Adoption, Why is it a dirty word?

[Anvilicious Luna]

adoption also costs a lot of money, but so does fertility treatments and stuff.

Personally, I would find it kind of disgusting to have started my life in a lab.

[ShutterBug69]

Im adopted and my parents love me vary much, at the beginning of the year i had a vary serious medical emergency and i had to stay in the hospital for a week. i was also in vermont an my family is in Georgia my mom was on a flight the vary next morning and never left my side, she said she wouldn't know what they would do if they ever lost me. so that prove that you can love a child that isn't your own. i was lucky enough to be adopted at birth. I know my birth mother never plan to have children but didn't think it was right to abort.

I have friend who was born in india and her mother died in child birth. her father gave her up for adoption to a European family because he knew she would have a better life ad wanted her have more than what he could giver her. i think that is a vary though thing to do but shes love her adopted family and had lead a vary happy life so far.

[Elrin_02]

I was adopted as a kid, but am also in contact with my biological family (the full story is long and dull.) I have a biological child and would be fully willing to adopt, though I have not yet.

So I feel like I can speak with some if not full authority on the subject.

There is a difference between an adopted child and a biological child. There is a difference between an adopted parent and a biological parent.

Taking on a child, any child, whether biological or adopted, is an enormous responsibility. Some people are not up for that responsibility and shouldn't have children. Other people are not up for having biological children--for whatever reasons, either they don't want to go through pregnancy or they have a genetic condition or they're unable to do so--but they believe they will be good adoptive parents. Some people even believe it is noble to adopt, and so want to do so.

By contrast, other people would not make good adoptive parents. When people say, 'an adopted child is not the same as a biological one,' aside from this being true on a biological level, it's also true on a mental level. Many parents would not be physically capable of loving an adopted child the way they could a biological child (or at least they believe so.) The process by which we fall in love with our children is complex and fundamentally biological, especially so for mothers, who normally gestate and nurse their children. Nature has provided a complex feedback cycle to make us love and care for our genetic offspring. Nature has provided us with the tools to care for other people's offspring basically as an accidental side-effect of our tools for caring for our own children and our relative's children.

In other words, most people will instinctively love their biological children, because that is how we are wired. People are not pre-wired to love a random child who happens to show up in their midst. People instinctively want to pass on their own genetics to the next generation. That is the crux of all reproduction, after all. People have little instinctive impulse to spend their time and resources helping someone else's genetics survive--in fact, such people get quickly bred out of the gene pool.

While that is a somewhat cynical and less than romantic way of looking at things, when you come down to the individual, they're not generally thinking 'Nooo I don't want to waste my resources, I want to pass on my genes," they're thinking, "But I want to have MY baby. I don't want to have someone else's baby." And try as you might to reason with them, they will always experience biological and adopted children differently. They will be physically unable to love a biological child like an adopted child, and will feel the loss of the relationship they didn't have.

As an adopted kid, I love my adopted dad, but I love my biological dad more. I 'connect' with him in ways that I don't with my adopted dad, even though I was around my adopted dad more during my childhood and we're actually culturally more similar. There are just things about my biological father and I which I don't share with my adopted family and which they therefore can't understand. It's a different connection. A different relationship.

To a person having trouble conceiving, the idea of not having a biological child can be absolutely crushing. It's not just that adopted children are different, but that they are unable to produce the children they want. They have to give up. They failed. They have to accept a child who may never see them as a 'true' parent, a child who is more likely to have mental and physical disabilities and issues, a child who will not be like them and whom they will not connect with on an intuitive level the way you can with a biological child.

And that is why mentioning adoption is considered taboo. Because people are fragile and going through a difficult time and the idea of adoption is tantamount to failing and having to accept an inferior relationships.


(Additionally, some people *can't* adopt. My step father, for example, was deemed too old to adopt. However, with fertility treatments and lots of effort, he and his wife managed to conceive and so I have a step sister who's 18 years younger than me.)

[Iylei]

I remember a couple in my church couldn't have a baby for a long time. They adopted a toddler from China and then two years later they had their own and a year after that they had another. I don't know... I just thought that was nice. Because they really love all of them. You can tell.

[coriella]

I'm adopted, and I am going to adopt a child when I get old enough.
surprised

[marshmallowcreampie]

Sapphisto

When I get old enough, I want to adopt. I can't see myself pregnant. I might even raise them myself. And I wouldn't care about how much they looked like me. I would adopt a black kid, they're cute. Most of the black babies I see are cuter than the white ones. And I might adopt a teen, too. Children can be annoying. As long as they aren't like, "You're not my mom!" and go do drugs and have promiscuous sex, it'll be good. He/she can help me with the little black baby. Only if I have the money, though, obviously.

I can understand why people wouldn't want to adopt, but I don't understand why some are so pissy towards people who bring up that idea. People who try so hard to have kids themselves, and keep everyone else from adopting, even those who can't conceive... How selfish. It's sickening.

I'd probably adopt a black kid. But my reason isn't really a matter of "cuteness". Black kids make up the biggest percentage of kids in the adoption system, while white kids make up the smallest percentage. Yet the white kids make up the biggest percentage of those that actually do get adopted. Hell, maybe I'd adopt a kid from another country so they can grow up with the things they wouldn't have a chance of getting if they remained in their home country. I'd probably get a slightly older kid, too, maybe a teenager. I can't stand babies.

[Veolin]

I can see why people would want a biological child of their own (I wanted one too) but at the same time I don't see how adopting a child could be considered a bad thing in that particular respect. My husband and I are planning to try for one more biological child but as there are issues that may cause me not to be able to, I have told him that whether I conceive or not I still wish to adopt at least once. Sure it's nice to pass on one's genetics if someone wants to, but that doesn't define how the person will love or treat the child. Even when I adopt the kid will still be mine. I will still be mommy and DNA doesn't change that.

[Captain McGreen]

I will say that I feel adoption is an extremely noble path to take. But you can't possibly think that the path that's right for one person is the path that's right for everyone.

I do not plan to adopt. When I'm ready, I plan to have my own child. That is not dishonorable. It is what feels right for me. And if I cannot have my own child, for whatever reason, I will adopt. But it will not be my first choice.

I want to feel my child inside me. I want to be connected to my child in a physical way. I want to be pregnant, and then become a mother. I don't want to skip that first significant step.

No, it won't make me a better mother, and no, it won't make me love it more than I'd love an adopted child, but I crave, desire, almost need that feeling, which biologically is natural and almost impossible to resist for me.

My mother was a horrible person from long before my conception. I want to be able to give my child the best mother I can possibly give it, a mother who doesn't smoke while it's in the womb, a mother who takes prenatal vitamins and reads to the baby bump at night, who bonds with it nine months before it's even born. No one has the right to tell me that I'm wrong for that.

[-Brynin Suiet-]

adoption is totally worth it. your helping a child have a home and if you cant have kids yourself, then this kid is YOUR baby. If the child isnt treated as your own, the child doesnt deserve you, it deserves far better. You're giving this child a second chance to a new, loving family

[Steam Punk Adept]

People still miss the point that many in society would choose to ignore the needs of others, and selfishly choose to do for them. In this case, it comes at the expense of children. Not only does this affect children waiting to be adopted, but it can also impact the children being born to families seeking fertility treatements instead of adoption.

Not to mention the even bigger social stigma of adopting a child outside your ethnicity. Even fewer people do this, which in fact only compounds the problem for ethnicities who don't see much in the hope of adoption.

[Steam Punk Adept]

Bryin Van Azuria

adoption is totally worth it. your helping a child have a home and if you cant have kids yourself, then this kid is YOUR baby. If the child isnt treated as your own, the child doesnt deserve you, it deserves far better. You're giving this child a second chance to a new, loving family

The problem isn't that adopted children are treated worse, it's the claim by many people that they couldn't love an adopted child because it doesn't share thier DNA

[Sprain]

It is our instinct to leave our own offspring. Adoption is a very nice human thing. Instinct vs Humanity, results are different for different people. I wouldn't adopt anyone though.

[Elrin_02]

AntiThesis of Time

Bryin Van Azuria

adoption is totally worth it. your helping a child have a home and if you cant have kids yourself, then this kid is YOUR baby. If the child isnt treated as your own, the child doesnt deserve you, it deserves far better. You're giving this child a second chance to a new, loving family

The problem isn't that adopted children are treated worse, it's the claim by many people that they couldn't love an adopted child because it doesn't share thier DNA

Which would cause the child to be treated poorly.

[Iggy The Balrog]

My partner and I have already discussed this.

If it turns out that we can't conceive (because you really never know until you check, and there's no pressing need and current) then we'll adopt. It never occurred to me that I might be unable to bond to the child, it'd be exactly the same as far as we're concerned.

[Steam Punk Adept]

Sprain

It is our instinct to leave our own offspring. Adoption is a very nice human thing. Instinct vs Humanity, results are different for different people. I wouldn't adopt anyone though.

Ok, I'll assume for a moment you want to have children someday, why take a chance away from a child already in this world and needing you by instead having your own kids?