The promise of a stable two-parent in adoption home is not a guarantee

Jane

Many of us in contemplating adoption for our unborn child envisioned a home that we wished we had. I know I did. A devoted mother and father, just one or no siblings, having my own room.

My parents divorced when I was 15 but were emotionally separated for years before that. I envied the girls whose fathers drove them to school when the temperature was below freezing, which was frequent in Chicago winters, fathers who took them to movies, who were just there, unlike my father who was rarely around. In mid-century, it was, if not a disgrace, at least an embarrassment not to have an active father in the home. We were told to be raised in a "broken home" was a recipe for failure. I had four siblings and had to share a room with an older sister. My mother was 36 when I was born, at least a decade older than my friends' mothers, and to me old-fashioned in her dress and hairstyle. She was a teacher at a public high school and did her best--something I did not appreciate for many years--but school clothes from Sears was all she could afford, unlike my classmate clothed by Marshall Field.

Why I'm not bullish on celebrity adoptions

Sandra Bullock and adopted son, Louis

Now that actress Sandra Bullock's new flick Gravity has hit the big screen, she's looking to adopt again, according to the Hollywood gossip machine. Three years ago, Bullock, then 46, joined many other entertainers who took another woman's baby as their own when she adopted Louis named after the jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong because, like Armstrong, he was born in New Orleans. And frankly reading about the likelihood of another Hollywood adoption makes me a little ill.

The list of Hollywood adoptive parents goes back to the beginning of the silver screen and includes Bob Hope, Joan Crawford, Joan Fontaine, Constance Bennett, Al Jolson and Ruby Keller, Dick Powell and June Allison, Bette Davis, Cecil B. DeMille, Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman,