Creating a positive adoption experience for your employees

There are many different paths to parenthood, and today we’re talking about how companies can support employees who become parents through adoption.

From the language used in the parental leave policy to understanding the intricacies of the adoption process, there are a lot of factors to consider to ensure that employees are supported as they embark on their parenting journey.

To share more about the adoption experience, we welcomed Boomie Odumade, a senior director of engineering, who welcomed her son via an adoption process to her family five years ago.

In the episode, we talk about:

• The need for inclusive parental leave policies regardless of birthing status
• How employers and colleagues and managers can be supportive through the adoption process
• Her approach to coverage planning and preparing for her upcoming parental leave

Boomie also talks about the resources she built to help other individuals going through a similar journey, which are shared in the links and resources below.

Allison: Hi, Boomie. Thank you so much for joining me here today on The False Tradeoff podcast.

Boomie: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Allison: I want to start by having you share a little bit of background on your personal path to parenthood.

Boomie: Sure. So growing up, I had always intended to adopt even if I had biological children. My parents can validate that. And so when I got married, I looked into various types of adoption. Initially considered international adoption probably from Nigeria. Then I also looked into foster care adoption, which is not the same thing as foster care. 

I finally settled on what is called domestic adoption. It basically means that the child is between the ages of zero and five. When that looked like it wasn't gonna work, I tried fertility treatments. And then right when our adoption home study was about to expire, we were matched and still tried fertility treatments wanting to give a kid a sibling. 

But right now that's how I became a parent by being a parent by adoption to the greatest kid ever. I'm biased.

Allison: Tell me more about that decision process when you were looking into adoption via Nigeria and you said you ultimately decided on domestic adoption. Why did you not move forward with adoption from Nigeria?

Boomie: There were a few different reasons. One was there were very few agencies in the United States that would work with Nigeria. There is this thing called the Hague, I think it's called Hague Convention or something. And Nigeria was not a Hague accredited country. So it was hard to even find an agency that would. 

We did find an agency that would, but the way it worked, you had to wait a year before you could even be matched. And then you had to go and stay there for many months before you could come back. And I was hoping for this to happen before a year. So I figured maybe we'd try Nigeria for the second or third, but for the first one. 

And on that note of the Hague accreditation, fully support that. As a parent by adoption, I want to provide a home to a child that needs one.

I don't want a child to be taken from a home. I want to make sure that everything is legal, ethical, etc. And the agency we did find that would work with them, they still did some checks to be sure that those things were true.

Allison: Right, and then after you looked into adoption from Nigeria, you also looked into foster adoption. Is there a reason that you didn't pursue that?

Boomie: I don't remember the reason. I remember going back and forth between foster care adoption and domestic adoption before settling on one. One thing is you can only have one home study at a time. So it's not like we could pursue both. And you know, we went through some of the classes for foster care adoption and I think it was less expensive because the kids are already legally free to be adopted.

Allison: Tell me more about what that year looked like, because it took you approximately a year from when you had the initial home study through when you were matched and received your son. What was that year like for you?

Boomie: Oh, so hectic and stressful. But I'll talk about the process first, and then I'll talk about after the home study. So I also want to stress that the process, I'm talking about 2018, 2019 time period, things may have changed, and things also differ by state. 

Allison: Yeah.

Boomie: So our experiences in the state of Maryland around that time was I went to some information sessions. That's optional, but I highly recommend it because you get information before you have to make the decision. 

And so I went to the information session for the different types. We then applied. And once our application was approved, you go through all the things that a home study application includes. These are classes in person. This is pre-pandemic, so classes are all in person with groups and also background checks and having your home analyzed. 

One joke I tell people is I had to get fire extinguishers. I think every home should have them, but those are some of the things that came through from the home study. So that entire process took a few months, but also we started it around the time classes were about to start.

If the classes weren't gonna start for six months or something, it would have taken longer. Then we got home study approved and then the real waiting starts because you wait to be matched. And the matches can be super quick. I've heard of people being matched in days or it could never happen. I know people who are still waiting. I know some who eventually gave up.

For us, people assumed the match would be fast because black couples were in need. But it wasn’t going fast. And so by the time we were matched, I actually thought the adoption agency was calling us to renew our home study because they had sent emails saying, you got to renew. And I'm usually quick with things like that. And I hadn't responded. And so I didn't even think they might be calling to say that we were matched.

And so that took about a year. And once we were matched and met him and brought him home and all that, there were additional things that happened after the placement. You have to have six months of home visits before you can legally file for the kid to be part of your family. 

And then it takes, and then that's a court case, but by then the pandemic was happening. So a lot of things took longer, but once he was home, it was great.

Allison: What was your reaction when you got the call? Was it a phone call? That's how I'm imagining it. Oh my goodness.

Boomie: It was a phone call. Yeah, I remember it like yesterday. She called, and I apologized for not getting the paperwork updated. And she said, what if I told you I don't need it anymore? And I'm like, what do you mean? And she said a birth mother had selected us. So I called in my partner.

Allison: Oh, that's amazing.

Boomie: You know, it was lunchtime. I went out, she told us all the information and I wanted to run to my friends and tell them what happened. But I was still being cautious because adoptions can fail. You know, so I told a few people initially. And once the agency said, no, this is a done deal, you can tell people. And I told more people.

Allison: And so did you meet the birth mother throughout this process? You talk a lot about open adoption. Can you share more about what that looked like and what does open adoption mean?

Boomie: Sure, open adoption means that the birth – usually the birth mother, but can also mean the birth family – can have contact with the child. The nature differs, and how legally binding it is in the states also differs. In Maryland, it is legally binding.

I'm gonna step back and say, when you get home study approved, you can verify your preferences. You can say you're not open to open adoption. The way ours is, is that they get letters and pictures roughly every three months, and they can choose to see them in person, at the agency four times a year.

But there's others that are that differ. We learned in classes that there are birth parents who actually babysits the child. Anyway, I digress. 

So I will say that when I first learned that open adoptions were the norm, I was a little bit afraid because I didn't know, well, the birth parents changed their mind. Would they have issues with how we're parenting? Would things get weird? It was foreign to me, so I was initially nervous. 

But the more I learned about it, the more I saw the purpose. And so we did list in the preferences that we were open to open adoptions. And the reasons I recommend it, first of all, the birth parents are usually choosing you or giving the adoption agency the power to. And the child is legally yours once the adoption is finalized. I mean, even before the adoption is finalized, you're the parent. 

And even in the most loving of homes, the kid might have questions that I will not be able to answer. And in those cases, access to birth parents helps. And sometimes kids who are adopted have a desire to know their genetic lineage. I've even read stories of people with international adoptions going back to home countries trying to find birth families.

So with open adoption, the information is just there. And as long as it's not destructive, it's one more person who loves your child. And sometimes the kid will have other biological siblings or half siblings. So it's also a chance to connect to them. 

Allison: That's beautiful. Yeah.

Boomie: I have friends who were adopted as kids and met their biological family and talk about

how great it was, even whether or not they felt they were missing anything. And most importantly, I hear stories about how someone found out they were adopted and it was a shock or something. 

I never have to worry about that. I never have to worry about my kid finding out. We've been reading adoption books to him since he was a baby. And one day he was playing and he said, this is mommy, this is daddy, this is birth mother. So I knew it was sinking in.

Last thing I will say though, it still needs to be navigated thoughtfully and there are resources that can help with that. I've heard of people with open relationships being so close they invite to birthday parties and things like that and others where it's more the minimum. It's up to each family how to do it, but there are definitely resources to make it work and to make it valuable for the kid and for you.

Allison: And speaking of resources, you wrote a phenomenal document that you have open-sourced that anyone can read. It covers your personal experience, but I will say I read it cover to cover, so to speak, and I found it to be incredibly educational.

I would recommend even people who are not considering going through adoption to read through this process or read through your document, because I just think it builds so much empathy about the experience and a deeper understanding about even when you go through the adoption process, it is so different. Everyone's experience is so different. 

And I think that sometimes people who aren't as familiar with adoption view it as, well, either you're selected by a pregnant woman or there's another process where you get a call and the next day you're picking up a child. There's actually a lot of other things that happen that go through the adoption process.

Boomie: Yes. There are, and it's interesting you said that. The audience for that, I initially actually wrote it for people in a fertility support group because when they share their fertility struggles, friends and family would say just adopt. Like, that's simple, you know, like that's not emotional. 

And so, this also gave them the data for if they needed responses to that or if it's something they were considering. And I do a lot of research on things. So for me, it was easy to write and I also went through it, but it can be so different. And I've gotten a lot of thanks for that document.

Allison: What surprised you the most about the adoption process?

Boomie: I think it was how different it could be, not only from state to state, but even from agency to agency. So there were some agencies, for example, one of the agencies that I looked into, we would have only qualified for out of state adoptions. And the agency that we did use, we qualified for both. So we were able to be matched with kids in state and also out of state. So it does take some research.

Allison: I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the experience of adoption from the perspective of you as an employee, how it impacted your career and what companies can do to better support parents who are going through the adoption process. I'll start with this question. How open were you with coworkers and your manager and your company about what you were going through via this adoption process?

Boomie: Yeah, so I want to preface this by saying the company I was working at, it was NPR, was very supportive. And my boss was very supportive. So I'll tell you what I did, but I also acknowledged that it might not work for all places and I can still give ideas that might work for other places. 

Because people thought the adoption would be fast. Our social worker did, my friends who had adopted kids did, everybody thought it would be fast. I told them as soon as the home study was approved, because if I got a call within a week or two, I didn't want them to be like, we didn't even know you were thinking of doing this. And also I was an engineering leader, I had direct reports, etc.

Allison: Right.

Boomie: So, You know, when you're pregnant, you can choose, you tell them at the six month mark, but when you're going through adoption, you don't know how much time you have. So I chose to tell them immediately and I never regretted that decision.

Allison: Why did you not regret that decision?

Boomie: Because they were so supportive! People would ask me how things were going and would be open to hearing, I'm frustrated because it's going slow. People were ready to, once we got the call, do what was needed to help out. And like I said, it didn't happen for almost a year later, but in that time, my employer knew that I might get that call, but it didn't affect our discussions about workload or career or things like that. And so I didn't regret it for that reason.

 I think there are other places I've heard of where that may have been really anxiety provoking. And I know you'll ask me for advice later, but I will say that I really appreciated that I was still seen as an employee, an engineering leader, and not just someone who's waiting on a chart.

Allison: Right. One thing that I read in your document that was really surprising to me, I didn't realize this, was that it is actually, I don't know if you would call it a best practice, but it is very standard for agencies to wait and match in the third trimester of the birth mother's pregnancy, if that is the process you're going through, because it was an interesting way that you described it that I had never thought about before that, unfortunately, adoptions can fall through. And so to reduce that likelihood, they will match later on in a pregnancy, as opposed to early.

I'm constantly living in this world of how do we help parents, whether they're adopting or not, plan their coverage plan? So I'm curious to get your perspective on if that is happening more often than not, that agencies are waiting until later in a pregnancy and then matching, so an employee who's going through the adoption experience, if they are being matched with a birth parent, they're finding out quite late in the game.

How should adoptive parents think about coverage planning for their absence if they won't have a lot of notice? And if you get a call and the child is already born, you're starting right then. So how should we all think about coverage planning best practices?

Boomie: Mm-hmm. That's a good question, because it can actually happen faster than that. This is not the best name for it, but I think at the time it was called Stork Drop where you get called and you're like, someone's at the hospital and you made a plan. I think what I would suggest is start making a plan as soon as you're matched.

Even if you can't share it with anybody, at least have in your mind what are the things at work that you're doing, what can maybe be deferred if needed. That's going to change, of course, because you don't know what date. What maybe somebody else can do, etc.

If you're able to be open with your boss, I would recommend that. If you're not, then maybe at least talking to a coworker just so you can get a different perspective of some parts of the work that you had not thought of. And, yeah, it may, I would also suggest if you can talk to HR and let them know because they may or may not know what all the rules and benefits are for adoptive parents. And even if you've kept up with your company's benefits, you might misunderstand something.

You want to make this as easy as possible. Easy is not the right word by any stretch of the imagination because none of this is easy. But you want to make things as smooth as you can for both yourself and also the workplace. Because if you make it smooth for the workplace, it helps while you're on leave. It helps your return. And if you can't talk to anybody at work, and maybe even if you can, also see if there are people outside of work who can give you advice about what they did when they were waiting to be matched and how they navigated that.

Allison: And tell me about your experience because you got the call and your son was already born at that time, right? So did you start your parental leave like the next day? And what did that look like?

Boomie: He was already born in the state of Maryland. The agency we use in the state of Maryland would actually not place a child until after 30 days because birth parents have 30 days to change their mind. And the agency didn't want to place the child and then have to come take the child back. And so my kid was over a month old by the time we heard about him. 

And when we got the call, he was in interim care. So he wasn't with the birth parents but with an interim care. And so to help him adjust, the agency suggested that we meet him a few times and then he comes home in three weeks. And that worked and also, you know, it was both.

 It helped but was also anxiety provoking. Some people in adoption class after the home study was approved, they set up a nursery as a sign of hope. I didn't do that. I didn't want to set up a nursery and look at an empty thing. So I was gonna wait until we were matched. 

And so I had three weeks notice and I had to scramble in those three weeks and coworkers, friends, everybody really came through. And then my boss had also just resigned the day before we found out.

Allison: Gosh, not stressful at all.

Boomie: Yeah, it was a lot going on. But at least I was able to tell him before he left. And so I started making a transition/leave plan, but it had to be expanded because instead of maybe my boss and peers taking some of the work now, it would mainly be my peers and my direct reports. But it worked out. I put things in detail.

Allison: Right.

Boomie: People really rallied around to see what they could do before I was gone or while I was gone. And, you know, and the leave worked out and the return was also great.

Allison: That's great. We get asked a lot from HR leaders, how can we construct a parental leave policy that is inclusive? Because the most common structure that companies have is there is a medical leave of six to eight weeks and then there's a parental leave bonding period. And so if you're adopting, you don't get that six to eight weeks of medical leave. What is your opinion on what the policy should be to most appropriately support adoptive parents?

Boomie: Yeah, so when I was at NPR at the time, everybody had eight weeks, birthing, non-birthing parents, mothers, fathers, regardless. I've heard and worked for one company where non-birthing parents get less than birthing parents. And by the way, NPR is 20 weeks now. 

Allison: Amazing.

Boomie: So what I suggest is for the policy to be as inclusive as possible. And in my experience, I also mentioned that because we adopted in state, there was no travel, but I mentioned earlier that we were open to out of state. And if I had to travel, meet the kids, stay in the state for a while before coming back, that adds to the leave time that I need.

I recommend that the policies be as inclusive as possible. There are definitely no medical impacts from being a parent by adoption or fostering, but there can be a lot of emotional. There can be paperwork. There can be all these other things. And regardless of how a child comes into your life, you need the time to bond. 

So I would also recommend companies think about education, both for the HR personnel that will be advising employees on potentially becoming adoptive parents, but also providing employees information so that they can choose whether or not this is what they want

You know, the document you mentioned, I did a lot of research and put that together. And, you know, and I've heard from so many people, I wish something like this existed when I needed it or I'm glad to find this because it saved me time. So, you know, I recommend that there's education because people don't always have the time or interest in doing the research. 

And some other things that come to mind is, you know, understanding how some of the differences might affect paperwork. I couldn't get an SSN for my kid for a while and that was less a problem with the company and more the health insurance agency who kept asking me for one. And just understand some of the various situations. 

If I had to go to Nigeria to bond with the kid, then can I work remotely from there? And so that's what I would recommend. And I kind of said this before as well. And even though this applies to all parents, I'm going to specifically talk about mothers, because I think women go through this more. 

Whether a mother is a mother by birth or adoption, support their career goals. Don't assume they don't have…we are able to care about our kids and our careers.

Allison: I was going to ask you what coworkers or other folks at work should specifically avoid doing that maybe they don't understand is hurtful or not empathetic. I don't know if you've seen this. It doesn't even need to be from your personal experience. It sounds like you had a great supportive environment. But what are the things that can be very painful or unsupportive that coworkers do and don't even realize it.

Boomie: Yeah, one thing I can think of is everyone is, because everyone is different, make sure that if there's someone who's waiting, you get their preference on whether or not they wanna be asked how it's going. It didn't bother me. The fact that people asked me showed how much they supported me, but there are people who are like, oh, I don't wanna think about that during work hours. So I would know their preference beforehand. 

I would also learn about positive adoption language. That was also in the doc. But what I tell people is if you remember nothing else, do not use the word real. I am my kid's mom, his birth mom is his birth mom and we are both real. 

And then just, I mean, I don't know that this has happened but be careful of the kind of jokes, you know, jokes like stealing the child or things like that, of course. Yeah, hopefully that goes without saying.

Allison: Yeah, this has been super helpful. I will say we are going to encourage folks to read the document that you put together. I find it incredibly educational and helpful. And I just want to thank you for being so open. I know that you've shared that a lot of people have reached out to you and have gotten a lot of advice. 

I went through some infertility struggles myself. And I just always found that talking to people can be so powerful. And so I know you've really positioned yourself as sort of this person who helps others through this process now that you've gone through it. And I'm sure you know this, that it is incredibly valuable. But I just wanted to say that, that I'm really impressed with your openness to talk about this process.

Boomie: Thank you. I've heard that too from people, male and female, because you mentioned infertility and men can have thoughts about that as well. Men may need support about that as well. So, you know, and when you're open, you help people, sometimes they help you as well, you know, and I feel like there's so many topics, including this, that people don't talk about for reasons I'll never explain, but I'm a reason I maybe understand. 

One of my goals was sharing this was so people know they're not alone. Even if they choose not to talk to me about what they're going through, at least they know they're not alone. And just knowing that can be so helpful.

Allison: Mm-hmm. And on that, I would like to thank you for coming on today. And I really appreciate everything you've shared with us. And we will continue to point people in the direction of your document if they want to learn more. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today.

Boomie: Thank you for the podcast and everything Parentaly is doing.