Hopeful Adoptive Parent Profiles/Life Books

The next step was to put together a life book. For those of you who enjoy scrapbooking, this probably sounds like an exciting thing to do. For those of you who are like me and would rather clean the bathrooms than scrapbook, this was a daunting assignment. How could I possibly put into one album all that a placing mother needed to know about us?

I am a writer, not a scrapbooker. I am also a computer person. My idea of creativity is inserting clip art into a document. Even the photographs in this blog are provided by a photographer friend of mine. So, instead of making a scrapbook, I scanned a bunch of pictures into the computer and put together a nice PowerPoint presentation. Each page shared another reason why we would be good parents. I thought it looked really slick.

Problem #1 – The social workers did not have laptops to carry around as they visited placing mothers throughout the state, so they could not show the PowerPoint presentation in the way that I had hoped. The agency told me to print the presentation out on a color printer and bind it together in a photo album. The end product did not look nearly as nice that way.

Problem #2 – The presentation was too “sales pitchy.” I did not realize that at the time. I did not ask anyone to look it over. I thought, “What things would a placing mother be looking for in a hopeful adoptive couple?” I included pictures and little blurbs about each characteristic. What else did I need?

We also had to put together a “Dear Birthmother” letter. Nowadays these are often called “Dear Expectant Mother” or “Dear Placing Mother” letters because a woman is not a birthmother until after she has placed her baby for adoption and her parental rights have legally terminated. I did not have the first clue about what to write to a 16-year-old girl. (We will get into placing mother and birthmother pre-judgments in a future blog. My son’s birthmother was actually in her thirties when she place her baby for adoption and was NOTHING like I assumed she would be.) I don’t even remember what I wrote, but it was more of the same “here’s why you should choose us” kind of sales pitch.

The social worker said the life book was fine. Now there was nothing to do but wait. I will talk more about the wait in my next blog.

After a year of not being matched, the social worker suggested that we re-do our life book. She said that it was too “sales-pitchy” and that we needed to add stickers. I felt these criticisms like a physical blow. I was so angry and upset. If the book was so bad, then why did they wait ONE WHOLE YEAR to tell me this? And what difference did STICKERS make? Wasn’t the placing mother looking for the best parents for her child? Would she really choose another couple because they threw in a few smiley faces?

Three friends of mine volunteered to make a new life book. As long as I paid for the supplies, they would choose the photos and do the scrapbooking for me. Let me tell you – they did a BEAUTIFUL job in expressing who were are and letting the photos “sell” us.

In my opinion, you should always let other people help you to select the photos. A picture that I saw as showing off my husband’s beautiful eyes was seen by my friends as him looking “mean.” My friends could see the pictures as a placing mother would – without the history of what was going on when the picture was taken.

I have a lot more to say about life books, but we will do that in a later blog.

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