Dear Blake,
When I first started dating my boyfriend seven years ago, I told him that I wanted to someday adopt a child. He said he would like his own children first, but adoption would be “cool.” We now have two children, 5 and 3, and I’m ready to adopt. We’re financially able to support another child, and we both have great careers. When I recently mentioned adoption to him, he said he has changed his mind and doesn’t want to adopt. He says because we have our own children, he wouldn’t want the adopted baby to potentially feel like the “odd one out.” Is this something to end an otherwise happy marriage over? Or should I give it one more shot and hope maybe he’ll want to adopt? I have wanted to do this since I was a little girl, and it is important to me.
Signed, Aliss
From Detroit, Michigan
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Dear Aliss,
I understand your desire for an addition to your existing family. I also believe that no young child should be forced to live in a city as raggedy as Detroit or any other war torn nation. Anyway, here are some options you may want to consider. Go ahead and secretly adopt a child, and then tell your husband it’s your long lost brother… that’s a dwarf that ages slowly. Or, you can send one of your kids to a relative that he doesn’t know about. that lives in another part of the country. After a couple of years of you pretending to be depressed over the “missing” child, he’ll probably yield to your adoption idea. Once the new child comes home with you, have your biological child “mysteriously” show up at your front door the following day. How about this one? You can tell him that U.S. history is important to you, and you want as many children as possible in Detroit, so they can look at their neighborhood everyday as a reminder of what Hiroshima looked like when America dropped an atomic bomb. But to be fair, you have to find out what your boyfriend’s real objections to adopting are. I think it’s either, he doesn’t want an outsider potentially being a bad influence on your two kids, or he’s showing some compassion to the potential adopted child because he feels the children you two already have are so wicked, wayward, and evil, that he doesn’t want another child to be subjected to the vile, rotten attitude of your contemptible depraved offspring. On the other hand, he could’ve always wanted only two kids. I hope this helps.
Blake