I tend to agree...and while I don't agree with their viewpoint and I would love to adopt a non-white child I also wanted my child to be accepted by that side of the family, racist SOBs or not.

Now that Little J's been here a couple of years and I'm trying to convince my husband that another would be a good idea, I'm having a hard time finding anyone supportive of my wish to adopt another.

In this case I don't think it's because they're against adoption -- they probably think I have enough to handle with my 2. For some reason 3 kids sounds like too, too many. It's like 3 kids is the new 6 kids around here! Or maybe I'm just lacking the grace that mothering to more than 2 will require. I dunno. I figure with all this talk about older moms that I have at least 20 more years to convince everyone.

So - what's your story? How have your friends and family been about your plans to adopt? Helpful? Annoying? Hostile? I'd love to know.