I hear it ever-so-often, and it never ceases to catch me off guard.
We might be playing at a park, standing in a line to order food, browsing books at the library, and a stranger will notice my family, all six of us, smile and then bring up the topic of adoption. We are quite used to this, since our multiracial family status (two white parents, four Black children) makes adoption obvious. And occasionally, a stranger will smile and comment, “Your kids are so lucky.”
This is meant to be affirming. Praising. Uplifting. It’s meant to say, “I see you. Your family is beautiful. Your kids seem to have great parents. Thank God you opened your home to a child who needed one.” Lucky, fortunate, blessed—these insinuate a lot of things, most of which are based in adoption and race stereotypes.
The issue isn’t in the noticing and affirmation (which is much preferred to awkward and inappropriate questions). The problem is that these strangers: they’ve got it all wrong. We, the parents, are truly the lucky ones.
We are lucky that we had the finances to add to our family by adoption.
We are lucky we have a home and car large enough to accommodate our growing family.
We are lucky that our children’s birth parents chose us.
We are lucky that we have a supportive network of family and friends.
We are lucky we live in a community that embraces families-by-adoption.
We are lucky that our circle of friends consists of many, many families that look like ours.
We are lucky that we were able to adopt not once, not twice, not three times, but four.
We are lucky that God put certain people in our paths to help us better parent our children: a hair braider, adult adoptees, a barber, a birth mother, their mentor.
We are lucky that we were on the same page about adoption: committed to ethics.
We are lucky that our children have open adoptions with their families.
We are lucky that we had some adoption education under our belts before adopting.
We are lucky that we are both committed to ongoing education and conversations with members of the adoption triad.
We are lucky that I already had a transracial adoptee in my family prior to us choosing to adopt.
We are lucky that God prepared our hearts and continued to mold our hearts for parenting children who were adopted.
When someone tells us that our children are lucky, we always correct the person, insisting that we are the lucky ones. We don’t want our children to feel they need to be grateful for being adopted or that we somehow rescued them from an awful situation. We don’t want them to feel they must choose between their birth family and us. We don’t want them to feel that any adult can use their age, size, or status to demand answers of them, to interrogate out of “curiosity” or out of nosiness, or that an adult gets to categorize them.
We want our children to be empowered, confident, educated, and strong. We want to love all their family members. We want them to know their story, celebrate their story, and feel safe to ask us (and their birth families) any questions they may have. We want them to have the entire story, in all of its joys and challenges. We want them to know that “real” is all of us, the ones by birth, the ones by adoption, the entire family unit.
And most of all, we want them to understand that we truly feel like the luckiest parents in the world who are blessed with the privilege and honor of raising them. There is nowhere else I’d rather be than surrounded by their humor, joy, silliness, talent, and quirks. Lucky? Yes, that’s me.