“An inspiring portrait of steadfast love under pressure.”
–Janet Fitch, White Oleander, an Oprah’s Book Club selection
Public adoption is a long and uncertain process with some of society’s most vulnerable people at the heart of it. Every adult and child involved in the system has a unique story to tell. In his candid and poignant memoir, A Family, Maybe (Ooligan Press, February 13, 2024, ISBN: 9781947845459), Lane Igoudin details his and his husband Jonathan’s fraught path through the Los Angeles County’s foster-to-adopt process. A Family, Maybe offers an unprecedented look into the adoption process as it affects the lives of everyone involved, from the children taken into the system, to the suffering birth parents, to the couples hoping desperately to start a family of their own.
In the fall of 2005, after years of preparation, planning, and waiting for a chance to raise a family, Jon and Lane were given the opportunity to foster an infant named Marianna. Lane and Jon fell in love with the child and decided they would give her the best life they could. Marianna’s mother, a teenager in foster care herself, had voluntarily placed her in foster care before going AWOL. With her birth mother absent and father unknown, Marianna seemed to be on the fast-track to becoming adoptable.
The couple could not have predicted the return of the child’s mother, still in foster care, and the news that she was expecting a second child. With the second child also came the sudden appearance of the baby’s birth father, a man 10 years older than the mother, which would complicate the kids’ cases and begin to pull Lane and Jon’s family apart.
A Family, Maybe documents the ensuing spiral, rife with legal challenges, emotional blows, and no less important, political strife. 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 LGBTQ+ families fighting for respect and equality.
A Family, Maybe is a story of hope and heartbreak; of relatable first-time parenting highs and lows, but also with the pressure of knowing the family you’ve built could be ripped from you at any moment.
“Helps to guide and comfort future parents through the challenging foster and adoption processes . . . a story of hope and perseverance.”
—U.S. Congressman Alan Lowenthal
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lane Igoudin, Ph.D., is a writer, blogger, and professor of English and linguistics at Los Angeles City College. He has written extensively on foster adoption, parenting, LGBTQ families, and spiritual growth for publications such as Adoption.com, FamilyEquality.org, The Forward, and Lambda Literary Review. He recently served as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow with the Humanities Division of UCLA.
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