NYHOMESTUDY BLOG

By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
Published: August 31, 2006

ATIE LEDBETTER, who is expecting a baby girl late this year, has delighted in the fawning of baby-obsessed colleagues, the cooing commentary on the joys of parenthood and the feigned laments over the loss of social life and sleep.

But because she is adopting instead of giving birth, Ms. Ledbetter, who works for Standard Register, a document services company based in Ohio, was initially told she was not entitled to the six to eight weeks of paid leave offered to pregnant employees.

Then in January, an ebullient manager told Ms. Ledbetter to check her e-mail. Effective this year, a memo to the company’s 3,500 employees read, Standard Register would offer adoptive parents four weeks of paid leave and up to $4,000 in financial assistance. Ms. Ledbetter, her manager told her, would be the first recipient. “It was like a gift from God,” said Ms. Ledbetter, 45, a customer service specialist in the company’s Charlotte, N.C., office. “When you are in this adoption mode, you just come to expect obstacles. I was so very, very touched to know my company backed us.”

With more than 100,000 Americans adopting each year, adoption benefits are becoming a hot new perk in the panoply of workplace benefits. Whether paid time off, reimbursement for costs or both, the benefits help parents defray hefty adoption fees and afford bonding time with new children. Just as important, recipients say, the assistance sends the message that adoptive families are as valued and worthy of support as biological families are.

“Building a family through pregnancy or adoption are now viewed pretty much the same by most people these days,” said Ms. Ledbetter, who has two biological children, Zachary, 11, and Amanda, 22, and who is adopting from an orphanage in Guatemala.

A 2006 survey of 1,000 companies by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption found that 44 percent of respondents offered paid adoption leave, up from 38 percent in 2000. And 83 percent of those surveyed offered financial assistance for adoptions, up from 70 percent in 2000.
The companies surveyed ranged from small nonprofits to Fortune 500 corporations. In March the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wis., a nonprofit organization with 65 employees, added three fully paid weeks of adoption leave for full-time employees, with three additional weeks at 50 percent of their pay. Bank Rhode Island, which has 300 employees, added four fully paid weeks of adoption leave in January.

“We see this as a significant increase, given the fact that in recent years companies have generally been looking for ways to cut expenses,” said Rita Soronen, executive director of the Dave Thomas Foundation, started in 1992 by Mr. Thomas, an adoptee and the founder of the Wendy’s fast-food chain.

A similar study in 2005 by WorldatWork, a group of human resources and benefits professionals based in Scottsdale, Ariz., found that 39 percent of responding companies offered some form of adoption benefits, up 3 percent from the previous year.

Some work-force experts say the numbers may be overly rosy, because the companies that respond to benefits surveys tend to be those with commendable practices. Even paid maternity leave is not guaranteed in the United States. Companies must treat pregnant women like other employees with a temporary medical disability and give them time off.

But a 2005 study by the Families and Work Institute, a New York-based research group, found that just 66 percent of companies with 1,000 or more employees offer some sort of replacement pay during maternity leaves. Among companies with 50 to 99 employees, 36 percent offered paid leave after a birth.

If offering benefits to adopting parents is, in part, a matter of good will and creating parity with pregnancy leave programs, it is also a competitive gesture. Many adoptive parents are professionals, well into their careers — employees that companies fight to hire and keep.
Bank Rhode Island added its adoption benefit after a prized employee who was adopting from China came to her managers with a list of other companies that offered adoption assistance and a proposal for how such a policy could work for the company.

“We realized that from a recruitment and retention standpoint we wanted to stay competitive with bigger companies and the banking industry as a whole,” said Marianne Monte, senior vice president for human resources for the bank, which is based in Providence. “People increasingly want to see these work-life balance benefits up front.”

The Dave Thomas Foundation, which runs an advocacy program called Adoption-Friendly Workplace, provides kits for employees on how to lobby employers for adoption benefits, and guides for companies about how to introduce them.

Most paid adoption-leave benefits range from two to six weeks, but some companies are more generous. The Merrill Lynch Primary Caregiver Leave program offers 13 weeks of fully paid time off for all new parents, biological or adoptive, male or female. It also offers adoptive parents $3,000 to $5,000 in financial aid.

“It’s a strong statement against the philosophy that the company has to get everything that they want first and you, as a person, and your family, come second,” said Keli Tuschman, director of human resources for Merrill Lynch Commodities, who adopted a girl from China in December.

As an executive, Ms. Tuschman, 42, was determined to maintain her career. But after waiting so long to start a family — she married Jim Tuschman, a real estate developer, nearly four years ago and started the adoption process in December 2004 — she was also determined to enjoy her new baby. Since returning to work in March after her 13-week leave, the company has allowed her to work from home part time.

“You can’t get that time with your baby back,” she said. “Some other company might offer to pay me a little more, but this buys my loyalty.”

SOME adoption agencies require, or strongly recommend, that adoptive parents take several weeks off to bond with a child. Kentucky Adoption Services Inc., in Owensboro, the agency Ms. Ledbetter is using, requires that at least one parent stay home after an adoption for at least six weeks and recommends eight weeks or more, especially for older children.

“No one blinks when a new birth mother takes off six weeks or more to be with her baby, but people then wonder why adoptive parents want the same time,” said Lucy Armistead, the agency’s executive director.

Neither Amanda Lawson nor her husband, Matthew, had paid time off for their adoption leave. The couple, who adopted from Guatemala through Ms. Armistead’s agency in July, relied on financial help from family and friends so that Ms. Lawson could stay home for eight weeks.
Ms. Lawson, an executive assistant for a nonprofit organization in Owensboro, cobbled together vacation and sick leave for five weeks of paid time off. She took another three weeks without pay. But the salary loss after spending over $25,000 on the adoption, she said, has been hard.
“It kind of hurt,” said Ms. Lawson, 27, who returned to work this week. “I am as much a new mother as anybody else. Those few weeks of salary make a difference.”

Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, a Washington-based advocacy organization, said that increased lobbying for adoption benefits is part of a broader push to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act, enacted in 1993.

The law requires any company with 50 or more employees to offer workers 12 weeks of unpaid time off for certain family or health needs, including maternity, paternity and adoption leave. But labor experts estimate that 40 percent of employees in the private work force are not covered by the law because they work for small companies or do not meet the law’s tenure or hour requirements. And many who are covered simply cannot afford unpaid time off.

“We have certainly come a long way from the days when people didn’t even understand what work-life policies were,” Ms. Ness said. “But people’s lives and mind-sets are still far ahead of policies, and support is still out of sync with the day-to-day lives and needs of most families.”
Ms. Ledbetter recently took vacation time to visit Guatemala, where her adoption is in its final stages. She and her husband, Russ, an import-export compliance officer for Goodrich Corporation, expect to bring their daughter home by the end of the year. She plans to take her new four weeks of paid adoption leave, and eight weeks of unpaid leave.

Their good fortune has become an inspiration. Among the handful of soon-to-be adoptive parents that she regularly talks with online, she is the only one with paid adoption leave. “They were just so thrilled for me,” Ms. Ledbetter said. “People want to know how they can get other companies to realize the need.”

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August 17, 2006
Overcoming Adoption’s Racial Barriers
By
LYNETTE CLEMETSON
and RON NIXON

When Martina Brockway and Mike Timble, a white couple in Chicago, decided to
adopt a child, Ms. Brockway went to an adoption agency presentation at a
black
church to make it clear they wanted an African-American baby.

Their biological daughter, Rumeur, 3, is accumulating black dolls in
preparation for her new brother or sister. Black-themed children’s books
like “Please,
Baby, Please” by the filmmaker Spike Lee and his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee,
share shelf space with Elmo and Dr. Seuss.

But the couple’s decision provoked some uneasy responses. One of Mr. Timble’s
white friends asked, “Aren’t there any white kids available?”

Ms. Brockway’s black friends were supportive. “But,” she said, “I also
sensed that there was maybe something they weren’t saying.”

Mr. Timble cut in. “Like maybe they were thinking, ‘What do these people
think they are doing?’ “

Ms. Brockway and Mr. Timble are among a growing number of white couples
pushing past longtime cultural resistance to adopt black children. In 2004,
26 percent
of black children adopted from foster care, about 4,200, were adopted
transracially, nearly all by whites. That is up from roughly 14 percent, or
2,200,
in 1998, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the National
Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect at
Cornell University
and from the
Department of Health and Human Services.

“It is a significant increase,” said Rita Simon, a sociologist at American
University, who has written several books on transracial adoption. “It is
getting
easier, bureaucratically and socially. With so many people going overseas,
people are also increasingly saying, Wait a minute, there are children here
who need to be adopted, too.”

The 2000 census - the first in which information on adoptions was
collected - showed that just over 16,000 white households included adopted
black children.
Adoption experts say there has been a notable increase since 2000.

The reasons for the increase are varied. The Multiethnic Placement Act and
its amendments prohibited federally financed agencies from denying adoption
based
on race. The foster care system has sharply changed in recent years and now
includes financial incentives for finding more adoptive families.

The combination of legal changes and greater embracing of multicultural
families - Americans have adopted more than 200,000 children from overseas
in the
past 15 years - have lessened resistance from both blacks and whites. The
long wait for white children and the high costs of international adoptions -
typically $15,000 to $35,000 - also play a role.

And agencies are offering courses to help adoptive parents enter the process
with more cultural openness and awareness.

Ms. Brockway and Mr. Timble decided to adopt after a physically and
emotionally wrenching first pregnancy - their daughter was delivered at 25
weeks. They
did not want to deal with the long wait for a white infant, and adopting
from overseas did not appeal to them.

“Some people see Asian or other ethnicities as closer to white, more
acceptable, easier,” said Ms. Brockway, a teacher. “That’s just not us. We
feel like
we have the open arms and minds to be a good match to an African-American
child.”

In practice, however, decisions about adoption placements are still
influenced by racial considerations, many families say. Since 1994, white
prospective
parents have filed, and largely won, more than two dozen discrimination
lawsuits, according to state and federal court records. Many more disputes
have
been settled in arbitration.

The loaded jumble of viewpoints and anxieties related to transracial
adoptions of black children are complex and often contradictory.

Rhetoric around the issue has softened considerably since the National
Association of Black Social Workers, in 1972, likened whites adopting black
children
to “cultural genocide.” The group removed the genocide reference from its
policy statement in 1994, but it still recommends same-race placements. And
organizations
like the Child Welfare League have argued in recent years that while race
need not be the primary consideration in placements, it should not be
disregarded.

Many blacks still worry that white families cannot equip black children to
navigate the country’s complicated racial landscape.

“Adoption, like everything else in this country, gets filtered through the
lens of race,” said Joseph Crumbley, a black social worker in Philadelphia
and
a consultant on transracial adoptions. “For blacks, it is about how
comfortable can whites be in dealing with the issue of race when their race
is in conflict
with the race of the child.”

At the same time, some blacks view international adoptions by whites as a
slight to black children in need of permanent and stable homes. “I can’t
help
but wonder why Angelina and Brad can’t adopt an African-American baby here
with so many in need,” said Ishia Granger, 36, a black friend of Ms.
Brockway.

More than 45,000 black children were waiting to be adopted from foster care
in 2004. There are no reliable national figures for private adoptions.

Advocates of black adoption criticize adoption agencies as not doing enough
to recruit black families. But one strategy agencies use, in part, to
recruit
black families - reducing fees for African-American adoptions - seems to
some critics like a literal devaluing of black children. And while current
adoption
laws impose penalties on federally financed agencies that discriminate,
there are no penalties for failure to identify black adoptive families.

Both black and white families, at times, feel discriminated against.
Charlene White, a black adoptive mother in Richmond, Va., said that when she
and her
husband, Malachi, began the process in 1997, a counselor asked them about
drug and criminal records - questions a white couple they knew who were also
adopting were not asked.

“It was definitely because we were black,” Ms. White said.

A white judge initially denied Nick and Emily Mebruer’s petition to adopt a
black child, ruling that the Mebruers, a white couple who live in rural
Lebanon,
Mo., were “uniquely unqualified” to parent a black child because of their
limited interaction with black people and culture. The ruling was
overturned,
and their daughter, Maggie, is now 3.

“We felt like it was an indictment of us and our entire community,” said
Mrs. Mebruer, a family doctor, as Maggie played with a black doll in the
center
of the living room and danced to the Australian children’s group the
Wiggles. “It was assuming that we didn’t have the desire or the capacity to
learn.”

The Mebruers did not explicitly set out to adopt a black child. But when the
Kansas City office of
Catholic Charities
called one spring afternoon to say that an infant was available and that
they needed the couple’s decision within hours, the race of the child, Mr.
Mebruer
said, was secondary.

White families adopting black children are increasingly learning that the
“love is enough” approach to adoption that families bring to the process is
often
met with skepticism.

Psychologists, researchers and adoptees themselves say many children adopted
transracially in past decades suffered from philosophies focused on
assimilation,
with little or no acknowledgment of racial and cultural conflict.

Robert O’Connor, 39, who was raised by a white family in Rush City, Minn.,
recalled his struggles growing up in a small town with few other blacks.
Throughout
his youth, he said, he felt awkward around other blacks. He did not
understand black trends in fashion or music or little things like playing
the dozens,
the oral tradition of dueling insults.

“I always felt like I had this ‘A’ on my forehead, this adoptee, that people
could see from a far distance that I was different,” said Mr. O’Connor, who
now researches transracial adoptions as assistant professor of social work
at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul.

Today, some agencies are working to avoid mistakes of the past. Ms. Brockway
and Mr. Timble are adopting through the Cradle, a Chicago agency that gives
transracial adoptive parents extensive counseling as well as a course on
“conspicuous families.”

One exercise meant to assess parents’ comfort level in confronting racial
issues lists a roster of stereotypes including, “lazy,” “passive” and
“athletic,”
and asks parents to assign them to the race or ethnic group to which they
are often applied.

Judy Stigger, a counselor at the Cradle and herself a white adoptive mother
of two black children, now adults, makes the issues tangible to prospective
parents by relating personal stories. She tells about the time when her son,
then a teenager, reached into her purse at a McDonald’s and a clerk called
security; and the time when her daughter began crying while looking through
congratulatory cards sent by family and friends when they took her home.

“Was I supposed to have been white?” her daughter, then in the third grade,
asked. Ms. Stigger had never noticed that the children on all of the cards
were
white.

“It’s about getting people to realize that they should not be thinking about
being, as one 8-year-old put it to me, ‘a white family with a weird child,’
but a multiracial family,” Ms. Stigger said. “The way most white people use
the term ‘colorblind’ is just silly. We want to create color aware families,
not colorblind families.”

Ms. Brockway worked for years in predominantly black schools and now tutors
children in foster care. Mr. Timble, who owns a promotional printing
business,
has a cousin who has adopted four black children. They live in an ethnically
diverse section of northwest Chicago.

But after working through the adoption process, Ms. Brockway said, they are
considering moving to a neighborhood with more black professionals and
finding
a more diverse church.

For some adopting families, public reaction defies assumptions. Katherine
and Ryan Liebl were dining recently in the Oak Park neighborhood of Chicago,
where
they live, when a black family asked them where they had adopted their son,
Matthew, now 8 months old.

They responded that he was from Chicago and steeled for disapproval.
Instead, they said, the family cheered: “Yeah, domestic baby. Good for you!”

The Liebls, who adopted through the Cradle, were chosen by black birth
parents from profiles submitted by black and white adoptive families. The
same birth
parents had previously chosen a black couple, Dana and Drayden Hilliard, to
adopt two older children. So the Liebls’ son Matthew has two biological
siblings
being raised by a black family in a nearby suburb.

The two families have become friends and are raising the children as
siblings, getting them together about once a month.

The Hilliards said they were surprised that the birth mother chose a white
family. “But wherever a child can find love, black, white or purple, that is
all right with me,” said Ms. Hilliard, 39, a program analyst. “I do feel
that if parents adopt transracially they owe it to their child to keep them
connected
with their heritage. But we are happy to be a resource for that.”

The two families do not know for sure what attracted the birth mother to
them, but they said worldliness seemed to have trumped race. The birth
mother commented
to each that their expressed love for travel would offer her children a
chance to explore the world that she never had.

“We feel like we struck gold,” said Mr. Liebl, 31, a lawyer. “Matthew has
these siblings that he will know and this level of contact between us that
is
authentic and not forced.”

In the personal letters that the Cradle requires adoptive parents to submit
to birth parents, those adopting transracially are asked to include examples
of how they would bring diversity to a child’s life.

Ms. Brockway said it had been a difficult exercise. She wants to include
pictures with black friends, but not too many. She wants to write about her
black
students, Mike’s black relatives and co-workers, their activities in black
communities - but not too much.

“I don’t want to appear over the top, trying too hard, like we think we’re
cool because we have black friends.” she said. “And who is to say what any
birth
mother will think is important or how any one views or defines diversity and
culture. These things are different for everyone.”

Sabrina I. Pacifici contributed additional reporting.

Copyright 2006
The New York Times Company

Miriam’s Comment” A much more open and fairer article than one would have
found in the media in the 1970’s and 1980’s