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As a mother of six, I will never understand the desire to adopt a child.
And I will never understand why someone needs to have six children. The world is overpopulated and there are enough orphans all over the world who are in dire need for loving parents.
I think adoptive parents are to be very much respected and thanked for their contribution to society.
Yet, do not go around, telling people they are selfish and inconsiderate to have too many children of their own.
You are on record on this forum as being "anti-adoption". You and some others are in an anti adoption "support group".
Really??? What is the purpose of an anti adoption support group, I mean, .... WHAT??? You must be joking?
Why do people care so much what other people do if it doesn't negatively impact them and is legal?
I saw a docu about China recently, when they had the one child policy. People just dumped their babies and toddlers on the side of the road or at a busy market and walked/drove by every day as did thousands of other people. They drove by the dying babies and saw them covered in moscitos, sitting in the sun, getting weaker by the hour, then dead and rotting away.
They said they saw a new baby there every few days. Other babies have been killed by midwives. Those babies could have been saved by adoption.
My take is simple - as the grandmother of a darling boy adopted from South Korea, as well as the adoring sister of a brother adopted from South Korea 50 years ago:
Adoption can be a beautiful, beautiful event and outcome for a family. But it would be naive to believe that it's not potentially very problematic. But so is parenthood. Period.
So if you can adopt and want to adopt - any child, any time, anywhere - just be sure you can handle the possible health issues, including but not limited to mental health issues. My biggest word of advice would be to adopt a child as young as possible for the fewest potential issues down the road. This is a general statement of course, and I'm sure there will be exceptions to this rule.
My adopted brother was half American, but that's all we knew about his ancestry - half Korean and half American. He recently passed away from pancreatic cancer. I really wish we could have known more about his genetics but honestly, I don't know that this knowledge would have made a big difference. It's not like people can't get DNA studies done now.
And I will never understand why someone needs to have six children. The world is overpopulated and there are enough orphans all over the world who are in dire need for loving parents.
I think adoptive parents are to be very much respected and thanked for their contribution to society.
Yet, do not go around, telling people they are selfish and inconsiderate to have too many children of their own.
I'm coming back to comment on the topic of physical, mental, emotional difficulties with adopted children. Yes, I know that all of these can occur with birth children as well, but there are some issues that are specific to adoptees. There are three adopted grandchildren (my nieces/nephew) in my family, and all of them have these issues:
1. One niece is now 31 years old and was adopted shortly after birth (domestic adoption through public agency). She was full-term but on the small side. Otherwise, she appeared normal. She was a difficult baby and toddler and at about five years old, she was diagnosed with severe ADHD. As she grew older, she exhibited poor judgment, poor impulse control, little understanding of consequences, and the upshot is that she mostly likely has FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). Her issues have not improved with time. She finished high school in the special ed program and has had a number of low-skilled, minimum-wage jobs (like stocking in a warehouse), but cannot drive and will never be capable of fully independent living. Unfortunately, no one seemed to be aware of the FAS when she was born or adopted; it has been a difficult struggle for my brother and his wife and isn't going to just go away.
2. Another niece is 18 years old (private domestic adoption as a newborn). She is bright and seems well-adjusted. She did have some ongoing medical issues as a child that baffled her parents until they were able to contact her birth mother and found out that the mother had had the same issues, so they were apparently genetic. Fortunately, birth mom was able to relate that she had outgrown most of it and had had a certain treatment for the rest. This was really, really helpful. Niece now has some limited contact with her birth mom and everything seems to be going well.
3. Nephew is 19 (private domestic adoption). He has an attachment disorder despite the fact that he was adopted at birth; in fact my sister and her husband were in the delivery room and the newborn was handed straight to them. The attachment disorder was not helped by the fact that he is a different race from his adoptive parents and sister (who is the 18-year-old just mentioned). Not only that, but they live in a city where almost no one looks like him. My sister says that she never thought of him as looking "different" and didn't care what race he was, but she now wishes she had thought more about whether he would care. In his teen years he began to withdraw more and more from the family, barely graduated from high school, and just wanted to get away. My sister and her husband spent years and tons of money trying everything they could think of, all kinds of therapy etc. but to no avail. At age 18 he moved out and has little contact with them; it has been heartbreaking for them.
I am not trying to discourage anyone from adopting, but I would discourage the idea that the adopted child will fit right in and have no issues at all, or that any problems can be quickly solved with a little family therapy. I think more often than not, that isn't the case.
You are on record on this forum as being "anti-adoption". You and some others are in an anti adoption "support group".
.
Are you sure? I can think of other posters that are anti-adoption, but not the OP that I can remember.
I don't know anyone who adopted newborns from agencies, but I know dozens of families that adopted from foster care and a few who were asked to adopt newborns through friends who knew babies were going to be put up for adoption. Three of my grandchildren were adopted through foster care.
The whole foster care process can be extremely difficult, long and heartbreaking. Lots of home visits, court dates, visitation appointments, wrap around teams, child advocates, not knowing for sure what health problems the child has, etc. At the last minute, after years of raising a child, the judge can send them off to the birth parents or someone else.
I am friends with many adoptive parents of grown foster children. In many cases, the genetics of the unfit parents (drug use, abuse, neglect, criminal, psych) are passed on to the child, along with the abuse they suffered as a young child before they were removed from their birth homes. The adoptive parents can be the best in the world but it can be impossible to reverse nature and early nurture in some.
My grandchildren have multiple issues and one has been in and out of institutions for many years. My friends' grown adopted children have been in and out of jail.
It's tough. It's heartbreaking. We hope ours will stay on a good path.
And I will never understand why someone needs to have six children. The world is overpopulated and there are enough orphans all over the world who are in dire need for loving parents.
I think adoptive parents are to be very much respected and thanked for their contribution to society.
Yet, do not go around, telling people they are selfish and inconsiderate to have too many children of their own.
LOL, I think you brought it up.
Is it okay with you that my son had 3 and adopted 3?
I have had professional experience of many children who were adopted at birth, over the past 30 years. This is a horrible but true thing that those adopting should know. Children tend to be like their bio-parents. In today's world, with little to no stigma attached to being an "unwed" mother, people tend to keep their kids. And if they cannot, their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, etc take the babies to raise. By the time that a child winds up going out into the foster care system, it usually means that there is drug and alcohol addiction and criminal behavior on both sides, three generations up and three degrees of relation parallel, who are not eligible to take the child. That means that the child is coming with a very strong genetic tendency towards addiction and mental health troubles.
I ask people, "What would you do if you got a call from DCF telling you that your cousin, whom you haven't seen in 20 years, had a baby who is going to have to go into foster care, if you won't take them?" Uniformly, the knee jerk response is, "I'd take the baby immediately." Even though the cousin was a ne'er do well addict/criminal. It's your relation, you're not letting that baby go to foster care. So imagine how deep and wide the dysfunction is, for the kids to have to go to foster care.
If you have the courage and strength to manage the mental health issues that these domestically adopted children usually have, then may God bless you. As long as you go into it with eyes wide open, knowing what you may be up against.
Chinese adopted babies were mostly fine, because their parents weren't mentally ill - they just came from a nightmare totalitarian society that at first practiced female infanticide (watch One Child Nation) to achieve the "One Child" policy, and then sold the baby girls for "adoption" by foreigners, all against the parents' wishes.
Babies from former Soviet bloc countries were largely the children of alcoholic prostitutes and criminals, many with fetal alcohol syndrome and mental illness.
Babies from South Korea were like babies adopted in the US before abortion became legal - children of girls who "made a mistake", and since society was so rigidly opposed to single motherhood, the babies were adopted out abroad.
I've seen a lot of mental illness in babies adopted from Central America, too - so I assume that it is the same as here - if the extended family is at all functional, they keep the babies.
Please, please DO adopt domestically and from abroad. Just be ready to deal with a time bomb of mental health issues that usually hit in pre-adolescence.
I think your list pertaining to intercountry adoption paints each country with a rather broad brush. Since I worked in adoption in the early 2000s, I can say that there is some truth to your assessments of each country and region.
However, since I worked in Eastern European adoption and oversaw many happy children who at=re now thriving, attending college and living normal lives.
It is wrong to suggest that ALL children adopted from Eastern Europe have neurological or psychiatric problems.
All children from Asia, are not automatically perfect. either. Since Asian countries allow baby adoption, it's often difficult access these issues, since they are not visible. Some behavioral issues are discovered when the child reaches school age, or at puberty.
While I bit adopt an infant girl from Korea, f I were to adopt again, it would not be a preverbal child.
As a mother of six, I will never understand the desire to adopt a child.
Is it really so hard to understand? Given that you have six children, I think it's a safe bet to say that you wanted to have children. Now, suppose that you had been unable to have them via the traditional biological route, for whatever reason. Would your desire for children have just dried up and blown away? Would you have just gotten a dog and been content with that? Or would you have explored some other means by which you could satisfy your desire to have children?
At its most basic, foundational level, THIS is why some people have a desire to adopt a child: because they want children.
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