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Open Adoption in the News

Two Men and a Baby
Washington is one of nine states that allow gay couples to adopt. Jamie Trudel talks to a gay couple about their conviction to adopt, the restrictions they overcame and their transition to parenthood.

Klipsun Magazine, a student publication of Western Washington University
May 2005

As he passes through the gated picket fence in front of his house, Benjamin makes sure his father closes it behind him. The sun is bright and light clouds sail slowly by, miles above Benjamin as he begins his journey down the street. As he passes another gated fence he stops, concerned. With one chubby index finger, he points at the open gate and says, “uh oh.” Looking up expectantly at his father, Seattle resident and Western graduate Geoff Tallent, 38, Benjamin waits for him to close the gate.

“He has a strong sense of order,” Tallent says, reaching for the latch.

“Which he certainly didn't get from us,” Benjamin's other father, Michael Cousins, 36, chimes in.

Just a year and a half ago, Tallent and Cousins were anxiously waiting for a child to come into their lives. Now, with 15-month-old Benjamin, they have started a family.

Tallent and Cousins, together now almost 12 years, say they began thinking about adoption five years ago. Tallent says they thought it would be great to have a family and it was the next step they wanted to take in their lives.

Upon hearing the news of their plans to adopt, Cousins' stepfather Terry Marshall, 58, a heavy equipment operator from Gales Creek, Ore., reacted with surprise.

“My first reaction was ‘What in the hell are they thinking,'” Marshall says with a laugh, adding that he initially thought the adoption plans were a joke.

Marshall says the couple was confident in their decision, was intelligent about it and knew what they were doing. He says he found the idea of an adoptive grandchild for his gay stepson and his partner to be enticing, especially since it was his only chance for a grandchild.

Cousins says over the next couple of years, he and Tallent began looking at various adoption options. Their search led them first through state adoption and international adoption. He says they found state adoption did not fit their needs and also ruled out international adoption. He says international adoption was not an option for them due to the fact that same-sex couples cannot legally adopt. Cousins says if they chose to go that route only one would have legal adoption rights, the other would be considered a “roommate.”

“We didn't feel like setting up our kid's life as a lie,” Cousins says.

One agency that does not allow openly gay couples to adopt a child, even in Washington where gay adoption is legal, is Bethany Christian Services, which serves Bellingham.

Jon VanValkenburg, Bethany Christian Services Public Relations Coordinator, says through 60 years of experience and expertise, and based on Biblical beliefs, Bethany Christian Services chooses not to offer adoption to gay couples. VanValkenburg says 94 percent of their client base is married couples, with the remaining six being single parents.

After ruling out other options, the couple found themselves at Open Adoption & Family Services.

Gillian Freney, an OA&FS counselor at the Portland office, says many homosexual couples come to them for help starting a family. She says about 30 percent of OA&FS' pool of families waiting for a child is gay and lesbian.

At Open Adoption, a relationship between the birthparents and adoptive parents is strongly encouraged. The birthmother ultimately has complete control over who will adopt her child.

“To develop a relationship that's intended to last a lifetime – that philosophy very much appealed to us,” Tallent says.

After going through interviews and background checks with Open Adoption, Tallent and Cousins were ready to put themselves into the pool of adoptive parent hopefuls. But one more obstacle remained.

Part of the decision-making process for a birthmother includes reading a “Dear Birthparent” booklet containing letters written by the prospective adoptive parents, in which they discuss themselves and why they want to be parents.

“We had to do this letter and we sort of went into paralysis,” Cousins says. “How do you put your whole relationship, way of life and philosophy into one page?”

Cousins says a great deal of pressure exists for the adoptive parents in this situation because they want to appeal to the birthmother without representing themselves falsely.

With an honest and carefully crafted letter submitted to the agency, all that was left to do was wait.

Tallent and Cousins say that waiting to hear that a birthmother had selected them to raise her child was the most challenging part of the adoption process. They admit they started getting anxious about nine months into the wait.

Freney says that for the '03-'04 fiscal year, gay and lesbian couples spent about 12 months on average in the waiting process compared to the all-client average of nine months.

“It's hard to give up any semblance of control – you kind of have to wait for things to happen,” Cousins says. “It's not like going into Target and pulling a carton off a shelf. There's actually a lot of human messiness around it.”

The call they waited nearly a year for finally came the day before Thanksgiving 2003. Hailey Byers, 19, from Portland, Ore., then a 17-year-old high school student, had selected Tallent and Cousins to raise her unborn child.

Byers says she chose Tallent and Cousins through Open Adoption because she found closed adoption to be upsetting and she wanted to have a hand in raising her child. She says she and her boyfriend, Robin Balmer, 19, also from Portland, Ore., chose Tallent and Cousins because they were calm, friendly, well-natured and their interest in travel would allow their child to visit places she never had the opportunity to visit.

“We had a gut feeling about Geoff and Michael when we met them,” Balmer says. “I know we've given our child the best family we could find.”

Byers and Balmer say one thing that caught their eye in the letter written by Tallent and Cousins was when they professed to have “a wicked sense of humor,” a line that Tallent and Cousins worried about soon after the letter was submitted.

Byers was due to give birth at any time, so the adoption proceedings began immediately and the couple went down to Oregon to participate in a mediated session with Byers and Balmer.

Two days after Christmas 2003, Benjamin was born and his life with Tallent and Cousins began.

Before heading back to Seattle with Benjamin, both sets of parents took part in an entrustment ceremony in which he was officially handed over to Tallent and Cousins. In the proceeding, both couples said a few words to each other, a difficult task, Tallent says, as he remembers crying the entire time.

“It was the most emotional, nerve-wracking and tearful moment of our lives, and I think it was for Hailey and Robin, too,” Tallent says, even now getting choked up.

Byers says that she was told that giving up her child would be the worst part of the adoption process, but she found it to be quite the opposite.

“I didn't think twice about it,” Byers says. “I was just happy to be giving a couple a family.”

Balmer says he felt the same.

“I saw it as a big, happy family,” Balmer says. “We were gaining family members instead of losing one.”

Now that they finally had the child they had been hoping for, Tallent and Cousins had to acclimate their lives to raising him.

“I think after we adopted, people most often said, ‘What do you mean you can't go to dinner at 9 o'clock at night,'” Cousins jokes.

Two men and a baby may seem a strange concept to some people, but Tallent and Cousins say they have encountered little opposition to their new family. Cousins says he can think of only one incident where someone was outwardly opposed to them. He says Benjamin was playing with another boy in an airport, but once the boy's mother figured out his parents were two gay men she did not want her child to play with Benjamin anymore. Cousins says Benjamin did not care and continued to play as he had been.

“I'm actually surprised there hasn't been more of a pushback than we've seen,” Cousins says.

Cousins, a marketing director for the Washington state lottery, says his co-workers, ranging from uber-conservative to liberal, actually held a baby shower for them. They left with about 50 outfits, among other gifts.

Tallent, an environmental planner, recognizes that some people may not be supportive of his family.

“I'm sure there are outside people that don't approve,” Tallent says. “But once you start spending time with other parents, it becomes much more about the challenges of parenting, not about who should be parents or not.”

Cousins' mother, Karen Marshall, 59, a retired schoolteacher from Gales Creek, Ore., says she has experienced some resistance to the couple's adoption.

“It has caused some family contention with siblings,” Marshall says, adding that some relatives' reactions have been supportive.

“A kid should have role models, both women and men, and Benjamin has those; we make sure he has those,” Tallent says. “Clearly a kid needs nurturing, guidance and mentoring: all the things a mother or father could provide. It's making sure you provide those things.”

Clinton Anderson, a gay, lesbian and bisexual concerns officer at the American Psychological Association, says that research indicates that children of gay and lesbian parents are at no disadvantage socially, sexually, in gender roles or in school performance compared to children of heterosexual parents.

Dr. Joseph Hagan at the American Academy of Pediatrics echoes that idea, and says children who grow up with gay parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social and sexual functioning as children with straight parents.

When the time came for Tallent and Cousins to return to work full-time, they faced the same issue heterosexual parents have dealing with work and children.

“We are an extraordinarily middle-class couple – a modest house in a modest neighborhood,” Tallent says, referring to the struggle of working and raising a child. “I think most parents in this day and age go through a lot of challenges with supporting a family.”

When deciding how Benjamin would be encouraged in his maturation away from home, Cousins says at first he hated the idea of daycare but now sees how much it has helped Benjamin develop. In the structured environment, surrounded by older children, Cousins figures Benjamin has advanced more quickly than if he spent all his time with his parents.

“Watching him grow has been the best thing,” Tallent says, echoing Cousins. “He's gone from a little lump that just sat there on your chest to this toddler who's running around the house.”

“I'm in awe of this headstrong, very bright kid that wants to be into everything and is constantly exploring,” Tallent adds. “I'm fascinated by how fast he picks things up. There's a new word every couple of days and a new skill. He never looked twice at a puddle two days ago – yesterday he jumped in one for the first time. Now every time he walks past a pool of water he has to jump up and down.”

Cousins found raising a child comes with some worries as well as fascinating moments.

“One of the challenges is watching him and trusting that he's not going to hurt himself and if he does that it will be a learning experience for him.”

Looking back, Byers and Balmer, now in college, say they do not regret their decision to place Benjamin with Tallent and Cousins.

“He's such a happy baby who I get to be somewhat of an automatic grandmother to,” Byers says with a smile. “I can spoil him when I visit and when he gets poopy he goes back to his dads.”

Marshall says he has seen Cousins and Tallent become more in tune with each other since they adopted Benjamin, saying their commitment to each other has been strengthened.

For now, Benjamin's two dads are taking their life with him one day at a time, learning along with him.

“I think I anticipated that there would be something different about raising a kid as a gay couple, but so far it has not been different at all; talking to other couples about getting up in the middle of the night and feeding him. There's nothing different, we're raising a kid, it's just normal,” Tallent says.

“Of course, it helps that we had no life before we had Benjamin, so spending an evening watching him play on the floor is better than watching television.”