PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

By ROCKY ROBINSON Andrews Kurth LLP

Adoption – More Than A Legal Definition

The focus of this issue is adoption. Black’s Law Dictionary defines adoption as a “legal process pursuant to state statute in which a child’s legal rights and duties towards his natural parents are terminated and similar rights and duties towards his adoptive parents are substituted.” While this definition is legally correct, I am struck by its relative sterility. Adoption is so much more.
Whatever your personal, political, religious or philosophical beliefs may be, I doubt that anyone would disagree with the proposition that the family is one of the linchpins of our society. Without family, most of us would have a huge void in our lives.
Adoption, while a legal process, is really about creating families. It is about giving couples or single adults the opportunity to experience the joys (and travails) of parenthood; giving them the opportunity and responsibility of raising and guiding children, as part of a family, and watching those children grow into productive members of society. It is about helping mostly young and single adults (the birthparents) who are not able to deal appropriately with the burdens of an unplanned pregnancy or, given their circumstances, the responsibilities of raising children. A goal of adoption is to give these persons a chance, sometimes a second chance, to get back on their feet, get their lives in order and become productive members of society. Finally, adoption is about giving children a home and the chance to be part of a loving family. This is what is sometimes referred to as the Adoption Triad: the adoptive parents, the birthparents and the adopted child.
Even when considering its dry legal aspects, there is no question that when one thinks about adoption, a word that frequently comes to mind is “joy,” as in the joy of creating and maintaining a family. Ask any family court judge, in Houston or elsewhere, to identify the most positive part of his or her job and the answer you will get, without qualification, is adoption.
If further proof is needed of the joy and happiness which adoption can bring, then you should have been at the Family Law Center November 19th to witness the celebration of Adoption Day. As part of National A-doption Month, and through the efforts of the Harris County Child Protective Services, 56 children (ranging in age from four months to 15 years) were placed with their new families. The joy on the faces of the children and their adoptive parents was demonstrative. For anyone who was present at the Family Law Center it was a delight to see these new families (many of whom were first time adoptive parents) as they proudly and confidently embarked on the journey of parenthood and family.
I do not mean to imply that raising an adopted child is not without its challenges. But the challenges are, for the most part, no different than those who have been blessed with biological children. Adoptive infants sometimes get colic and always have to be fed in the middle of the night! An adopted ten-year-old girl will get into her mother’s make-up and create the same havoc as will the ten-year-old girl born biologically to her parents. An eight-year-old adopted boy will track mud into the house as easily as his biological counterpart. Adopted teenagers will cause you the same level of consternation and anxiety as will a biological teenage son or daughter. The point is that adopted children, while special because of their own unique circumstances, are no different than biological children. Raising an adopted child is no different than raising a child born to you biologically. The parents and the children experience the same range of emotions and the same joys and heartbreaks.
How, you may ask, do I know all of this? I know because I have lived it.
My wife and I are the proud parents of two adopted daughters and a biological son.

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