almost human

from another question "For everyone with rude comments I am interested in adopting for all the right reasons. Where I live it is very hard to adopt an American baby."

I hear this all the time, and it seems so black and white to those who say it. So I'd like to know exactly WHAT these "right" reasons are that those who want to adopt internationally seem to feel is understood as a convention?

On the flip side, WHAT do those who want to adopt internationally think are the "wrong" reasons?

someone brought this up in another question I asked.

and it felt somehow right, so I wondered what others thought about this?

If yes, why do you think this is so?

btw, this will be up for open vote - I'm just curious

It just seems like I see more huge families through adoption. I'm truly just perplexed why, if this is true.

My story has lies, deception, abuse, twins, and a major adoption agency doing damage control. It I need to get it out there.

Someone had my last question deleted. Hmmm, who could that be?

Seriously - I Need LOTS of great answers to pursue. Please provide lots of LEGITIMATE answers, just like you did last time.

Thank you!

Part of the horror of being adopted is feeling like you were bought and sold. I always felt like a souvenir or plaything as a child, and being acquired unnaturally gave me even more of a sense that adoption was less about my welfare and more about my parents purchasing a novelty.

Now, my situation might be different, my childhood perspective might have been skewed, and you might not LIKE my question, but a lot of us adoptees feel this way. But it DOES bring up some fundamental valid questions:

How are we different than purchased goods? What is the difference between adopting out babies and human trafficking? Don't Adoptive parents also wonder these things when they are being gouged for fees beyond reasonable cost? Should adoptive parents defend these agencies that rape them of all their money? Should money be exchanged when human lives are being exchanged? Everyone thinks us adoptees are being over-sensitive, but really - aren't there some fundamental civil rights and ethics at issue here?

I think this is an important question that everyone affected by adoption needs to discuss. I'd like to hear from all parents and adoptees. I don't want to hear from agency representatives, however...

We're all supposedly here because we care about children, right?

If you all were to put your personal situations aside for just one moment and formulate what to do about child placement with the best interests of the child as priority number one, what would be our common touch-points?

(please let's be positive and leave out blaming anyone)

thank you

And also, is there a period prior to adoption where they can get to know the prospective adoptive parents first?

I was just curious.

It just seems to me like it would be awful if they were sent to be adopted with people they really didn't like. It seems to me that they deserve a little bit of self-determination, after all they've been through, having their lives in upheaval all the time, having everything decided for them and nobody asking them what they want.

i just read someone talking about looking for children through photo listings. i know that i was "chosen" in a similar manner. from the beginning of the paper work until i arrived, all my parents had were two photos to go on.

i have a hard time grasping this. it seems rather barbaric, from my adoptee perspective. it makes me feel like a commodity, sold in a catalog.

i'd like to hear some convincing arguments for why this is an acceptable or adequate method of choosing who to adopt.

i am trying to form my opinions about creating families and how this is accomplished. i am really not, at this point, comfortable with the validity of the love at first photo sighting argument, nor do i know much about this practice.

whenever i have this euwww ick feeling, i try and understand it before rejecting it out of hand. welcome everyone's insights

It just occurred to me that, when pregnant, the child we get is whatever God decides or genetics or chance happens at conception.

But adoptive parents seem to have a list of what they will and won't accept. Or a hierarchy of what they want. And so many of them want the same things that there is a shortage of that profile ideal child while so many needy children languish.

How many potential adoptive parents would be willing to spin the roulette wheel? What if choice was as much NOT an option as natural birth? How long would the wait list be then?

People want children to nurture and parent - if you couldn't choose, would you still want to adopt?

This video clip from the ADOPTED, the movie really disturbed me.

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

Do you feel more for the child or the parent?