The Kid: (What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant) an Adoption Story

For Dan and his boyfriend Terry, the odyssey begins at a seminar in Portland where (after rejecting the idea of making a "biokid" with a lesbian couple, a lesbian single, and their straight next-door neighbor), they decide on an "open adoption". The birth mother who selects them as the adoptive parents for her child is a street kid named Melissa, who drinks and uses drugs during pregnancy and who, despite doctor's orders, is still living on the streets. As Dan and Terry tag along on her prenatal visits and the due date rapidly approaches, the fears common to adoptive parents mount: What if the baby isn't healthy? What if we aren't parent material? What if the birth mother changes her mind and decides to keep the baby?

In The Kid, Dan Savage shares his views on what it means to be gay and raising a child in America today. In the process, he takes his usual scathingly funny potshots at everything from growing up gay to committing to a younger man, from the gay left to the religious right, homophobia...love...getting fat...getting married...getting older...and the very human desire to have a family.