PSA: What not to say to adoptive parents...

... unless you want to (best case) really hurt their feelings or (worst case) alienate them permanently. Both things I've heard said to others, and dumb sh*t that gets said to me.

• Can't you have kids naturally? Is this your business? Do I ask you about the internal workings of your crotch?


• Just relax and you'll get pregnant. Unless you are their gynecologist, you never know what goes into someone's fertility. They may have one of a million medical issues. They may be a trannsexual. They may just be a person who prefers adoption to pregnancy.


• You're just going to get pregnant right after you adopt. Yeah, unless we don't. See above. That only happens to 8% of adoptive parents anyway, so we're not holding our breath.


• Adopted kids turn out messed up. Granted. Moses, Dave Thomas, Steve Jobs - all such screwups. So unlike that sweet little Jeffrey Dahmer, who was raised by his birthparents.


• You're buying a child! Most adoption fees go to pay lawyers. Nobody calls the medical costs you paid to give birth "buying" your children. PS - offspring are not commodities.


• Adopted infants are stolen from their birthmothers. Unfortunately, this happens a SMALL percentage of the time. Adoptive parents and adoption agencies go to great lengths to avoid that happening.


• If you were meant to be parents, God would have given you a child. You now speak for God and the universe? F* you.

Special to international adoption:

• Why don't you adopt domestically? Why don't YOU adopt domestically? Whether, when, and from where is the best place to adopt, is a question every family answers differently. In our case, we found some aspects of domestic adoption to be not for us. Also, if we're going to adopt, we prefer to do so from a country where being adopted vs not may be the difference between living to adolescence and not.


• If you care so much about Ethiopia, why don't you do something to make the place better rather than just take their kids? Did we explicitly say we were doing nothing to help Ethiopia? It's not that we don't care, it's just that (a) on our planet, classy people don't brag about charitable donations; and (b) Is my name Warren Buffet? No? Then probably, any charitable donation we give that country, isn't newsworthy to anyone but one or two individuals.


• You are such a humanitarian to take that poor child in! Right. Thanks for your support. That said, adoption is not a charity project, it is a way to build a family. That means the parents are probably happier to be mom and dad to that child than the child is to be adopted. And do you have any idea how bad it must make kids feel to hear people refer to their mom and dad loving them as some great act of benevolence?


• Any comparisons to Brangelina. Do I make out with my brother and keep a vial of my husband's blood around my neck? Then I guess we're not so much like Brangelina at all. PS - adoption is tens of thousands of dollars spent, every aspect of your life examined with a microscope, and your nerves on end for a year plus. This is not something people do because it's "the in thing".

Now that you know, I trust you will not say any of the above unless you're trying to be a douchewaffle.