If you could change one perception of adoption?

That it is the one social institution about which nothing is ever bad and everything is always good.

Really, if I see one more "ZOMG how could anyone anywhere ever believe there's the teeniest thing wrong with the wonder that is adoption?" question here, I will snatch myself bald headed.

Everything has a downside. Everything has gray areas. Everything.

Absolutely!! Im adopted myself and previously had always felt 'an understanding' towards my natural Mother. She was having an ongoing affair with a married man, he had 3 children with his wife and i was the 5th baby he had conceived with my birth mother, he told her to 'get it adopted'. My birth mother had given one of my brothers up for adoption previously when he was 6 months old and disliked the Social workers and system (although things were different then). For that reason when she became pregnant with me she never saw a doctor, although her friends and family were aware she was pregnant she had told them she 'wasn't keeping it' yet she had not arranged this with anyone. She ignored the pregnancy and continued to smoke and drink. Only going to the hospital once she was in labour, when i was born she refused to look at me or hold me, she told the nurses she didn't want 'it' and wasn't taking 'it' home. Eventually the social workers came and took me away, i was fostered by my brothers adopted parents and then adopted. Once i was old enough i traced her and met her and my other siblings, though she told be she had thought about me everyday she didn't seem that bothered or interested in me, i felt somewhere in the back of her mind for her i still didn't exist. When i married and became pregnant i was overjoyed, yet it was also such emotional turmoil, right from the day i conceived my baby was part of me. The bond between myself and my baby shocked me to the core and i could not possibly understand how anyone could put their own feelings and fears over that of a babies health. I have 2 children and neither pregnancy or birth was easy, i suffered a lot, and then got post natal depression, perhaps the new found anger for my birth mother played a part in that, maybe it didn't, i don't know. I am disabled due to complications when i was born, theres a strong possiblity that something could have been done had they known, my birth mother acknowledges that and shrugs. Im not bitter, you get what life deals you and i cope well. Im not against adoption at all, i have had a wonderful life because of it. Most Mothers that chose to give up their children go through a terrible time, like a bereavement, and i know thats how i would feel. But until i had a baby i wasn't aware that my mother didn't feel that way, she gave birth, gave me up, then got on with her life. Before i had children i thought that was fair enough, she'd made a decision that was good for both of us. The bit about her not getting medical attention when pregnant didn't really occur to me as being that important. What changed my perception was the X factor, that magical something that is only there between a baby and its mother from the second they are conceived, once i experienced and felt that i could never ever understand how anyone could feel a baby kicking and moving inside of them and not feel that need to protect and want to make sure they are ok. I understand for some maybe part of that protection involves giving them up for adoption. I just don't understand my birth mother.

Oh, there are SO many! But as an AP, one of the perceptions that bugs me the most is that something must be "wrong" with my son because he was in foster care. Ooh, that just STEAMS me! It goes right along with the perception that his first mother "must have been on drugs." Grrr. Both are far from the truth.

that all adoptive parents do not recognize the loss on 2 sides of the adoption triad. That all APs think that first parents are nothing more than "breeders". That all APs think it is their right to have a child, when in reality many APs spend a LOT of time feeling very humbled by the gift of their adopted child and the pain that is involved by the first parents and the child.

That adoption is a reproductive choice.

When people accept that faulty line of reasoning, they begin to believe that the mother alone should make the choice, the father has no rights, the child has no rights, and government secrecy is more easily disguised as 'birthmother privacy'.

That every adoptee is scarred for life. That if you adopt a baby you are a baby snatcher. That some think they have the right to tell others what age child and from where they should adopt. That all adoptees are unhappy that they were adopted (many of us are very happy we were adopted) and will be messed up for life I could go on but there are to many to list

that adoption is neither perfectly wonderful nor completely disastrous.

Some of society tends to think that it's the "most wonderful" or "most loving" choice which is not always true.

Other parts of society gravitate the other way basically saying how adoption is horrible with no positives.

Adoption experiences are shaped by a myriad of factors that differ from person to person and relationship to relationship. I just think that painting adoption with one brush doesn't work and that should change.

(and yes, I'm aware my opinion is unpopular and probably semi-unwelcome, so sue me)

That adoption is somehow God's will. Because the implication here is that poverty, disease, corruption, and war are all also God's will, and there is nothing in our individual power to improve things; we can only take advantage of an awful situation. To even conceive of such an ignoble, spiteful, and heinous God is the work of the monstrous; the arrogant; the self-conceited and narcissistic; the infinitely vain. Those who espouse such a God do not deserve children.

The one perception of adoption is that it should be made illegal. Fostering, yes, losing identity, NO.

That not all adoptions are ethical. In general people who aren't affected by adoption believe that there is no such as forced adoption and all happen because the parents chose to surrender or the child has been abused and removed from their parents. Forced adoptions are on the increase in the UK due to false allegations or social services not wanting to work with families to keep them together.