10 minutes reading‘
This is the story of a father and a son. The story of an adoption that changed their lives. In front of the sea, in a noisy cafe in Puerto Madryn, Severino González begins the story. Beside him, a teenager remains silent while the gray-bearded man speaks.
Severino always wanted to be a father. I had had stable partners but either they were already mothers or they didn’t want to be; The plans to start a family were moving away. The crisis of the 40s marked a turning point. “I started to think about the real possibility of adopting, of being a single parent.”
At that time a friend told him that he had adopted a child, that friend guided him and took him to the tiny adoption office in Puerto Madryn that depends on the Family Court, so he found out what the legal procedures were like.
—I’m not saying it’s easy but there is a bit of a myth, let’s say. Presenting the papers, putting together the folder, is not complex. I spoke with Silvia, who received me, she explained the situation and the adoption process quite well. And then he sent me an email with a list of things to present. Basically: health certificate, debt free, criminal record, and demonstrate economic stability.
Once the folder was complete, the interviews began, at the end of 2022. First with people from social assistance, who went to his house with a lawyer and a psychologist. A file emerged from this entire process, Single parenthood was not an impediment, nor was singleness or age. For Severino, the waiting and preparation stage began.
—Reading about adoption, listening to testimonies, watching documentaries helped me a lot. The largest population of boys and girls today are older children, five or seven years old, who are passing by with time and it is becoming more difficult for them to have a family because in general couples, people, are looking for babies.
When completing the form, she remembered a documentary in which a woman said that she had placed someone she could take care of among the parameters. Severino decided to look for a big boy. It was difficult for him to be alone with a baby, not because he didn’t like the idea, but because it required constant attention, family help that he didn’t have, or had more than a thousand kilometers away.
In Puerto Madryn there is a Mini Home that has been housing institutionalized children for 47 years, children who arrive in a situation of threat or violation of rights. There are also foster families, says Severino, families that take care of boys and girls on a temporary basis.
—It is a process similar to adoption. First they meet, then they see each other on the weekends, then if there is availability they can stay.
The process depended on the children, says Severino. “There is no time limit, the limit is set by you, every year you have to renew that folder, you can make modifications.”
The choice can be enlarged or reduced, the folder must be rectified or removed. Far from being a one-time decision, there is the possibility of regretting it and canceling the procedure.
For those who wait, the situation can generate some anxiety.
One Friday night, Severino was at home when his phone rang.
—I had three or four missed calls from Silvia. I said, Wow. Something appeared. So I called her and she told me, “There is a case, a baby in an adoptable situation. You can come on Monday morning, if you want to come.” Yes, I told him.
The law puts the child and their rights first. That’s why sometimes it takes a while. It is not only the desire of the parents, it is about exhausting all instances linked to the biological family. When the situation is no longer enough, adoption is only resorted to. The psychologists told him the story of an absent father and a mother who could not take care of him, of the temporary family that housed him.
—He was a loving child, a soccer fan, a Boca fan —they smile knowingly, Severino is from River and there is always rivalry between them.
It was Wednesday, February 28, 2024, at 8:30 in the morning. They explained to him that he was seventh in a ranking of possible adopters, the chances were slim, but the next day they called him to make an appointment with the judge who investigated his plans and reasons. I would give the last word. T, who was ten years old at the time.
Severino González is moved by the memory.
—There she appeared through a window with long hair, her hair long because she didn’t want to cut it. He covered his face.
With everyone around them, they greeted each other, chatted. T invited him to watch him train, so the bonding process began. The next day he went to pick him up from school and from there he took him to his own house, in a neighborhood far from the center of Madryn. During the first six months there was supervision, increasingly spaced out, then they were left alone.
When asked why he chose it, T answers somewhat shyly:
—The first day we met, they told me a little about what he was like, that he had pets, a cat and a dog named Gilda. Which also has a club on the beach.
With the report that everything was going well, it was now possible to carry out the adoption trial through a lawyer provided by the State. In Chubut it is free, but this is not the case throughout the country.
From two months to 34 years old, Severino González lived in Buenos Aires. There are his three brothers and many friends. In 2013 he returned to his city of origin: Puerto Madryn. It was when his mother died and he chose to leave the city that weighed on him to seek the peace of the sea.
She found her space in the sport that she had always practiced, and that at the same time was a social tool that could help marginalized girls and boys to get ahead, to integrate. He worked for the municipality with a program called Valued Football and with other sports that took place on the beaches, on school fields or in the neighborhoods.
In the summer of 2017 to 2018, they created a soccer school on the beach for boys and girls with some friends, a project—Arena Madryn—with the intention of bringing the sport to all social strata.this is how they trained children and adolescents who today are around 20 years old. That adventure still continues every time a ball rolls and the sand becomes the best court in the world.
—Some called me uncle or dad. There was an issue of bond that arose in me, and that was evidently important for the adoption.
Currently Severino works in another area of the municipality, in the bulky waste recovery center, on the outskirts of Madryn, where they carry out dissemination and educational work, but sport is still present as an unalterable love.
At the new school, the girls were the first to approach each other and become friends. Over time, he felt more confident, began to talk, laugh and feel comfortable. Then he met those who would become his best friends. “They are children of friends of mine who are the same age. The ‘trident’ is followed, if it were by them every day.”
They go out to ride their bikes, play soccer or Play. They once had a sleepover. With them he shares his passion for Boca.
—The reality is that the families adore him, and he stays there calmly and we also build our lives. My cousins, and my three brothers, with my nephews also adore it, we have already traveled to Buenos Aires three times.
When T joined the soccer school, he says, he was very shy and got very angry. He wanted to have his position but sometimes it wasn’t his turn to enter the field. They were able to talk about it and he understood it. Severino represented the figure of a father but he was also the coach, he had to make decisions without weighing down his new fatherhood. “By the second year I wasn’t angry anymore.”
For T, the best thing about the bond is the time shared:
—I like it when we go to beach soccer, in fact sometimes I fight but I also have a lot of fun with him.
They not only share the family, but also the dogs, the music. Seve says that T plays music on his cell phone while he takes a bath. And he turns off the TV so he can hear it better.
—Sometimes Soda Stereo sings. Yesterday I was singing a song, New, joy —they smile while T sips an orange juice.
Although he thinks about it for a few seconds, in reality it is clear to him, T would like to enroll in a football school. On the courts, on the beach, even on the computer, sport is his life and he knows that practice is what gives him security. He also dreams of playing for an important club in Buenos Aires. A fan of the Madryn club, which was close to being promoted to first class, he played on their field and got to know the grass of the Comercio club on a seven-man field.
In August 2025 the ruling came out and there they were able to prepare the document and the new birth certificate.
—We made a tremendous Milanese to celebrate. He is already my son, emotionally and really, in every possible way. We can now move freely and well, with the responsibilities and obligations of the case. From all parents, from any established family.
Severino tries not to romanticize adoption because he understands that not all situations are the same.
—I was expecting a boy, a girl with more complexes, who naturally, due to the history they usually live, may be more frustrated, more closed. The truth is that he is a child full of tenderness.
What they both found was the same desire for a family, of loving and letting oneself be loved. “That’s what moves me the most, what brought us here.” He no longer even remembers what the time was like before T, because this present is a great challenge, the possibility of learning to be a father every day.
—What T brings is very important, it is very decisive. You have to prepare and be patient, try to make that story present, be able to talk about it as much as necessary, make it feel calm. Build our life together. More than one day you go to sleep thinking that you are the worst father in the world, that is inevitable.
Big kids come with history. Severino understands this and embraces what constitutes him as a unique human being. He knows that sometimes it requires patience because it is a process that has to do with life itself and that does not depend only on a parent but on an entire environment. There are many births, he assures.
—When we saw each other for the first time, when the sentence came out. We have many anniversaries. I came to Madryn on November 3, 2013, T was born on November 30, 2013. I felt like it was like jumping from an abyss. Well, at some point I learned to fly, to plan.
In that leap of faith, on the road, in the football that unites them, they learn to be the best family they can be.
