The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant - Hardcover

Savage, Dan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525945253 ISBN 13: 9780525945253

Publisher: Dutton Adult, 1999

Synopsis

A popular sex-advice columnist offers a celebratory and incisive memoir discussing his decision, as a gay man in a long-term relationship, to adopt a child, creating problems with conservative groups, his own friends, adoption agencies, and a drug-addicted birth mother. 15,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Dan Savage's column, "Savage Love," is a nationally syndicated sex-advice column read by more than four million people each week. He has written the column for eight years, and it runs in twenty-six newspapers in the United States and Canada. He also writes "Dear Dan," an online advice column for ABCNEWS.com. Savage is the associate editor of The Stranger in Seattle and a regular contributor to This American Life on NPR and is the author of Savage Love (Plume), a collection of his advice columns. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Reviews

Known for his nationally syndicated sex advice columns (collected in Savage Love) and as a regular contributor to NPR's This American Life, Savage recounts what he and his boyfriend of two years went through to adopt a child. After investigating the possibility of becoming biological parents with lesbian friends, Savage and his partner, Terry, pursued an open adoption through an agency. They met Melissa, a homeless "gutter punk," whom they liked, although they worried that she drank and took drugs recreationally at the beginning of her pregnancy. In the end, though, everything worked out for everyone involved. Savage is best when detailing the emotional ups and downs that came with revealing that he was even considering gay parenting, including his anxiety about the possible disapproval of both gay and straight friends, about the ways his sex life would change and about buying the right "baby things." Employing the blunt tone of his columns, Savage humorously and honestly discusses his sexual practices (including bondage and fantasies involving actor Matt Damon), his ambivalence about being a parent and his rage at his homophobic grandmother. His forthrightness is brave and daring in the face of social opposition to gay parenting. However, though Savage's chatty, mercilessly satiric style is effective in his columns and may be intended here to balance the optimistic underpinnings of his journey into parenthood, in this sustained narrative it wears a bit thin. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Savage's memoir of his experience with adoption reveals an acid tongue and a boundless heart, a savvy blending of social commentary and self-deprecating humor, with an ending so sentimental that, in comparison to the beatific vision of Daddies Dan and Terry, June and Ward Cleaver would look like Al and Peg Bundy. Known for his trenchant wit and outspoken attitude in his nationally syndicated sex advice column, Savage is the queer incarnation of Dorothy Parker and Dr. Ruth, with a little Dr. Laura Schlesinger thrown in for good measure. In The Kid, which he confesses he wrote primarily for the scads of money the publishers threw at him, his indefatigable tirades against homophobia and heterosexism are played off to delightful effect against the story of adopting baby Daryl Jude. Savage details the long and arduous adoption process that he and his boyfriend endured: the seminars with the adoption agency; the agony of waiting to be picked by a birth mother; the fears that she would change her mind and keep the baby; and the burgeoning relationship with both the birth mother and the babys biological father, who they thought would never appear. Along the way, Savage revels in his rejection of the sanitized and homogenized model of the innocuous homosexual and blatantly exposes all of his dirty laundry, from bondage to drugs, from messy housekeeping to strained relationships with some family members. He discloses this litany of character flaws because he wants to underscore the fact that imperfect peopleeven if theyre gaycan be good parents. A book of humor and heart and a vision of life lived fully, Savage paints a picture of an ideal home for his and his boyfriend's child in its blemished humanity and right-on queerness; it's a book that can't be put down for the same reasons. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In 1997, the author and his partner, Terry Miller, decided to become parents. They explored the various options currently available to gay men: biological children conceived with women friends, traditional adoption, and "open" adoption, which allows the birth parent(s) to select the adoptive parent(s) from a pool and then structures an on-going relationship between the two parties. Choosing "open" adoption, which is legal only in three states, the two men completed the paperwork and anticipated a long wait. To their surprise, they were picked within days by Melissa, a homeless teenager who travelled nomadically with friends, "spare-changing" strangers to get by. As Melissa's due date approached, the relationship that developed among the three parents brought concerns, heartbreak, and finally joy. Savage is a fluid, conversational writer, and fans of his advice journalism will be prepared for his brash style: crude, funny, and not always kind (especially regarding Miller's family). But more important than kind, Savage is honest and informed. Many readers, including gays who believe that adoption is prohibited to them, will welcome Savage's book like a visit from a generous and irreverent stork. James Klise

One major trend in the sexual minority community in the late 1990s has been the addition of children, by adoption or cooperative parenting, to their families. Several books have been written detailing the experiences of those creating new families, most notably Jesse Green's recent The Velveteen Father (LJ 6/15/99). Now Savage, a well-known sex-advice columnist, weighs in on this discussionAwith inimitable wit and graceAtelling the story of how he and boyfriend Terry adopted a baby. One of the most honest gay writers around, Savage mingles personal insights about the complicated adoption process with analysis of contemporary issues. He is funny and touching without being mean or corny. Though some writers of personal experience tend toward whimsy overload (notably Garrison Keillor), Savage keeps such tendencies in check. This book is such a good read that even those who have thought a lot about gay parenting will find their horizons expanded. For most public libraries and academic libraries documenting contemporary culture.ADavid S. Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dutton Adult
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0525945253
• ISBN 13: 9780525945253
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 246