Oogy_ The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [15]
Arty Elgart had founded Golden Cradle, which is a nonprofit organization, after it took him five years to adopt his first child. Arty had concluded that adoption should not have to be such an arduous experience, and he sought to expedite the process of matching would-be parents with birth parents. After fifteen years on the Golden Cradle board of directors, I have come to the conclusion that what has made traditional Golden Cradle adoptions so successful — those in which the agency finds and assists the birth parent(s) and then arranges for the adoption by parents in the program, who have paid a fee — is that the agency makes certain that an adoption happens for the right reasons. There is no lingering regret by the birth mother or birth parents; they understand that it is in the best interests of the child to place him or her in the hands of another couple. There is no second-guessing; they know the child will be well loved and that they are sharing a gift of inestimable value.
In a traditional adoption, the birth parents pick the parents to whom the child is going to be introduced. When an expectant mother or couple who wanted to place their child for adoption through Golden Cradle contacted the agency, Golden Cradle would focus on what was important to the birth mother or birth parents. The agency would ask, What characteristics do you want to see in the couple who will adopt your child? And if the mother answered, Well, I’m Italian, and I am a potter, so I’d like the child’s parents to be Italian professionals interested in the arts, Golden Cradle would reply, Well, we have an Italian couple who are not professional and are not really interested in the arts, and we have a Jewish professional couple who are. What’s more important to you, religion or lifestyle? Depending upon the responses that Golden Cradle received to the questions posed, it provided prospective adoptive couples’ autobiographies for the birth parents or birth mother to choose from that reflected the birth parents’ interests.
For the first six months after placement had occurred, adoptive parents would prepare what were known as “Sharing Sheets,” letting the birth mother/parents know how the child was developing and the parent-child relationships were evolving. The Sharing Sheets, each of which included at least six photographs, were turned over to Golden Cradle and forwarded to the birth parent(s). Knowing that the child was doing well and was loved and appreciated served to confirm the correctness of the decision and helped the birth parent(s) to say good-bye.
When we joined Golden Cradle, forty couples at a time were accepted into the program, all of whom were waiting for children through traditional adoptions. Arty spoke at the first meeting of our class. And the first thing he said was: “I want you all to relax. You’re all going to be parents. One couple has to be first, and one couple has to be last, but you’re all going to get a baby.”
Early on, Golden Cradle staffers had learned that when they called adoptive parents for administrative reasons and told them, “This is Golden Cradle,” people would flip out, thinking that they had just been placed and were now parents. So at the first meeting everyone was informed that if someone called and said they were from Golden Cradle, it did not mean there was a baby waiting for them. When the phone rang and the voice on the other end said, “This is the stork calling,” the baby was there.
Jennifer and I ended up being the last in our class to be placed. It took almost two years. We had been waiting for the call so long, we had stopped thinking about it. Despite the assurances we