Do adoptive parents really realise what they're getting in to?

[Zavi]

I know that many infertile couples, or established families, turn to adoption as a way of creating happy family units but I wonder how many realise that having an adopted child - especially if it's not newborn(ish) - realise what they're getting in to. Children that are available for adoption almost always come from horribly dysfunctional families and that the children, unfortunately, have inherent issues, some of which will never be overcome by love/best intention.
It's my view that if childless couples/singles think that they will be able to form ready-made happy families with the type of children who are up for adoption then they are going to have a rude awakening.

Kew - I've seen the stats (can't remember where) and disruptions definitely climb with the age of the child at adoption.

OP has been more markedly offensive with every post - it sounds like she read an article somewhere, and has taken it upon herself to pronounce from the summit, though I do wonder if there's more going on here than she's letting on. It's extraordinary that somebody with no experience would come on here and TELL experienced adopters about adoption rather than ASKING them. But hey ho, some people are like that.

It is, notwithstanding, an interesting issue. I suspect I'm not the only adopter who went through the system with a kind of twin track thinking going on - on the one hand, fully apprised of the risks, saying all the right things to the social workers about our preparedness and awareness. On the other hand, part of me had fingers stuck in my ears, humming loudly, and living in hope that MY child would have no problems and we would have a perfect family life where the sun always shines.

But I think that may be inevitable. Even functional. I don't want to be a FT unpaid therapeutic carer for a 'damaged' child. If I did I would do the appropriate training and at least get paid for it. No, I wanted a child to mother, I wanted to complete my family, I wanted a normal happy family life. And that's what motivated me through the process and got me to where I am now - having, for now at least, a normal happy family life.

The social workers must know this. They're full of doom and gloom and warnings, and at times it feels like you're being told that if you dare hope that life as an adoptive parent will be anything but misery and strife then you are an irresponsible romantic. But how many adopters would they get who are signing up for a life of strife?

All parents are romantic and misty-eyed when they take the huge leap of faith that is involved in choosing family life. Just as we don't fall in love with our partners while dwelling on the rows, compromises and tricky times that will inevitably come. Of course adoption carries extra and different complications to parenting birth children, but I really reject this dogma that adopted children are all CAMHS caseloads in waiting. Hey, that's my kid you're talking about. I love her just the way she is.

Thanks for info, Lilka, I feel a bit how ignorant I was about UK situation, but then, I do come from a very very different system. Why so few voluntary relinquished children in the UK, considering how many there are elsewhere? Are there better support mechanisms elsewhere for the bio mothers (USA)? Easier access to abortion here? Cultural reasons?

I have one aunt & one cousin who gave up newborns. Another relative gave up 18 month old twins, although that was into foster care (stayed with same carers until adulthood). I don't know if she would have give them up to adoption. Another cousin adopted a newborn almost 5 yrs ago (roller coaster!)

My DH and I want to adopt an older child, possibly a small sibling group. The average age for adopted children here is around eighteen months and up. We are thinking of asking if we can just be considered for children who are aged four and up, since to be honest the exterior of our home is not toddler friendly - lots of steps - and we have both worked with children aged four and up in the past, including children with severe SN and MH. So hopefully we could use our past experiences to help to better care for our child or children.

lljkk I don't really know - but although there are no national statistics on relinquished children, I doubt there could be more than 40-ish at most in a single year, maybe that's quite an overestimation and there are far less. But someone else please correct me if you know more, because that is a guess

I think we are very accepting of abortion generally, and compared to the US, we (and other western european countries which also have very low adoption rates of relinquished children) do have a lot of support systems (welfare, good access to cheap medical care or in the UK the NHS, quite lengthy paid maternity leave etc) for the mother so that she can keep her baby

Most parents who have their children taken away would never have relinquished them willingly. I'm glad we have the suppport systems we have, because I don't personally feel an infant should be relinquished unless the mother truely does not want to raise it, or has such major problems that the baby would be harmed if she kept it

Ullena - SS do not choose for you the age of the child. You should be in complete control of what ages of child you will consider. In fact, if by older child you mean aged 5+, you will probably find that agencies will be very welcoming and maybe prioritise the application. Older child adoptions are rare, and once a child reaches about 5, their chances of finding a family are low. Once they reach 8 ish, it's very very low, and many LA's at that age, don't even try to find adoptive parents, they default to permanent foster care.

I have adopted two older children (were 10 and 8 when they moved in), and I do feel that adopting an older child can be fantastic. They are more likely to face issues than a younger child (although that isn't a blanket thing, some older children do brilliantly and some babies are very 'damaged' even as babies) but I feel strongly that a child should never be denied an adoptive home through age alone, if they want to be adopted. There should be enough adoptive families for them all, but there are nowhere near enough. And again for sibling groups, nowhere near enough families

Lilka, thank you, yes we would prefer to adopt an older child or older sibling group. We are both in our thirties now, DH closer to forty, and so are certainly old enough, iyswim. We just feel that we would be better able to parent older children due to our own life experience so far. We are happy to apply to adopt children between the ages of four to twelve.

Ullena, I suspect an agency would bite your hand off if you are really interested in an older sibling group - there just aren't enough people prepared to adopt these children.

OP, I still don't get the point of your post. Do you know of any adopters who got all the way through assessment and preparation and still thought that all they needed to do was really love their adopted child and hey presto, happy family?

Zavi Fri 14-Sep-12 23:38:08
"I posted this because I believe that people who might be considering adoption ought to think twice about what they might be getting in to.
Having a child through natural means and having a child through adoption are completely different things."

According to my mother, the job of parenting her adopted child threw up very similar issues to my job of parenting my biological child who was traumatised by disability issues over which we had no control- except that mum reckons my brother was far less damaged by his trauma, was far less hard work and has come through it far better.

"At least with our own kids we know where we've gone wrong and we know how our behaviour effects our kids ( they're like sponges right,!) but with kids that have had to be adopted all you know is that their upbringing has been so rubbish that they have has to be removed from that environment."

Oh yeah, because nothing can ever happen to our biological children apart from what they learn from us and where we go wrong. Dd's mental health issues are caused by me, her chronic joint condition which leaves her in permanent pain is something I had control over, the years of misdiagnosis, damaging treatment and bullying by doctors and school staff is where I went wrong?

Other people have pointed out that you don't know anything about adopting or adoptive parents. It doesn't seem as if you know a lot about parenting biological children either.

I have stepchildren as well as DD. They are all, thank goodness, healthy and have no special needs. They all require similar parenting, though obviously stepfamilies throw up issues of how parenting is shared out between two homes that are special to them.

The really big difference between DD and my DSSs is the one of personal space. DD grew in my womb, was fully breastfed and we shared a bed for many years, took baths together and generally live in one another's space very comfortably. I never shared that closeness with my DSSs and our ability to share personal space is not nearly as great as the ability that DD and I have to share personal space. I always wonder what it is like for families where a child or children are adopted and others are biological and whether they share their personal space in the same way.

In our family there has never been a difference, Bonsoir: if anything, my adopted db has been physically closer to his mum than some of his other siblings- but that is more a question of personality. But then he came to our family as a toddler so there wasn't quite the same issue of personal boundaries as there might have been with an older, more self-conscious child.

Zavi, there are myriad good reasons why it is so difficult to adopt - and one of them is because the agencies involved spend so much time trying to match children to the right families and making sure that those families are fully aware of any issues and that they will be able to deal with them.

I say that as the mother of a boy we adopted age 6. We had known him almost since birth and knew him inside out, but it still took us almost 5 years to make it legal.

Mind you, he's a much easier personality than either of our bio DDs!

"I always wonder what it is like for families where a child or children are adopted and others are biological and whether they share their personal space in the same way."

I would imagine it varies by family, Bonsoir.

DS and I are physically very close - we co-slept for some time after his adoption (out of necessity to start with and later out of comfort) and even now at nearly 7, when he is unsettled his default position is back in bed with me. His favorite position watching TV is cuddled up to me. Of course it wasn't like that immediately - cuddling up to a complete stranger would be more likely to show signs of attachment issues rather than a good thing!

The difference (I imagine) with step children is that they still have their birth parents around - that is their primary source of comfort and closeness. Of course some children are naturally cuddlers (DS isn't particularly) so will be physically affectionate with anyone close to them.

I'm sure the issues are different for children adopted when they are older but even then I would imagine that physical closeness probably comes with time and trust.

I'm not a step parent but I don't imagine in most situations that having step children is at all similar to having adopted children.

The issue I am talking of is not so much one of cuddling and physical affection, but ability to share space because one is so highly attuned to one another that you don't bump into each or get in one another's way. DD grew up from the start knowing how I use the space around me whereas the DSSs (particulary DSS1) has another concept of space entirely and doesn't know in an unconscious way when he has moved into my space and is in the way.

I'm not sure then Bonsoir - I've never really been consious of DS being in my space. If you adopt a very young child there can't really be their space and your space! And certainly its not compatible with changing nappies and catching sick in your hand, which I can't imagine doing for any child except DS. But I'm not really sure I understand what you mean, unless you are talking about separation ie you don't really feel the separation/separate identity of your own child in the same way you do with other children. They feel more like an extension of you rather than a separate being.

I'm sure that changes as they get older though.

Ultimately I have no idea if I feel differently about DS than anyone else does about their's, I only know how I feel and thats hard to explain. From observation, I haven't noticed any difference between adoptive and birth children in those families who have both (to the naked eye!).

Bonsoir Mon 17-Sep-12 11:56:10
"The issue I am talking of is not so much one of cuddling and physical affection, but ability to share space because one is so highly attuned to one another that you don't bump into each or get in one another's way."

I think there is a difference between adopting parents who bond with their children (ime) in a very similar way to biological parents, just at a later stage in their lives, and step-parents who however loving and close are always aware that they are interacting with somebody else's child.

Db3 grew up with us from the age of 2. By the time he went to secondary school he had spent 9 years getting used to family space: not really very different from his brothers who had spent 11 years. He had no other frames of reference: he made up the family and defined how we used space just as much as any other family member did.

There's certainly no difference in our family. It is something DH and I have discussed both alone together and with the DDs and as DD2 put it: "He is just one of us."

Kew, I second your sentiment in your final paragraph. I know how I feel about all my DCs and am secure in my love for them but have no idea if others feel the same. Presumably not, as we're all different.

No, I am not talking about separateness, Kewcumber, which is another issue entirely. I do appreciate that you only have one DS so no comparison points. I wondered whether parents who are also stepparents and parents with both biological and adopted children felt that difference. I know that I am equally ambitious for all three children in our family and ensure they all get similar opportunities and they all get equal levels of attention when they are here - favourite foods in turn, ensuring they get one-on-one time etc. But I cannot (and nor can the DSSs) live physically in the same room for hours on end as DD and I can, and we have never been able to.

Prospective adoptive parents go through rigourous training course where possible issues are hammered home so I'd say, yes, they do know what they're getting themselves into!

That's why I thought my experience might be useful Bonsoir: because my mother had that opportunity of comparison: she had children of both kind and no, she didn't feel it made a difference. When she went in for adoption she knew that this would mean that db would become her child, just as much as if he had passed through her vagina or been handed out through a caesarian section. She knew there would be a bonding process, just as there is with a newborn baby, only that this would come at a later stage and possibly take slightly longer. And once they were bonded, they were the same kind of mother-child unit as she and I were.

"But I cannot (and nor can the DSSs) live physically in the same room for hours on end as DD and I can, and we have never been able to."

But how would you parent a child (adoptive or birth) if you can't be in the same room as them for hours - parenting when you have a very small child is 24/7 they are virtually attached to you.

In the majority of cases that I have seen, step-parenting is very different. My ex has a step-father, he is the only father he has ever known (his mother was a single parent before she married), they have been step-parent and child for over 40 years but he still calls him and thinks of him as "step" father.

I would be amazed if any adoptive parent I know (with or without birth children) feels the way about their children that you describe. Unless I still don't understand what you mean.

Mind you, I don't think my mother could live with my sister in one room for a long time and hasn't been able to since my sister was probably 12! Birth child.

Bonsoir Do you think that might be down to the fact that they are teenage boys and your daughter is a younger girl.
I always think Mums and Daughters are (mostly) easy in each others company (maybe sons also are but I dont have any so I can't comment) but I don't think that pregnancy, childbirth and feeding are what makes the difference.
I think its the ease of the relationship between a child and its primary caregiver. Thats why I dont think adoption results in a diminished bond.
The age of the child can also make a difference, younger children love you without qualification, you dont irritate or annoy them whereas teenagers find their parents endlessly irritating.

On the original point there is no doubt that children from a difficult background find any relationship more challenging, however any adoptive parents I have met are more than well equipped to deal with this. None I knew adopted with a Hallmark card view, whereas I know many new mothers who gave birth thinking the baby stage would be a round of coffee and shopping.

I don't have stepchildren. But I imagine the dynamic is totally different to having adopted children, as one of the birth parents is living in the house, and remains the parent. So the two situations cannot be compared in any meaningful way.

I adore both my children. Because they are my children. Whether birth child or adopted child.

' at least with our own kids we know where we've gone wrong '

WRONG. Just because you have a biological child doesn't mean the problems are easily solved. They aren't.

OP I can't help but feel you are being antagonist.

mindosa- I think there is truth in what you say about little girls versus big boys, though in our case it is not the teens who find the parents irritating but rather the reverse!

"in our case it is not the teens who find the parents irritating but rather the reverse!" I would think thats pretty normal isn't it?