Callie Mitchell, a 25-year-old student and photographer,
documented her pregnancy and decision to place her child for adoption.
Photographs.
posted by lalex
on Feb 26, 2013 -
15 comments
Why People Really Love Technology: An Interview with Genevieve Bell The thing I love about Intel researcher Genevieve Bell is that she finds surprising things by looking at what's left out of the dominant narratives about technology. She finds data that's ignored because it didn't fit into the paradigm of, say, how people adopt technology. The dominant narrative is that young men determine the popularity of phones, computers, websites, and the like. But when Bell looked at the data, the story we told ourselves about how the world worked was not reflected in the numbers.
That's why I wanted to talk to her about what gadgets people around the world might be using over the next decade. I figured she was someone who could look past the conventional wisdom and find the missing pieces of the future
posted by infini
on Nov 29, 2012 -
30 comments
In 2010,
1st grader Katie Goldman was the bullied kid at her school for being a girl who was into Star Wars (which is, of course, only for boys).
Geeks and fans across the net rallied to give moral support to Katie ("
The Littlest Jedi") for standing up for who she wanted to be.
Katie and her mother went on to lead an anti-bullying effort at Katie's school (which now observes December 10th as "Proud To Be Me Day") and Katie became a
symbol of
geek pride and anti-bullying, standing up at a birthday party for a boy who wanted to have his nails painted like the girls were getting. The experience became the source of book
Bullied. In 2012, it was Katie's turn to show geek solidarity. The
501st Legion/"Vader's Fist", who had been so supportive when her story went viral, were now among those
being taunted online for their cosplay geekery at a con, and Katie wanted to be a stormtrooper for Halloween to show her support. When the troopers heard that, the 501st's
First Imperial Stormtrooper Detachment came together to raise the funds/materials/expertise and
build a full-on custom-fitted set of proper stormtrooper armor ('77 movie specs and all), with just days to spare before Halloween, as a gift for the little girl whose courage inspired them so much.
[more inside]
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey
on Nov 2, 2012 -
61 comments
In 2006, Hannah Overton was charged with the death of her 4-year-old foster son, Andrew Burd.
Media accounts at the time claimed that Overton had force-fed her misbehaving son a mixture of water and creole seasoning, leading to death by salt poisoning. Convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life without parole in 2008, Overton's case led angry bloggers to call her
"the ultimate evil," part of a cult of
"child abuse groupies," a murderer that
"church cronies" are working to free.
This month's issue of
Texas Monthly paints a fuller picture of the short life of Andrew Burd and the conviction of the mother who was working towards adopting him.
posted by mudpuppie
on Dec 20, 2011 -
79 comments
In the state of Virginia, it is
now legal for licensed adoption agencies and foster facilities to discriminate on the basis of a potential parent's sexual orientation, religion, age, gender, disability, political beliefs, or family status.
[more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen
on Dec 16, 2011 -
60 comments
Everything went silent, Judi told me, as if she'd been pulled underwater. She read the sentences over and over, trying to comprehend them.
The boy Sulaiman Suma had been looking for all these years was her 16-year-old son, Samuel.
Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.
[more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia
on Aug 10, 2011 -
12 comments
Interactive map of international adoptions, from the superlative Schuster Institute
for Investigative Journalism. The site contains an amazing amount of information about corruption in international adoption in countries like
Nepal and
Vietnam.
posted by the young rope-rider
on Apr 19, 2011 -
18 comments
In
2009, there were 423,773 children in foster care in the U.S., one of those children is "Jacket," who at age 20 months in
December 2009 was placed into foster care with her foster mother
Rebecca. Rebecca, single and in her early 30s, had already fostered a few young children and started
blogging about it.
[more inside]
posted by k8t
on Mar 25, 2011 -
42 comments
Matthew Roberts, a 41-year-old DJ who lives in Los Angeles, said the shock of discovering his
father sent him into depression.
posted by Balisong
on Nov 23, 2009 -
61 comments
Anita Tedaldi shares her experience
terminating an adoption at the NYTimes blog
Motherlode. Her response to the support and criticism in comments is
here; in a subsequent Motherlode post Lisa Belkin
muses on the ethics of blogging about children.
posted by lalex
on Sep 9, 2009 -
59 comments
The child you saved by adopting him
might just save you in return. A quiet first-person story of how a married guy became a single dad to an adopted son - the wife moved on, but the boy remained. (SLYahooV)
posted by micketymoc
on Aug 31, 2009 -
5 comments
International Adoption may not necessarily be helping the disadvantaged in Third World countries as advertised. In some countries, like
Guatemala and
India, children are simply stolen from their families. The
Hague Convention governs the rules for International Adoptions, but like all rules, they aren't always followed. Many adoptive parents believe that their children have been given up, but in some countries, "
orphanage" doesn't mean what you think it means.
[more inside]
posted by grapefruitmoon
on May 10, 2009 -
18 comments
Sixteen states already have
laws [PDF] related to
abortion ultrasounds . Eleven more states have recently introduced bills that demand that a woman who wants an abortion be forced to look at the ultrasound, while a doctor describes what she is seeing. All of these bills are because the legislators believe that adoption is the only choice a woman should make. This essay,
On Living Pro-Lifer's Choice for Women, explores the difficulties faced by birth mothers who choose that path.
posted by dejah420
on Mar 17, 2009 -
505 comments
Generations of Hope is a non-profit set up to bring kids out of foster care and into extended families with grandparents. The community of
Hope Meadows was repurposed from housing on a
closed Air Force base in Illinois. (The NYT article erroneously refers to the community by the non-profit's name. No matter. The story is still inspirational.)
[more inside]
posted by yiftach
on Sep 16, 2008 -
5 comments
Are
you looking for a nice, big kitty to let into your heart?
Princess Chunk, at 44 pounds, might fit the bill nicely. Just
two pounds shy of the world's record, the pudgy kitty was roaming sans collar in Voorhees, NJ and is now in good hands at the
Camden County Animal Shelter. Chunker's owners have until Saturday to claim their big pal - after that, this big quarterback of a kitty is ready for a loving home.
posted by porn in the woods
on Jul 30, 2008 -
61 comments
Ohio Senator: Bar adoptions by the GOP ---In response to Ohio Senator
Hood's bill to bar adoption by gays and lesbians, one Senator uses humor to counter hate:
...To further lampoon Hood's bill, Hagan wrote in his mock proposal that ``credible research' shows that adopted children raised in Republican households are more at risk for developing ``emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities.'
However, Hagan admitted that he has no scientific evidence to support the above claims.
Just as ``Hood had no scientific evidence' to back his assertion that having gay parents was detrimental to children, Hagan said. ...
posted by amberglow
on Feb 24, 2006 -
29 comments
Did the blue dress ever exist? Regina Louise had a miserable childhood, shuttled from foster home to foster home, at best ignored at best and at worst abused. There was only one happy memory from her childhood: the time she spent with the sole foster mother to ever show her love. But that woman had vanished from Louise's life years ago, and it seemed unlikely they'd ever meet again... (Warning: this newspaper article may make you cry.)
posted by yankeefog
on Dec 31, 2005 -
46 comments
