Money, money, money...

I have just read an article at blogher.com - Blog Hop: Dollars and $ense of Family Building -  about the financial costs of adoption to adoptive parents. Strangely, at the top of the page, it says "This project started with a debate that I facilitated for the Open Adoption Examiner about potential adoptive parents using billboards to connect with expectant parents considering adoption. One of the viewpoints came from first mother Claudia Corrigan D'Arcy, who wrote: I have too many adult adoptee friends that scoff and joke at their adoption paperwork where they see how much their folks "paid" and speak about what they "cost." But beneath the joking, there is pain that they were looked at as a product and used in transactions." Cue the strangeness when the article then goes on to ask adoptive parents and infertile people to blog about the amount of money they spent on infertility treatments and/ or adopting a child.
So, where exactly does the aforementioned adoptee fit into this discussion? Those of us who feel like a commodity, like nothing more than an accessory for our adoptive parents, are once again forgotten. It seems odd to start a discussion like this and not include those of us with the dollar signs printed on our foreheads, the ones who can tell you how it really feels to find out what we cost, the ones who experience the emotional cost of your financial burden. Here's a clue, there is no good time, no good age, no good way to tell a child how much they "cost" you. If there are dollar amounts on adoption paperwork, well, that cannot be helped and adoptees are entitled to see all of the paperwork that has guided the direction of their existence. But as far as telling a child "It cost us "this much" to conceive/ get you", just... don't... do it!!!! You will just be burdening a child with something that is neither their fault nor their problem.