so...where would they go?

I've been thinking about this a lot myself, and here's my take on it. You have to WANT to be a parent, WANT to have children "of your own", or WANT a family, in order to be willing to go through the adoption process. It takes a long time and a lot of effort to adopt, and in some cases, a lot of money. People just don't go through the adoption process because they're "meh" about having kids. BUT, you have to do your research, and be willing to understand the adoptee's position in order to be a GOOD adoptive parent. You have to be willing to understand and accept (and preferably, embrace) the fact that your child isn't JUST your child. There's a whole lot more to adoption than filling out some paperwork and buying diapers. You're changing another human being's entire life, and affecting MANY others. You have to have a good balance between "I want", and "I'm not the important one in this scenario".

i'll probably get fried right along with you, so here goes.

I don't consider the majority of children placed for adoption to be unwanted or uncared for. I'll say that to start off with. Yet i have a hard time understanding people getting slammed with wanting to adopt to fill their own needs. Why does anyone plan a pregnancy? Isn't it to fullfill their own needs and wants to be a parent? So I do not understand why it's so wrong to want to adopt because you'd like to be a parent.

I don't see what's wrong with wanting to raise a child to be the best adult you can help them be. I don't see what's wrong with wanting to teach a child all the good there is in life and teach them how to handle the bad.

People on here get slammed for saying they want to adopt to give a child a better life. They are told that is the wrong thinking and most children placed for adoption in the US are very wanted and very loved by their bio parents. And i do agree with this.

Then the next question someone else will slam a person for wanting to adopt because they want to be a parent more than anything in this world. They are told they should be wanting to adopt to help needy children, ones that need homes. Isn't this the same as wanting to give a child a better life?

Now most prospective adoptive parents come on here and are not educated in using terms that are not offensive to many, and i think this is where some of the problems come from. But instead of educating them, all too often the are ridiculed and put down.

Maybe the point of some, even though their answers come across harsh and angry are trying to point out that if more people stopped adopting infants then agencies would be forced to try and keep bio mom and baby together more than what's being done now. But i cannot speak for others and what they're thinking.

All i know is my daughter's other mother would have placed her wether is was with my hubby and I, or another couple. And I'd have to say then she would be in the wrong home. She is my own child, and i'm trying my best to raise her to know her entire story. I want her to know her bio family as well as her adopted one. I do this because i wanted to be a parent more than anything in this world, and want what's best for my child.

I think that foster children and youth should have first priority into homes of permancy since according to the child welfare statistics they are usually removed due to neglect and abuse. They NEED homes seperate from those they were born into.

Aside from that I think that if the US reformed their laws to promote parenting like Australia and with a a few new twists of its own cause aust. isn't perfect that the rate of surrendered infants and child would reduce dramatically.

for the ones left over, I advcocate for permanent legal guardianship and changing the last name of the child to that of the legal caretaker/parents by adding it onto the name already in place.

I have met a few adoptive parents where legal guardianshp wasn't possible. And in those situations after reform of the laws so the the identity and civil and human rights of child could be honored, then as a last option I think adoption would be okay.

Hi Rachael,

I am so glad you asked this question! I was thinking of asking a similar one myself since I touched on this subject in a reply here last week.

Going on the assumption you offered, if all parents who wanted to give birth to their own children could do so, that would totally take the demand side out of the adoption equation. That would then lower the associated costs for adoption, if not eliminating private adoption altogether. It is exactly because the demand for infants is so high that we have profit-driven businesses in the first place.

Lack of demand would eliminate the baby trollers, the Dear Birthmother letters, the ads, and recruitment of babies from poorer, single, younger, or other typically targeted groups. The pressure to relinquish babies at birth would disappear. Women wouldn't hear anymore about all the "better qualified parents than themselves out there who desperately want a child but cannot have one." If all people could have their own children that would also greatly reduce the importing of children here from 3rd world countries.

That does not mean that there would never be any American children who later lose their parents to death. There will also unfortunately still be some children removed from their parent's custody for abuse reasons. Homes should be found for those children. First, relatives should be sought to care for the children. If there are none, then temporary foster care should be utilized until more permanent arrangements could be made such as adoption or guardianship. By the way, it would also change foster care because only people who really want to provide temporary care would continue doing it. The people who had hopes of foster care leading to adoption would probably not be interested anymore.

Lack of ability to give birth is not the only reason for adoption. There will always be some people who want to adopt who already have children. There will also be some who choose not to give birth yet still wish to be parents. There just would not be the competition we see today for 90 couples competing for every healthy, white infant. The people who would be adopting then would be the ones who are not trying to pretend they gave birth to a child they did not. They are not likely to want to change everything about the child nor deny his/her background. I believe they would be totally adopting for the best interests of the child rather than for themselves, which would lead to fewer negative issues for the adoptees.

The other thing I like about this question is that it points out that adoption as it is, appears to be about providing babies for childless couples when it should not be. If we remove that part from the equation, we will again have what adoption is really meant to be - finding homes only for the children who really need them.

Great question. It's the kind that hopefully gets people thinking! Thanks for asking it.

julie j

reunited adoptee

I think many of them would go home with their families.

I do not want adoption to go away. I DO think there are people who do not want their children or who are abusive or neglectful and that those children DO deserve to be raised by adoptive families.

But I also believe that there are many people who would parent their children if given the proper encouragement and support.

I think adoption should be a last resort. That's all.

Take a look at what's going on in Australia right now, and you'll have your answer.

There are only about 500 adoptions taking place there per year as opposed to...over 100,000 in the USA? Where are the children in Australia going who aren't adopted? I'll tell you...they are staying with their mothers.

We need to stop looking at adoption as a way to build families and start using it for its intended purpose. We need to start focusing our social programs on supporting mothers, encouraging them to parent, on education and family preservation.

Sure, there will always be a need for adoptions. It hasn't completely gone away in Australia, just as it will never completely go away here. But why not look at it as something that should only have to be a last resort, instead of something that is "a beautiful and wonderful thing"?

I think it is a legitimate question. And for the record, I have never understood why some people say that adoptive parents want children for their own selfish reasons, for themselves, And bio parents want children......why? It is o.k. to want to be a parent for yourself, as most of us do, as well as for the child. I don't think we can say that most parents decide to be parents only for the sake of a child. It is a mixture of wants, needs, hopes and dreams for a child and ourselves. I think that is o.k. But obviously if we are wanting a child as an object to control, to meet our needs, then that's different!

Throughout history, people have taken care of "others" children. Not too many years ago, we housed children in orphanages where there was little interaction with others, muchless a family. We saw that this was detrimental to children. So we moved toward small group homes and foster care. Taking care of the world's children is a work in progress. We have a long way to go! But we have also come a long way. I think if you ask the majority of people if their family, whether bio or adoptive, was a good one, you'd get mixed reviews. But bottom line, it is a family. It is not a brick building with one child care worker for every 50 children. We have much yet to do, reforms to make, changes to make in adoption. But it is what we have now, and it works well for so many.

Some facts:

Most children who are surrendered to adoption ARE wanted. Their mother believes (or has been convinced) that the child would have a 'better' life with another family. In the past it was the unmarried who were seen as 'unfit' to raise their own children. For whatever reason she is desperate.

There are not loads of unwanted children in the US to be adopted (except in foster care, but as you know, that is not what PAPs are interested in, generally). Less than 1% of children born to unwed mothers are actually relinquished. And there are 90 couples per 1 healthy, white infant to adopt. So where's the surplus?

Take the actor Jack Nicholson. He was born to an unwed mother in 1937. His mother scrambled to get a husband, but he was already married, so her mother finally stepped in to raise Jack as her own. So he stayed in the FAMILY. Had Nicholson been born just ten years later, he surely would have been given up for adoption as social pressure in the US increased.

Maybe your mother was unable to take care of you. But for MANY of us our parents were MORE than able to care for us. My own mother (and I repeat it here ad nauseum to counter the whore/trash image so many enjoy perpetrating) was a girl at university who had a large, wealthy family. She is a much healthier person (emotionally and physically) than my adoptive mother. So WHY did this have to happen?! It didn't.

No one here believes that children who are in abusive, neglectful, or addictive homes should have to stay with those mothers. That said, there needs to be the realization that NOT everyone who wants a child can have one. Not everyone who wants a Jaguar can have one. Not everyone who wants to be a doctor can be one. Not everyone who wants to grow roses will be able to do so.

There seems to be a misconception in THIS generation that did not exist in my parent's era, where everyone believes that BECAUSE they WANT a child, that they DESERVE a child.

How can we have so many infertile people in a time with more scientific technology available than ever? Because people want to delay childbirth, childrearing, they are fat, they smoke, and they were promiscuous in the earlier years and have incurable diseases that prevent their ability to conceive. Many are quick to criticize the unwed mother's behavior--I have to wonder if it's so we won't look too closely at theirs.

Good question it got me thinking. I will answer on this one more later. :)

don't we already have programs encouraging people to parent and supporting those who were ill prepared to parent (i.e. Welfare, WIC, parenting classes, etc)? yet, babies are still be dumped in hospital cans, dumped at prom dances, etc.

From reading the posts of you and lori, i can't imagine (and no offense to be taken, please as i have only gathered this information from the posts on the board) that people would try to keep everyone together or try to have you adopted into a member of the family if Lori couldn't parent you. There are absolutely situations where adoption IS a good thing.

When a young single mom gets pregnant, people on this board have pointed out that usually it's the families pressuring the young gal to adopt .. . yet, you want us to turn to those same families for placement? I can't understand that?

If we were to adopt people who were so mentally instable that they wanted a child to round out their lives, then yes, we would have a far more overloaded foster care system, more kids growing up without security of ANY family, education would be compromised as these kids are jostled around foster homes like hot potatoes, etc.

"We" as adoptees probably would've ended up in far worse situations than we believe ourselves (if we do) to be in now. We can't wipe the earth of adoptive parents -- we would have more than 100,000 kids per year thrown into the foster care system (per the facts stated on this board that there are 100K adoptions per year) . . .my god, can you imagine the drain on the system?

I don't know what more we can do to encourage people to parent. We have programs available for them to financially assist them, pay for daycare, help them find jobs, etc. We have entertainment "stars" who are single and parenting and promoting it; we have young girls all over Maury searching for a father and treating their children like new "blingy" purses and accessories. These girls were not forced to relinquish and they have some sort of income to parent.

I believe that adoptive parents do serve a purpose for us just as much as we do for them. They are not greedy predators -- they are people wishing to have a family while providing a home for a child.