What is wrong with adoption because you want a family?

Kazi

Speaking as an adoptive mom, adopting a child is no more and no less selfish than giving birth to one. Wanting a family is selfish. We do it for ourselves. It's human. It's primal. So no, there is nothing wrong with wanting to have a family.

But IMO there is good selfish and bad selfish.

Good is wanting to adopt because you want to be parents to a child that does not have any.

Bad is wanting to adopt because you wish to be a hero, or save your marriage or feel fulfilled, or have someone take care of you. Many of these bad reasons also apply to people who raise biological children.

So in essence: the desire to have a family is selfish, yet normal, but what ultimately matters is what you do once you become a parent. It should be about your child. What they need. And can you provide it?

Opedial

It is not selfish to adopt. It is selfish to only consdier your needs and wants, and go to any length to get what you want.

Adoption is about finding families for children who need a home.

Also, there is much corruption in adoption when money starts exchanging hands and it becomes human trafficking.

celtic.piskie

Because a child deserves to be thought of, once here.

Adoption SHOULD be about finding the best home for that child, not finding the best child for that home.

Do you see the difference?

Children should not be sold according to their race and health.

Healthy white little girls should not have costs 10 times higher than a 5 year old black boy.
The only reason that happens is supply and demand, treating children as goods.

Is there nothing wrong with that in your head?

How does that benefit the child?

Would you like to come with a price tag depending on how 'valuable' you were worth?

Taking a child in to a home because a child needs a home is not selfish.

Buying a child because the parents want a little daughter, it's a world apart.

Mei-Ling

Wanting a family isn't really selfish.

It's the expense at HOW you gain that family that can be considered selfish.

Anha S

I think it has an awful lot to do with how someone goes about it. If they are going into it looking to pet a great big hero complex, sure, that is completely selfish. When the fervor to adopt rules out all common sense, and people troll on places like YA for babies, thats selfish. When there is a refusal to research, or to accept that the adoptee might just have feelings about the whole being relinquished business and adoption as a whole, thats selfish. I guess therin lies the crux of the matter. Adopting a child is a whole different kettle of fish.

Adoptionissadnsick

Having bio kids and adopting ARE different things. Pretending they ARE the same is a diservice to everyone. So I'm going to try to answer why it is "wrong" to pursue adoption because you want a family.

The difference is when people birth they are continuing their DNA - there IS a physical, mental and spiritual connection between parent and child. I am an adoptee and a mother. It is difficult to find words to express the connection between pregnacy, childbirth and nurturing a human that shares your same toes, and sleeping paterns, and a thousand other little profound and charming similarities. Also there are pysiological changes as well like homonal changes and bonding chemicals.

Caring for someone else's child IS different. It is another ballgame. Read forums for adopters and you will see a few of the honest comparing it to babysitting their neighbor's brats. The comparison is apt - I know as an adopted kid; I didn't feel especially close to my aparents. It always seemed it could have just as easily been some other couple who raised me...like they were interchanable. Frankly babies are interchanable to adopters. You want a family. Me? I want MY family. There is only one specific boy I call son, I wouldn't want any son, only him.

Some families have disfuction and are unaware - not thinking about the kids needs. (These I think are the ones who at the worst end of the spectrum lose their kids to adoption.) However the infant knows it is connected and has a sense of belonging that can make even disfuctional envirenments familiar. An infant who loses his mother at birth loses a piece of himself. That is what you hear us "angry bitter" adoptees trying to express. A child who is even available for adoption will be suffering greatly - even if they appear all smiley and
"normal" - probably especially then.

As someone who was obtained by a "couple who wanted kids but couldn't have them." It is so unfair to expect a stranger to fullfill this longing for you. It is an impossible bill to fill. It was selfish of them to want me to like the things they liked, and attempt to make me be the daughter they wanted. That was selfish. But isn'lt that human nature?

The loss of the bio child you are unable to have can never be replaced by someone else - and chances are you'll always be expecting them to be able to. It is profoundly unfair.

Imagine all the traits that happen to annoy you - that's who you may adopt - a person so completely different from you - it will challenge you to the core to find that love you profess to want to share.

DevonChaos

Because adoption shouldn't be about what YOU want. It should be about supporting a child. There are many people out there who have "holes" in their lives that they want to fill with children. Sometimes they ONLY want once gender, or ONLY want one race, or ONLY want one age. If someone is willing to parent, they should be willing to accept a child who is "less than perfect". If they are willing to adopt, there are so many children out there who are deserving, not ONLY the infants. I don't have a problem with every adoption, but it sickens me to hear people say they ONLY want one gender, one race, healthy, and for x amount of money. Those kinds of people are selfish.

monkeykitty83

On one level, wanting a child has to be the reason for adoption. I would never recommend any kind of adoption to someone who DOESN'T want to parent a child. Children should live in families who love and want them... which means adoptive parents have to, at the root of it, want to be parents.

The problem comes when the desires of parents get put FIRST, because those desires should always be secondary to the needs of the child. Children shouldn't be taken from parents who can and want to parent, so that others can adopt them. Parents shouldn't feel forced or coerced to place their children for adoption. We shouldn't have 40 couples waiting for every 1 newborn available to adopt, while tens of thousands of children age out of foster care with no one interested in adopting them-- at that point it stops being about kids' needs, and starts being entirely about adults' wants.

The point of adoption SHOULD be finding homes for children who need them. Yes, that should be with families who want to parent them, not who see them as a burden or something, but ultimately, it's because that's better for the child. Adoption needs to be child-centred, not adult-centred. Adoption should be about meeting needs, not filling one person's wants at the expense of another person's rights. Wanting to be parents is necessary, but not sufficient... the focus has to be on finding homes for those children who truly need them.

myst1998

Okay..

This is two seperate issues. To want a family, to want children, is NOT selfish. It only becomes selfish when a person needs a stranger to fulfil their desires.

When an adoption takes place, it means a loss for two people to occur first and that is why it becomes selfish because if you are seeking to adopt, especially in infant adoption, it means asking a mother and a baby to be separated in order to satisfy what you want.

This is incredibly selfish, immoral and unethical. Would you walk up to someone and say to them, "My heart is giving out and I need a transplant, can I kill you and take yours"? No, why? Because murder is against the law but the principal of this is still technically the same.

If you seek to adopt a child from foster care that has been in your home for sometime, this is different as it is about the child's needs and the separation has already taken place long beforehand.

Adoption should NEVER be used to build one's family based on pure desire to have a family. It is terribly, terribly sad that there are people who cannot have their own children... my very best friend is going through this right now and I am grieving with her and for her... but even she can see how wrong it would be to seperate another mother and her child just so she could be a mother.

Causing pain, angst and lifelong trauma is NEVER okay, no matter how much you are suffering because you can't have a child. Two wrongs can never, ever make a right. It just makes one big giant mess.

Great question!

Independ"ant"

IDK....maybe because when a teen tells her mother she wants to keep her baby she has to deal with this garbage for support....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Aq00yJSxo

Its normal to want to give birth and have a family
Its not normal to want to separate a family so you can create your own.

Giving birth and adoption are completely different.
One is a natural God given right...the other isn't even a right.

SJM

Many of the selfish motivations would be eliminated if the birth certificate wasn't amended, adoptions were open, and the child had to be informed. The real problem arises when parents are running around shouting, "Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine!" as if they just found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It's selfish to want to wipe out another person's heritage, and adoption allows that to happen. Wanting to hear the pitter patter of little feet isn't selfish in and of itself. A willingness to procure someone else's child then demanding that child recognize you as its progenitor regardless of the truth is not only selfish, it's pretty weird.

Jackie B

RaWen -- IVF is selfish? Extreme maybe, but selfish? So we have on one hand here people who tell you to have your own baby and stop taking other people's babies and now on the other hand IVF is wrong? There's so much bias against the infertile adopting to "fulfill" their needs to be parents but now IVF is wrong too? What gives? Oh, and then you can *only* adopt from "approved" sources, like foster care?

ETA: Monkeykitty83 I'm so glad you brought this up! If it wasn't for the desire for a family, adoption wouldn't occur at all. That is overlooked all the time. All you want is a baby, blah, blah, blah,...shouldn't kids be adopted because the APs want a child? And the child needs a family? In what other way is adoption supposed to work?

eharrah1

The only reason you should adopt is because you want a family, or maybe to help protect a family member or friend that needs to be taken care of. I just do not agree with the adoption laws. They are/were made to supposedly protect the child. The one person who's rights and priviledges are removed from them are the children these laws are supposedly made to protect.

shellyramirez1984@yahoo.com

good point,people criticize about anything and everything they can for different reasons i guess,i am trying to place my baby for adoption and trust me i am getting alot of negative feedback.do whats in your heart.(is there an agency you are using im looking for one.)

Indian-vision

Desire to parent and love a child is the best reason to have a child !!

It DOES NOT clash with a child's need to have a family.

I am ofcourse talking about children in "need" of family not those that have been taken away from parents who do want to parent them.

Ouida B

There is nothing wrong with adoption, I did it and never regretted it.
She's known she was adopted before she really knew what that word meant. Her birth certificate was amended to have my name as her mother. I'd do it again if I a lot younger. Go ahead and make some child who needs a home happy. I have a biological daughter also and there is no difference in the love... Good luck

chunky monkey

it is no way selfish to adopt you are giving a child a family and a home. what is so selfish about that?

sailboatsandbutterflies

Frankly I agree with you. I'm not sure why it would be considered "selfish" to adopt UNLESS the individuals who are answering the questions are adopted children/adults who have had horrible experiences and feel that they may have better chance without their adopted parents.

Frankly if that is the case, I don't blame them for that idea--maybe they would have been however it's a moot point. If they were not adopted--they would have been bitter that no one was selfLESS enough to take them in.

cmc

I agree. People getting pregnant don't say "wouldn't it be nice for this child if it were born". I think adoption is about wanting a family. You need to consider the child too, but it isn't realistic to think someone does it to be altruistic. I think it is selfish - but that is fine, as long as it is done ethically and the child is raised with love in a good home.

Melissa F

There is nothing wrong with adoption and there is nothing wrong when letting the child know they are adopted (when they are at an age to understand it). I have many family members who were adopted and they all know that they were adopted by the time they were 13 and they are all fine with it.

RaWen

Nothing is selfish about chosing to adopt. I think IVF is selfish - it is using ridiculous amounts of resources and creates much human waste. The only "bad" thing about adoption is it is so expensive (but not much more expensive than IVF).

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