Not only are we (relatively) happy adoptive parents, and not only do I maintain this here blog (if what I do can be described by a word as serious-sounding as "maintain"), but My Laudable Spouse also works in an adoption-related field. She probably hears more of these stories than most.

The trying stories. The uncomfortable stories.

Not every trying adoption situation winds up as idyllic as this one with the ponies and all. Sometimes things don't work out, and people wind up in a situation like this one. That's a recent blog entry that's bouncing around the Adopternet about one of the adoptions that didn't take.

The term on the paperwork is "disruption," as if an adoption were a public transit service or a network broadcast. Only, you know, more traumatic and less easy to understand. I generally don't get them myself -- it seems like something was malfunctioning with the home study process (repeated episodes of depression? not good on home study) or the referral paperwork or something. People don't like to think about the boundaries of systems -- the points past which things don't work -- so there are the usual reactions to stories like these. You know, the "what kind of lunatics were these?" reaction, which may or may not be followed by the equally extreme, "Oh, those poor suffering people" reaction.

Between those two, I can't really think straight. In part, because one of the first adopted Chinese kids I met was (subsequently) in a disruption that was in turn disrupted. Meaning, in essence, "No, thanks... oh, waitaminute." Or so I heard, in a series of unhappy whispers from mutual acquaintances.

It's not the kind of thing most people talk about out loud, so it's probably worth thinking about from time to time.