While waiting for my dauther Sasha to be born, I got an alarming preview of our culture's adoption attitudes and myths. A young friend who learned of our impending open adoption asked why the baby's mother didn't like children. A colleague said she couldn't imagine giving away her own flesh and blood. A neighbor told me that her adopted cousin had gotten pregnant and had to go on welfare. Even the adoption professionals, educators and other adoptive parents that I encountered seemed to focus on problems in adoption.

I began to wonder how these attitudes and myths, so pervasive in our society, would affect Sasha and what I could do to counterbalance them. As a result I have given much thought not only to why these myths and attitudes exist but also to how I want my daughter to view her adoption.

I want her to develop a personal sense of security. I want her to be able to distinguish between personal adoption issues (if any) and those projected upon her by society. I want her to view her adoption not as a defining moment of her life but as a lifelong opportunity for connection with two families who are interested in her well-being.

To help her develop such a view, I have come up with ten adoption lessons.

1. Adoption does not describe you but how you entered the family. Adoption is neither a label nor a statement of your value or status. "Adopted" does not describe temperment, personality or character. To say that someone is adopted is as absurd as saying that someone is biologic.

2. Adoption describes your connection to your family. Connections are formed by law and emotions. The legal and emotional connections in an adoptive family can be as strong as those of genetic families. Genes do not make a family strong or happy.

3. Because blood ties are valued so much in our culture, others may consider our family connections weak and may see adoption as a liability. Blaming adoption for life's woes, which happen to everyone, is unproductive. How we enter our families is not an inherent advantage or disadvantage for success.

4. Adoption is a plan your birthparents made for your parenting. They did not give you up, reject you or abandon you. As your birthmother said, "I am not giving up my baby. I am entrusting her to people I know to raise her."

5. Your loyalties need not conflict between birth and adoptive parents. One set gave you life. The others are parenting you. It isn't a matter of either/or but of both/and.

6. Adoption can sometimes be a second choice, but it is not second best. Having a child was what we wanted first and foremost; pregnancy was just one possibility. To find a baby we could adopt was a joyful and challenging process. The family we want is the family we have.

7. Adoption is very common in the United States. An estimated five million people have been adopted into their families, and one out of 63 children in America is an adoptee. Despite this number though, many people, and our laws, treat adoption as something uncommon.

8. Adoption is an institution, and it is also an industry. Its controversies and problems can be profitable for some.

9. Adoption challenges attitudes about families, bonds and women's role. Negative attitudes about childless women have been ingrained in society for a long time. Throughout history they were considered sinners and outcasts. Women today are still confronted with the belief that all women are born to be mothers. If women today choose not to be mothers, they are seen as unfit or unnatural.

10. Adoption is sensationalized by the media because distress sells soap. The media both reflects and creates social attitudes, bias and prejudice about adoption. "It is not adoption that is the problem but what people think of it," says one adoptee I know.

These lessons are guidelines that I can use and revise as Sasha and I grow together. I will strive to treat adoption honestly and openly but as no big deal. As Sasha's mother it is my joy and responsibility to support and guide her with any issues for which she wants and needs help.

Susan Saidman is a writer and trainer who lives in Wheaton, MD. Her articles have appeared in Adoptive Families Magazine and The Washington Post. Susan, her daughter Sasha, 6, and her daughter's birthmother, Linda, were recently pictured and quoted in an article on modern adoption in The New York Times.