There are things adoption can help accomplish, and things it cannot, but at the end of the day, adoption is… just adoption.
Adoption can provide loving and stable homes for children who need them. Adoption can offer a safe alternative for women who find themselves “knocked up” by a stranger or a one-night stand, or for those who feel unprepared to parent. It can afford families with “too many kids” already another option that will enable them to reserve already limited resources for the children they’re already raising.
Likewise, there are kids who get adopted and grow up in homes that afford them greater opportunities in life, which may mean anything from better nutrition, private healthcare and safer neighborhoods to family trips to Disneyworld or vacations abroad to better schools and colleges and as a result, an easier path to better jobs as an adult.
Adopting can provide a couple an alternative means of building or growing a family. It can make parents of the childless. Some feel by adopting they are fulfilling their calling in the world, or providing for a child in need. Placing a child in an open adoption can offer birthparents an opportunity to receive updates &/or keep in touch with the adoptive family… but it’s not co-parenting, and its not like joint custody, because again: it’s just adoption.
Adoption offers no guarantees
There’s no guarantee that adoption will always be the “right” choice, because in human life, there simply are no absolutes. That’s why some birthparents who place have a deep sense of peace over the choices they made, while others struggle with regrets. Likewise, birthsiblings of adoptees sometimes feel they were favored, while others resent having not gotten the advantages in life their adopted sibs may have gained growing up elsewhere,
Many adoptees are grateful to have been adopted, while others spend their lives feeling they didn’t belong in their adoptive family and wondering what life with their first family may have been like. There are people who grew up adopted and always knowing their biological relatives, so they never question where they came from. And there are adopted people who didn’t, and who insists they don’t want to know their birthfamilies– or who never stop feeling rejected or abandoned by the parents they never knew.
There are adoptive parents who come to see their infertility as a blessing because without it they may have never adopted the children that they did. And there are others who forever mourn the chance to have borne children who shared their genes, Adoption is just adoption– not a one-size-fits-all solution, after all. But here’s the thing: adoption, in its purest form, was never intended to benefit anybody but the kids, by providing them the safe homes they might not otherwise gain any other way… when just adoption could fulfill that need.
Why all adoptions should be just
According to dictionary.com, the word “justice” is a noun referring to “the quality of being just” which is described as being righteous, equitable, or morally right.
In a perfect world, let’s be honest: there would be no need for adoption. There would be no unwanted pregnancies, no maternal deaths, no abandoned babies, no child abuse, no deadbeat dads, no addiction, no poverty nor neglect, no illness, no special needs, no homelessness, and no violence. (And that’s just the start of the list of reasons that kids sometimes need to be adopted.)
But that’s not the world in which we live, is it? Adoption has existed for centuries, and will likely continue to, so it’s all the more important that we work together to make sure every adoption is a just adoption, marked by righteousness, fairness and ethics.
That’s not how it is exactly, just yet, given that every state has its own set of adoption laws and unethical baby brokers still break the rules all too often. If you need help determining where and how to find more reliable, trustworthy adoption providers like us, AdoptMatch is an online resource that provides guidance nationwide.
And if you want to join the fight for adoption reform, please do so, because there’s much work to be done. And because ultimately, ensuring a just adoption for anyone can mean bettering adoption for everyone.
