Interview in the Town Crier

Idyllwild Town Crier

Vo. 79, No. 31, p. B1

Thursday, August 1, 2024

Local Author to Speak of Foster to Adoption Journey

By David Jerome, Correspondent

Tuesday August 6, the Idyllwild Library will welcome local author Lane Igoudin, who is on a tour for his book A Family, Maybe. It chronicles the ‘twists, turns, and heartaches” along the path to adopting two foster daughters through LA county’s “overburdened and at times chaotic” child welfare system.

Igoudin and his husband have been living part-time in Idyllwild for almost 20 years, and parts of the story take place against familiar backdrops: the Nature Center, story time at the (old) library, the 4th of July Parade, Town Hall Camp. The book is both a memoir and a guide for foster parents wishing to adopt. Lane answered a few of the Crier‘s questions about his experience with the foster adoption process.

What do you wish you had known before the adoption process?

LI: I wish we had understood better how complex and unpredictable it is. Not that it would have scared us off from taking in the children, but it would have helped us to prepare ourselves better to manage it. The antidote to uncertainty is knowledge. You can learn from books, websites, experts, social media groups, adoptive parents in your community. This will give you the understanding and the tools you need to address the issues as they arise. That’s what we did, and it helped us make it through the most difficult parts of our journey.

Describe a little about the court process. You say prospective adoptive parents are not included, and these proceedings are not public? 

LI: The intention of the process is to figure out what’s best for a child detained by the court, and, using another legal term, how to best dispose of their case – send the child back to their birth families, keep them in the foster system, terminate their parents’ rights so they could become eligible for adoption, and so on. . . The foster parents are generally treated as paid caretakers. The needs, responsibilities, and biases of each party to the case also fluctuate, which can make the outcome of the child’s case highly unpredictable.

Has the process changed for better or worse since your adoptions?

LI: Not much, unfortunately. Children’s Law Center of California reports that there are still over 25,000 kids in foster care in Los Angeles County alone. The legal framework is still the same, and the caseloads of social workers, judges, and attorneys remain high.

What changed in the last 10 years though is that the preference for birth family reunification has grown stronger, reflected in new federal and state laws that redirected some group home funding towards programs meant to strengthen birth families. That backfired in that there are now fewer homes available to take in foster kids, and some of them, as Los Angeles Times reported in a series of recent articles, the county is now placing in hotels.

Igoudin concludes, “This may sound like a lot to handle, but I still encourage prospective parents to consider fostering and adopting children. There is such tremendous need for children to find forever families. Even getting one child out of the system makes a world of difference. It’s worth the sacrifice.”

Lane Igoudin, author of A Family, Maybe, at the Idyllwild Public Library, 54401Village Center Dr., Tuesday, August 6, 5:30 p.m.

Poem published by the LA Jewish Home

Glad to see my poem “Nothing Is Ever New,” reflecting on the recent riot at the synagogue Adas Torah and life in general in the post-October 7 world, published by California’s largest Jewish family newspaper. The acceptance of my piece by a publication serving largely an observant community tells me that no matter where we fit religiously and politically, issues like the rise of anti-Semitism and a growing tolerance of violence in the US concern all of us across the Jewish spectrum.

See the full text of the poem here.

Coming up: “Mindful Parenting” – book talk/workshop at InsightLA

Join meditation teacher and therapist Wendy Block and me for our special author talk / meditation / parenting workshop at the Santa Monica Meditation Center of Insight LA this Sunday, 7/21. InsightLA is the largest Western mindfulness organization in the region, and the event is both in-person and online. From my end, I’ll be focusing on the spiritual takeaways from our foster/adoptive parenting experience and parenting itself as a mindful, centering practice.

The event is part of my book tour for A Family, Maybe, and there will be books available for signing afterwards.

See more information here, and please don’t be discouraged by the “suggested donation” which benefits InsightLA. ‘Suggested’ = optional. It’s free to attend. Just come, and tell your friends!

Podcast interview: Bookaholic

Delighted to be interviewed by a popular book reviewer and podcast host Deirdre Pippins. To listen/watch the 25-minute interview, click here.

Podcast description from the Bookaholic website:

Lane Igoudin’s Adoption Journey: A Family, Maybe | LGBTQ+ Family Challenges”

Welcome to our latest episode featuring Lane Igoudin, the author of the heartfelt memoir A Family, Maybe. Join us as we dive into Lane and his husband’s emotional journey through the foster-to-adopt process in Los Angeles County. From legal battles to moments of pure joy, Lane’s story provides a unique and powerful perspective on the adoption system and its impact on LGBTQ+ families.

In this podcast/video, you will learn:

  • The intricacies of the public adoption process
  • The challenges and triumphs faced by the couple as they fostered and adopted their children
  • The societal and legal hurdles for LGBTQ+ families in the early 2000s
  • Insights from Lane’s memoir, A Family, Maybe, and its importance in today’s context.

Click the screen to watch/listen.

Author talk at Historical Society of Long Beach, July 5

Tour stop #6. It was so very meaningful to speak about my book in the neighborhood where our kids grew up and much of the story takes place.

Long Beach, our home for the last 25 years, has been kind and generous to us. Kind in its tolerant attitudes affirming all identities, and with its signature live-and-let-live lifestyle. Generous in providing an opportunity to establish a home, make friends, raise a family, and partake of its resources like schools, libraries, and Jewish communal institutions. And weather, what other place can beat it?

So in this talk, I focused not only on the foster-adoption and LGBTQ family angles of A Family, Maybe, but also on its local aspect, as in what makes it a Long Beach story, a story representative of local culture and communities.

We had a great turnout, and I was delighted to see many familiar faces in the crowd.

The event was part of this month’s Bixby Knolls’ First Fridays programming, so the evening progressed naturally from my talk and book signing into HSLB’s open house for the people streaming in from Atlantic Boulevard while strolling the First Fridays.

Unfortunately, the talk moderator, Gerrie Schipske, the two-time Long Beach City Councilmember and author, couldn’t make it due to a family emergency, but I am grateful to her for helping to produce this event.

Thank you, the Historical Society of Long Beach for hosting my book talk, Long Beach Living for profiling it among the weekly events, and Bixby Knolls BIA for helping to spread the word about the event.

Save the Date: July 5, Historical Society of Long Beach – with Gerrie Schipske

Long Beach author Lane Igoudin will be in conversation with Gerrie Schipske, a two-term Long Beach City Councilmember, about A Family, Maybe, his memoir of building a thriving family through foster adoptions,

This free book event will be held at Historical Society of Long Beach (4260 Atlantic Ave.) on Friday, July 5, at 6:30 pm, and is part of the monthly First Fridays in Bixby Knolls. Q&A, signing, and refreshments will follow the talk. The book will be available for purchase at the event.

Public adoption can be filled with twists, turns and heartache. This is something Lane and his husband Jonathan experienced firsthand in their 3-year foster adoption process. A Long Beach family story, A Family, Maybe, offers an unprecedented look at the adoption side of an overburdened, and at times chaotic Los Angeles County foster system, the largest in the country. The book shows how it impacts the lives of everyone involved, from the children raised in foster care, to the suffering birth parents, to the couples like Lane’s desperately hoping to start families of their own.

A Family, Maybe also documents the changing political environment of the pre-equality era in which LGBTQ families began to come out of the shadows and into public spotlight. In the early 2000s, with gay marriage and adoption still illegal in most U.S. states, Lane and Jon’s family would join the first wave of out gay families fighting for acceptance, legal recognition, and ultimately, respect.

A Family, Maybe received praise from U.S. Congressman Alan Lowenthal who represented Long Beach in 2013-23; Sheila Kuehl, California’s first out gay legislator; Rita L. Soronen, President and CEO, Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption; as well as bestselling writers like Janet Fitch and Greta Boris. Lane has spoken about his book on NBC’s “Daytime” show as well as a variety of syndicated radio shows and literary and parenting podcasts.

Lane is available for interviews in advance of his talk at HSLB.


Lane Igoudin, Ph.D., is the author of A Family, Maybe, a journey through foster adoptions to fatherhood (Ooligan Press, Portland State University, 2024). He has written extensively on foster adoption, parenting, and other topics for Adoption.com, Forward, Jewish News, Lambda Literary Review, and Parabola, and spoken about his book on NBC’s “Daytime” show as well as a variety of syndicated radio shows and podcasts. Lane is professor of English and linguistics at Los Angeles City College and recently served as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow with the Humanities Division of UCLA. See more at www.laneigoudin.com.

Gerrie Schipske is the author of eight books about her hometown, including the new LGBTQ+ Long Beach (Arcadia Press, 2024). The only lesbian elected to public office in Long Beach, Gerrie served two terms on the Long Beach City Council and is a past President of the Long Beach Chapter of NOW. In 2013. President Obama honored her as one of only seven “White House Champions of Change for Open Government.” Married to her partner of 44 years Flo Pickett, Gerrie adopted three foster children and is raising a granddaughter.

In conversation with Stacy Perman (LA Times) at Book Soup, WeHo

Tour stop #5. Still electrified from my Father’s Day book talk with the veteran LA Times reporter Stacy Perman at the iconic “bookseller to the great and infamous.” Together we explored the systemic dysfunctions of the Los Angeles County child welfare system, and how it impacts the lives of foster-adoptive families like ours.

Both the interviewer and the location were quite remarkable.

Stacy Perman is an award-winning journalist, a New York Times bestselling author, and a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, whose work appeared not only in Los Angeles TImes, but also in Business Week, Time, and Wall Street Journal.

Located on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, Book Soup has been serving readers, writers, artists, rock ‘n’ rollers, and celebrities since 1975. I was humbled by the fact that after so many Hollywood and high-profile books launched here, this legendary venue would save a spot for a talk about my memoir A Family, Maybe.

We talked, I read the opening chapter of the book (“Curbside Delivery”), answered questions from the audience, and signed a few books. The time flew by in what felt like 10 minutes, but was closer to 2 hours.

So thank you, Book Soup, for hosting and promoting us, Stacy Perman for insightful, probing questions, and everyone who came for their support. Some of the attendees drove from as far as Altadena, Seal Beach, and Torrance, and I truly appreciate that.

I am also grateful to Janet Fitch for helping get the word out, my friend and colleague Susan Niemeyer for these great photos, and the tireless book impressario Corey Roskin for connecting me to Book Soup.

Speaking at ONE Archives at USC

Tour stop #4. On June 5, I spoke with Craig Loftin, PhD, professor of American Studies at CSU Fullerton, at ONE Archives at USC Libraries, the world’s largest repository LGBTQ materials.

With Craig being a well-known queer historian, we were able to look at our family building story, documented in A Family, Maybe, as representative of the first wave of out gay parents – the transformative time when our family making intertwined with the struggle for equality of the LGBTQ community, including full and equal rights to civil marriage and public adoption.

I read several excerpts from the book depicting our path to parenting, which mirrored that of the community at large.

USC had posted the event on its Event Calendar, and ONE also publicized it advance of the talk.

Thank you, Dr Joseph Hawkins, Lexi, Quetzal, and Au at ONE who helped organize the event, and to all who came, asked questions, and, for some reason, decided to get a copy of my book.😉

Book signing in Long Beach

Tour stop #3: A deep and lively conversation with Ellie Perez, head of The LGBTQ Center Long Beach at Page Against The Machine, especially when we explored “how we do family” as LGBTQ parents, how much our rights and visiblilty have grown, and yet how much work still remains to be done.

My book event took place during the Long Beach Pride week, but also on the International Family Day, which made it even more memorable.

Something special from the day. The morning of my talk at PATM, I found these adorable baby shoes from when my younger daughter was an infant!

I brought them with me and placed them proudly on the microphone podium. Just looking at them made the whole story feel real.😌 I’ll be taking them to all other book signings from now on.

Thank you, Chris Giaco (below), the owner of Page Against The Machine, for hosting us.

There will be another book signing in Long Beach: July 5 at Long Beach Historical Society in Bixby Knolls, and 2 more in LA: June 5 at ONE Archives at USC and June 14 at Book Soup on Sunset. Hope to see you at one of those!