Preparing to Adopt
Check out some of Pact’s most timely and popular publications. For permission to reprint or repost, please contact Beth Hall at beth@pactadopt.org.
Are you considering forming or growing your family by adopting a child? As you set out to learn more about adoption, you will discover that it’s easy to find a chorus of adoptive parents and adoption professionals eager to share their advice. However, at Pact we...
2014 When we asked Pact members what they wish they had known before they adopted, we weren’t sure what kind of response we would get. The feedback we received, overwhelming in volume, was primarily from white parents parenting children of color. Clear themes emerged,...
by Parker Dockray and Susan Dusza Guerra Leksander 2017 Mother’s Day can bring fraught feelings for many of us. This is particularly true for mothers touched by adoption, whether as first/birth mothers or as adoptive mothers, because for both groups there remains...
by Malaika Parker 2014 Shadism (a preference or privilege based on lighter over darker skin tones) is a conversation that gets directly to the heart of racism and its roots. In an effort to fight against these preferences and privileges, Pact does not engage in...
by Pact Staff When considering adoption, prospective parents are asked almost immediately to a make decision about whether they are seeking an open or closed adoption. Making parenting decisions before you become a parent can be challenging, particularly when they...
by Beth Hall 2018 Why adoptive parents need to talk about birth/first parents Birth parents are surely the least understood and most often villified members of the adoption triad.[1] Outsiders to the experience of adoption will often recommend that it is best to...
by Pat Irwin Johnston, MS 2011 Secrecy hides far more than what is private. A private garden may not be a secret garden; a private life is rarely a secret life. Conversely, secret diplomacy rarely concerns what is private, any more than do arrangements for a surprise...
by Beth Hall Originally published 2010, updated 2022 Sometimes, when pre-adoptive parents contact Pact to learn more about our placement services, they seem to view adoption as a process whereby they decide what makes them comfortable in terms of the child they want...