One Kiwi man shares his story of trying to adopt children in New Zealand with his same-sex partner.
As two men in a committed relationship, it can be tricky to know when the right time is to start a family. My partner and I both knew we wanted to have kids, even before we got together. But once we found each other, we also had so many things we wanted to do and places we wanted to travel before the patter of tiny feet turned our lives upside down (for the better).
However, we’re not getting any younger. Our close female friends and relatives have already had their children, with some of them finding pregnancy a struggle. Asking someone to have a baby for you felt like such a massive request. And with children out there needing a warm, safe, loving home, we decided adoption was the right path for us.
We went through the process of entering New Zealand’s adoption pool, knowing it was likely we would be waiting a while before being selected.
Entering the adoption pool involves:
- Getting sign-off from your doctor that you are both fit to parent.
- Attending a couple of days of training and learning about the process with Oranga Tamariki (Ministry for Children).
- Being assigned a social worker.
The social worker visits your home two or three times to talk through your desire to have a family, how raising children will fit into your daily lives, and assess your suitability.
Following your social worker’s approval, you create a profile for birth parents to consider if they decide to adopt out their baby.
The biggest learnings we took away from this process were:
- Domestic adoptions in New Zealand are mostly ‘kin-adoptions’—i.e. blood relatives of the child, wider whānau, or people who already know the child and have a connection to the birth parents. So the most likely outcome is that you will sit in the adoption pool and never be chosen.
- The training emphasises the importance of maintaining a relationship (where possible) with the child’s birth family. This can feel like an intimidating prospect at first, but Oranga Tamariki shows extensive video footage of adoptees (now adults) talking about how important it is to understand where they came from—their whakapapa. This includes stories of people who found out they were adopted as adults and were left devastated by the shock.
- The New Zealand government does not have any international agreements with other countries that allow same-sex couples to adopt. Therefore, Oranga Tamariki cannot facilitate this for gay couples, although they can for straight couples. As unfair and discriminatory as this feels, we also learnt that the international adoption process takes years. This means a child who may have been orphaned, given up, or removed from their family has to remain in their home country, in state care, an orphanage, or with a foster family, only coming to live with you years after you’ve met the child and agreed to become their adoptive parents. To me, that experience sounds traumatic for everyone involved.
Having sat in the adoption pool for a considerable time, crossing our fingers that fate would one day select us, our hope began to wane. Everyone has to ask themselves: When will I be too old to raise a child and give them the upbringing they deserve? It’s a personal answer that will be different for everyone. For us, we decided we wanted to make our family happen within the next two years.
In the next issue, we will discuss the two other key options open to gay couples wanting to start a family: paid international surrogacy and altruistic domestic surrogacy.
The key lesson we have learnt going through this experience is that starting a family can be a long and bumpy road. If you are 100% sure you want to have children, start discussing the process now and don’t leave it until the last minute.