I recently learned that a member of Steve’s family doesn’t agree with adoption. Let’s call him Bob. Bob’s mom is adopted. Bob and his wife have children through surrogacy. Bob is well educated and has spent a good amount of time in 3^rd world countries through work. But Bob feels that international adoption is wrong. (I tell you all of this to let you know that he is aware of the poverty in the world, is no stranger to infertility, and that adoption has touched his life.) I haven’t spoken to Bob about this so I don’t know all of his reasoning around it. Bob’s mom shared this with us because she feels he has talked another member of our family out of considering international adoption. He has always been supportive and asks about our adoption progress when we see him. He has offered to loan us baby items that his children have out grown and seems to be happy for us.

Steve and I were upset to learn that someone close to us feels that way. Steve plans to talk to Bob about this but Bob doesn’t live in town so the conversation hasn’t occurred yet. I’m not sure how to feel about this. Obviously, I don’t have the power to change his views about international adoption – all I can do is offer the information we have learned during the process and hope that it makes a difference. Assuming that he continues to disagree with the adoption, will he be able to treat our child the same as he would a biological child in our family? I never would have guessed at his feeling through our interactions with him – and I’m pretty good at reading people. I haven’t had any worries up until this point about our child being fully accepted by our families. Another member of our family hasn’t been particularly supportive but we’ve all assumed that once our child is here she will be very happy for us. But this news about Bob has me worried that our child might be treated differently. And that will not be acceptable. We certainly don’t want to create tension in our family but we will not expose our child to anyone who might make her feel less than 100% part of the family. At this point, I guess all we can do is talk to Bob about it and see how it plays out. Anyone else have family members who were anti-adoption?