My View on Adoption These Days

My view on adoption keeps changing. I used to think it was this really amazing thing. I thought that I would grow up and adopt a child someday. I felt the need to “pay it forward”. I would adopt a child because I knew what it felt like and I would help them to deal with it. I was well-adjusted and I would raise a well-adjusted adoptee. I would show them that DNA didn’t really matter, because I didn’t believe that it did. I remember asking my boyfriend about it once. I wanted to know if he would support my plan. He didn’t and I was secretly upset with him. He said he would have a really hard time raising another man’s child. He wanted to have his own children and he couldn’t see adoption as a first choice. At least the guy was honest.

Then I entered reunion and I started to see that maybe, just maybe, DNA did matter. I started to see similarities. I saw pictures of people who I looked like. I could see myself fitting in with them, the people who gave me away, people who I had always thought about and wondered about but never really admitted to thinking about. I started to think that maybe there was more to adoption than I had given credit to before. Then I started doing some of my own research. And I found blogs. And I found an online community. And I started to really think things through. And I realized that what I had never really dealt with before was the pain and the grief. I had never really grieved for the life that I could have had if things had worked out differently. A lot of my “issues” stemmed from my adoption. Now that I’m working on my adoption issues, my “issues” in life seem to be getting a lot better. And I have to say that it makes a ton of sense to me now. Call me crazy, but I know now why I push people away and why I was always so sensitive around my birthday. Just a few examples…

I’ve come to a place now where I don’t think that infant adoption is a good idea. There are always going to be cases where adoption is going to be needed. There are going to be babies like me who really are unwanted. But I don’t think its right to put a child up for adoption because you are young and don’t have a lot of money and maybe aren’t married. I don’t think that adoption is a good solution to temporary problems. I think that it should be a last resort. And I think that there are a ton of kids in foster care who deserve good families.

I think that our current adoption practices need to change. I think money needs to be removed from the equation, that pre-birth matching needs to stop, and that OBCs should never be sealed, but instead adoption certificates should be issued instead. I also think society needs to get better about how they view adoption. It’s all possible, just not probable. So I’m not going to hold my breath, but I will continue to hope for a better day.