Taking Back November

I will be joining in with some of my fellow bloggers in taking back the month of November!  November is National Adoption Month.  What started as a way to promote foster care adoption has now warped into something else.

For the record, while I don't consider myself to be "anti-adoption", I do consider myself to be pro-family preservation.  So while there are a lot of kids out there who do need loving homes, I think that as a society we need to work harder to keep families together.  A lot of times adoption is seen as a solution to temporary problems.  We grow older ever second so I don't think that age is a great reason to give up your kid.  Wealth is something that fluctuates over time.  I think as a society, we need to help these people out.  Marriage is another thing that seems to change over time (or it could).  Over half of marriages now are expected to fail.  Who's to say that adoptive parents won't end up single themselves?

At the same time, there are people out there who simply don't want to parent.  They have their reasons.  My first mother's situation was interesting.  She had a lot of societal pressure to give me up.  She was scared of what people would think.  But nobody coerced her.  She didn't wish to parent me.  She wanted to go back to her normal life.  That doesn't make her a bad person.  I write this because it's to illustrate the point that not all people want to parent, and not all people should parent either.  So we do need a system for those children.  Children who do need loving parents.  But I don't think it's our current system.  I don't think that sealing records is the way to go.  I don't think that falsifying documents so that my adoptive mother is listed as the woman who gave birth to me is the right way to handle children who do need parents.

I will be blogging this month about issues surrounding adoption from an adoptee point of view.  Hope you enjoy!