

Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care
Creating a Family
Are you thinking about adopting or fostering a child? Confused about all the options and wondering where to begin? Or are you an adoptive or foster parent or kinship caregiver trying to be the best parent possible to this precious child? This is the podcast for you! Every week, we interview leading experts for an hour, discussing the topics you care about in deciding whether to adopt/foster or how to be a better parent. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are the national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content: weekly podcasts, weekly articles, and resource pages on all aspects of family building at our website, CreatingaFamily.org. We also have an active presence on many social media platforms. Please like or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jan 14, 2015 • 1h 10min
Should You Use an Adoption Consultant, Facilitator, or Attorney
Click here to send us a topic idea or question for Weekend Wisdom.Adopting a baby in the US can be confusing. Where do you find a child to adopt? How long does it take? Should you use an adoption consultant, adoption facilitator, or adoption attorney. What is the difference and will is cost more or less and will it be faster? Host Dawn Davenport, Exec. Director of Creating a Family, the national adoption & infertility education and support organization, will interview guests Jim Thompson, an adoption attorney in South Carolina, and fellow of the American Academy of Adoption Attorney; Nicole Witt, with The Adoption Consultancy; and Lisa Sweet, a Licensed California Facilitator with Sweet Beginnings Adoptions.
Blog summary of the show and highlights can be found here:
Blog Summary of the Show
Highlights
More Creating a Family resources on adoption attorneys can be found here.
Support the showPlease leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content: Weekly podcasts Weekly articles/blog posts Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Jan 9, 2015 • 1h 7min
Latest Developments in Diagnosing and Treating Miscarriage
Click here to send us a topic idea or question for Weekend Wisdom.What causes miscarriage and what can women do to prevent them. Host Dawn Davenport will interview Dr. Ruth Lathi is Director of the Recurrent Pregnancy Loss program at Stanford University, and Associate Professor in Obstetrics & Gynecology at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is board certified in Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility. Dr. Lathi has authored over 60 publications, is the incoming President for Pacific Coast Reproductive Society.
Blog summary of the show and highlights can be found here:
Blog summary of the show
Highlights
More Creating a Family resources on miscarriage can be found here.
Support the showPlease leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content: Weekly podcasts Weekly articles/blog posts Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Jan 7, 2015 • 1h 8min
Interracial Adoptive Parenting: White Parents with Brown Kids
Click here to send us a topic idea or question for Weekend Wisdom.
Transracial adoption is becoming increasingly popular in the US. There are issues unique to parenting a child of a different race. Our guest is Dr. Marlene Fine. She is a Professor Emerita from Simmons College in Boston MA specializing in issues related to race, racial identity, and interracial communication, and the co-author with her spouse, Fern Johnson, of The Interracial Adoption Option: Creating a Family Across Race. She is the white adoptive mother of two African American sons, both adopted as infants and now ages 24 and 25. She is also a facilitator with the YW Boston Community Dialogues on Race and Ethnicity.
Blog summary of the show and highlights can be found here:
Blog summary of the show
Highlights
More Creating a Family resources on interracial adoptive parenting can be found here.
Support the showPlease leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content: Weekly podcasts Weekly articles/blog posts Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Dec 24, 2014 • 1h 3min
All About Siblings: Parental Favoritism, Birth Order
Click here to send us a topic idea or question for Weekend Wisdom.Time Magazine’s cover story on parental favoritism got to me. I literally argued out loud with the author while reading. It seemed only fare to have him on the show so we could argue in person. Jeffrey Kluger, author of the new book The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us, and an editor and science reporter at Time, will be our guest to talk about siblings, favoritism, birth order, ideal spacing, and lots more. Birth Order, favoritism, spacing between children, sibling rivalry, preference for sons.
Support the showPlease leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content: Weekly podcasts Weekly articles/blog posts Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Dec 17, 2014 • 1h 6min
Loans for Infertility Treatment
Click here to send us a topic idea or question for Weekend Wisdom.Having trouble paying for your fertility treatment? Are you considering borrowing money to pay for treatment? Host Dawn Davenport will be talking with representatives of the leading lending entities that lend specifically for paying for infertility treatment. You must listen to this show if you are considering taking out a loan for fertility treatment.
Blog summary of the show and highlights can be found here:
Highlights
More Creating a Family resources on paying for infertility treatment can be found here.
Support the showPlease leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content: Weekly podcasts Weekly articles/blog posts Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Dec 16, 2014 • 1h 5min
Ethical Issues To Think About with Sperm Donation
Click here to send us a topic idea or question for Weekend Wisdom.What are some of the ethical issues to think about before using donor sperm to create your family? How many times should a man be allowed to donate? How much screening should be done on donors? Host Dawn Davenport will interview Ole Schou, founder and CEO of Cryos International – the largest sperm bank in the world according to Guinness Book of Records. Cryos' simple mission and vision is to help childless people to become parents. Ole Schou’s special interest over almost 30 years is ethics & law and the impact on the market mechanisms and the use of donor sperm.
Blog summary of the show and highlights can be found here:
Blog summary of the show
Highlights
More Creating a Family resources on sperm donation can be found here.
Support the showPlease leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content: Weekly podcasts Weekly articles/blog posts Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Dec 10, 2014 • 1h 6min
Preserving Fertility with a Cancer Diagnosis
Click here to send us a topic idea or question for Weekend Wisdom.A diagnosis of cancer is devastating on so many different levels. Often patients are so overwhelmed that the last thing they think about is getting on with their life once treatment is past. This would include taking action now to preserve their option to have children after cancer. Host Dawn Davenport talks with Dr. Michelle Ottey, Laboratory Director for Fairfax Cryobank, who works with male cancer patients; Dr. Stephen Lincoln, Medical Director of the Fertility Preservation Center for Cancer Patients at the Genetics and IVF Institute; and Lauren Haring, Director and Co-Founder of the Fertility Preservation Center for Cancer Patients at GIVF.
Blog summary of the show and highlights can be found here:
Blog summary of the show
Highlights
More Creating a Family resources on preserving fertility can be found here.
Support the showPlease leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content: Weekly podcasts Weekly articles/blog posts Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Dec 3, 2014 • 1h 3min
Adopting Siblings: Special Issues to Consider
Click here to send us a topic idea or question for Weekend Wisdom.We try not to separate siblings in adoption when possible, but adopting siblings brings special consideration for adoptive parents. Our guests to talk about sibling adoption are Kimberly Offutt, a social worker at Bethany Christian Services and Erin Q. Nasmyth, a licensed clinical social worker with Hopscotch Adoptions, who has spent spent the last ten years working with families and children in the foster care system, in child mental health and supporting families in adoption.
Blog summary of the show and highlights can be found here:
Blog summary of the show
Highlights
More Creating a Family resources on sibling adoption can be found here.
Support the showPlease leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content: Weekly podcasts Weekly articles/blog posts Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Nov 19, 2014 • 1h 4min
Why Consider Open Adoption & How to Do it Well
Click here to send us a topic idea or question for Weekend Wisdom.Open adoption is the norm in for domestic infant adoptions in the US and becoming more common in foster care adoption and international adoption. Host Dawn Davenport will interview Dr. Hal Grotevant and Dr. Ruth McRoy, long time researchers on the impact of openness on all members of the adoption triad, and lead researchers of the Minnesota / Texas Adoption Research Project (MTARP). They literally wrote the book on open adoption and how we currently practice adoption.
Blog summary of the show and highlights can be found here:
Blog summary of the show
Highlights
More Creating a Family resources on open adoption can be found here.
Support the showPlease leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content: Weekly podcasts Weekly articles/blog posts Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Nov 12, 2014 • 1h 6min
Making Peace With Not Having Children
Click here to send us a topic idea or question for Weekend Wisdom.Infertility treatment is not always successful and neither is adoption. Couples may have to face the decision of living childfree. Host Dawn Davenport will interview Sheridan Voysey, author of Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams Into New Beginnings, a book about his journey to deciding to live childfree after he and his wife struggled to create a family for 10 years; and Jen Gamper, an infertility therapist with RMA New Jersey. She also has a private psychotherapy practice in Basking Ridge, NJ.
Blog summary of the show and highlights can be found here:
Blog summary of the show
Highlights
More Creating a Family resources on being child free can be found here.
Support the showPlease leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content: Weekly podcasts Weekly articles/blog posts Resource pages on all aspects of family building