Adoptions Can Take Unique Forms

For Jim Gradoville, the best part of the day starts when his two daughters greet him when he comes home from work.

It's a familiar family scene. Or is it?

The difference, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen for The Early Show series "Exploring Adoption," is that Gradoville is single.

A successful executive for Motorola in China, Gradoville often dated, but never met the right woman. "I wasn't married, and I wanted to have kids," Gradville tells Petersen, "and the lightbulb went off one day and I thought, 'Well, maybe I can have kids through adoption, even if I didn't get married.'"

He adopted Wendy six years ago from a Chinese orphanage. Then, last year, he adopted a second child, Waylin. And Gradoville, who comes from a large Midwestern family, has his own little family.

"Both my girls are great girls, and it's really amazing to me that it's worked out as well as it has," he says, especially since he's single and in his 50s. "Obviously, I'm a bit of an odd duck, I guess, but family -- everybody thinks it's good and positive."

China is one of the few countries that will allow a single man to adopt an orphan, Petersen notes. With it's one-child-per-family policy, most families want a boy. So when a girl is born, she is often abandoned, winding up at an orphanage. Babies who don't get adopted will spend their entire childhood in institutions.

"What Gradoville did in China, he would probably never be allowed to do in America," Petersen points out. "Yet, he's a one-man testament that one parent can change a child's life, even if that parent is a man.

By day, the girls are in the care of a full-time nanny. And this mommy-less family seems, well, perfectly normal to them, Petersen says.

When other kids come up and ask, "Where's your mommy?" what does Wendy say?

"I overheard her a little while back," Gradoville says. "Some mother had just come up to here and said, 'Here's your dad, so where's your mom?' She just kinda quickly came back and said, 'I have a daddy, I have a driver, and I have a nanny. I don't have a mommy.'"

There are sacrifices, as every parent knows. Gradoville rarely goes out on the town anymore. Work sometimes has to take a back seat to the kids. But he says he has no regrets.

"It's really miracle, it's a joy, it's something I'm so thankful for, and I've got two great kids. I'm really blessed. You can't substitute for that."

And, adds Petersen, there is no substitute for what makes a family: a parent's love.