Homestudy complete

This week concluded our homestudy process--the social worker is writing up the report this weekend and promised us a rough draft by Tuesday (since Monday is technically a holiday). My Dad's passing last month interfered with ours scheduled plans to meet up with the social worker but we finally did so twice this past week--once on Thursday night at a coffee shop for the individual interviews and then again yesterday morning (bright and early at 8am) for the home-visit.

We've been through this twice before, but I keep forgetting how non-threatening these interviews really are. The questions are always very open and general ("what does a typical day in your home look like?" or "how are have you been preparing the boys for the arrival of a new sibliing?") but we know they can ask--and have a right to inquire about--any question they'd like regarding religious, health, educational, discipline choices we've made and such. While we have nothing to hide, I don't enjoy discussing intimate details of our family life and personal philosophies with a stranger--especially one who technically has the power to approve or deny us the ability to parent another child.

No such questions came up but there is always a big sigh of relief when the interview is over...no matter how innocuous the questioning or squeaky clean our histories. Perhaps it's my pride, but I hate the fact that indifferent third parties have the ultimate say in deciding who is "fit" to parent and who isn't. Good people who would make great parents can be denied on a whim. It's not a perfect system by any stretch.

The homestudy process is a humbling experience. There's no doubt about it.

As though all the doctor's visits and time spent in the stirrups was not humiliating enough during the IF workup, adopting also requires you to bear your heart and soul in an equally vulnerable way. Various agencies, police departments and government officials must be adequately convinced that your home is a safe environment to place a child. And the only way to do that is the scrutinize every aspect of one's life from explicit financial situation to our families of origin, from intimate medical histories to police clearances in every state and county you've ever lived.

Now I've long since come to terms with the invasive nature of the homestudy process as a "necessary evil"--there are indeed evil people in the world who do not have the child's best interest in mind. I don't have a philosophical objection to the fingerprinting, the questioning and the scrutiny per se...it's a privilege to be able to parent a non-biological child and safe guards need to be set up to protect the child and scrutinize the safety of the home to which the child will be placed.

But there's an irony in all of this...

I can remember during our first adoption 8 years ago...I was working as a L&D nurse at an inner city hospital where prenatal care was very low and intact families very rare. Drug use was rampant and more than one "baby daddy" had to be escorted from the unit for being high. I can remember delivering the babies of 14 and 15 year olds and handing them over to them without so much as a visit from a social worker or parenting class before discharge...and yet here DH and I were getting background checks and police reports and letters of references written on our behalf just so that we could go on a waiting list for a child.

The homestudy is necessary and we happily oblige but that doesn't mean that it's an easy process for any of the parties involved. We are breathing a collective sigh of relief now that the brunt of the work and scrutiny is behind us and eagerly await the report that makes us officially paper-ready to parent.

Or as DH calls it, "paper-trained".

Happy 4th of July!