Are these the right motivations? Feeling so confused

[MaryQueenOfSpots]

My DH and I have a lovely but eccentric 5 year old DS who we love beyond reason. While watching him grow and become independent of us is amazing, I find in my heart I want to re-experience it all again. Simultaneously, my head tells me to enjoy the freedom to mumsnet work and have some of my own time now DS is at school.

We have tried to conceive naturally for 3 years and now I have reached my 40s, I'm beginning to come to terms with being infertile. Everyone says to consider IVF and I did go to a clinic to find out more, but morally I just can't get past the thought that there are already children who really need a family and that genetics isn't everything.

If we didn't have a child already, we would have no hesitation in taking on the challenges that an adopted child may bring but we need to consider DS in the equation. I love him to pieces but I recognise that he may struggle more than other only children to accommodate a sibling. He prefers adult company or imaginary friends even when there are other children to play with. I definitely wouldn't see the adopted sibling as a playmate for him.

However, he is very nurturing and affectionate to visiting younger children and when alone, he often plays with a baby doll - changing its nappy, trying to make the baby laugh. In the longer term I think it would do him good to have to share me and DH. I would also hope that once both the children were adults, they would benefit from having each other.

I also worry about whether the additional needs of a traumatised child will be too much for DS. I'd hate to make him unhappy by my selfish desire for a bigger family. When I read the forums I really worry. But this is somewhat counterbalanced by the experience of a friend who adopted two children (aged 3 and 5 at adoption, now 6 and 8) who has had a few tricky issues (control over food and bedwetting) but on the whole it has been a great experience for them. I am pretty sure we could cope with similar.

I am so confused about whether my motivations to adopt are the right ones, or even if they are realistic. Was my friend exceptionally lucky with her children? It's helped to write all this out funnily enough, but I would be so grateful for the views of anyone involved in adoption.

As another lurker I think you are brilliantly realistic, truthful and passionate about adoption.

Reading your posts on other threads helped my DH understand why it wasn't a case of just 'having a third child' if we went into adoption, but a whole therapeutic style of parenting and meeting potentially life long needs that we would be signing up for. He really couldn't understand why I thought wanting a third child was the right motivation and wanting to rescue a child in care was the wrong one. I spent some time trying to explain that the seemingly selfish motivation was the necessary driving force to get through all the hard parts of parenting.

I've made it clear I will reconsider it again once mine are older but since I am so stretched with my two (3 and 4), and 90% of the childcare falls to me, I would never take this path unless I had a strong desire for a bigger family. I know wanting to 'rescue' a child is not the right motivation, only wanting another/a child in your family is strong enough to keep you going.

Wow. I join real life for a couple of days and look what happens.
Well done Lilka and Kew for keeping your cool.
Op, it's not always like this on here!

Blimey. Glad that appears to be over.

FWIW everyone on the Adoption threads here has been nothing but kind, helpful, realistic and positive while we've been researching and now being assessed for adoption. A great mix, I think.

(And while I do go onto AdoptionUK it's always nice to get back here, so it can't be that bad! )

I don't think you're harsh. Since I started talking to people IRL about adopting I've heard so much stupidity I reckon this topic strikes the right balance of 'Here we are, feel free to vent/wail/ask for help' and 'You want a playmate who's the same age as your BC so they're not lonely? Get a fucking grip'

And I speak as someone who Kew recently told they were 'barking'

Right, going to go and get out of this druggie NC...

Right, have read all of your lovely comments, and will take on board- I didn't realise this was a 'slap us on the back, haven't we helped society' thread -

There is another side to 'adoption' you know - the only point I was actually trying to make was maybe before so many people reached the stages of being separated from their children, shouldn't more efforts be made to help families stay together?

That was not me knocking the efforts and and credibility of adoptive parents, and if you read 'some' (not all!) of my posts i hope that's understood -

If in later posts I came across incorrectly, I do apologise, I did feel a little 'under attack', but maybe that's because I talked about some topics that were and are very close to you.

I apologise

As for a 'personal attack' I merely responded to a discussion - whether I'm agreed with or disagreed with.

If I was to 'report' the 'personal' attacks on me in this whole thread, would your comments also get 'deleted'?? I would hope not, as I appreciate everyones point of view, and freedom of speech -

The only thing I do take offence at is somebody, marisa i think, mentioning I'm traumatised because of my past dealings with the care system - I think that's personal actually

At the end of the day, discussion forums should mean 'discussion' - and unfortunately that doesn't always mean people agreeing -

Then why is this a 'discussion' forum???? I do believe there are individual sites set up for support networks for adoption???

This is 'mumsnet', an open forum for mums, to discuss any topic mentioned??

This is not an 'adoption forum', its a thread posted on a discussion site -

If it was an adoption forum, I would totally have no right to post, as I'm not an adoptive parent -

But its not, so i'm discussing a question, that should also be open to debate - why not?? Nothing ever got solved with 'pats on the back'??

I feel compelled to post (and I very rarely post) in response to taffleee's comments on here. Adoptive parents have very little opportunity to discuss adoption in the real world, as unfortunately we are a rare breed . This forum is for adoptive parents and prospective adoptive parents to communicate with people who have adoption experience, not as you put it 'pat each other on the back'.

I am not sure what you are getting our of this thread, but your comments are insulting and derogatory. I can only assume you are enjoying winding people up. You have twisted the words that people have used and you have made assumptions about adoptive parents that are simply false.

My son is very much my son. I do not treat him 'as if he was my own ', he IS my own. He is a lovely, happy little boy, BUT his early neglect HAS meant that he needs slightly adapted parenting and can I just point out that this is not inadequate or second best parenting, just a different approach. I know I am repeating what others have said, but you are simply not listening. I sincerely hope you spend some time researching the impact of early neglect and abuse on children if you are serious about fostering.

You may well be 'discussing a question' but it would appear not to be the one the thread has asked. Do please feel free to start your own thread asking any question you would like to debate and then we can all hide consider it.

Tish No, you haven't read my comments fully, I in no way undermined to love given to children from adoptive parents, actually quite the opposite - and before I was silly enough to enter into an argument with posters, my adoration for people offering a loving home to children in need was even reposted -

My only argument came from people suggesting all children in need of adoption came from 'traumatised' homes - I now have re-read the posts, and agree that these children are from traumatised 'experiences' -
I posted on here admiring parents who felt they were incapabable of looking after there children having the willing and trust to put their loved children in the hands of people they felt more capable, only to be told the majority of children get taken away from homes and put up for adoption unwillingly from loving parents -

I may be totally ill-informed, and nieve, but oh my god - what has happened when apparently there are thousands of children awaiting adoption, and they have been taken away from loving parents??? No matter what the background, more support should be given to people who love their children?????

I don't know why I am bothering here
But, you need more than love to parent a child, you need to be capable of putting another persons needs above your own
Many adopted children are already going to be challenging due to alcohol and drug abuse
They are removed from people unable to parent them and have already been given many chances and in many case caused actual harm or even death to children

If you are bothered by the system taffleee forget being a foster carer because you would have to work within the system
Take your concerns up with your MP because no-one on here has any power to change the system

You made need more than love to parent a child, but isn't that a good start?? I'm sorry, but I'm talking as a parent, who loves my children with my whole heart and being -

And if I was ever, god forbid, suffer the horrors of addiction that some loving parents, no matter what their background go through, I just hope to god these families are offered support before being separated from children who love them also -

I did mention fostering, because I think far more families are just in need of resbite, other than total separation -

OK, I'll try one last time: the point being made, Taffleee, was that adopted children have been traumatised. Not that they come from 'traumatised homes'. i.e. even a newborn child voluntarily relinquished by a loving and selfless mother will be traumatised by the experience of losing their birth mother, having to adjust to new parents, and as they grow up having to work through their feelings about having lost their first parents.

So even a child like mine, who has never lived with her birth parents, and who was adopted when less than one year old, has had to endure traumatic experiences and shows signs of enduring issues around that. And I can say that without needing to pass any kind of comment on the birth parents.

And let's just take it as read, shall we, that we all love our children and all believe that children need love?

"Adoption can be a difficult subject to talk about - understandably so - but we don't let comments stand which suggest that people who adopt are any less of a parent than people who have biological children.

Going forwards, we'd really appreciate it if folks could remember that the main aim of the site is to provide support for parents of all backgrounds."

AmyMumsnet (MNHQ) Thu 07-Nov-13 12:37:48

(my bold)

I think far more families are just in need of resbite, other than total separation - even as a foster carer that isn't your decision to make. If you want to get involved in the decision making then train to be a social worker.

There are estimated to be over 1 million children in the UK in the UK living with drug or alcohol addicted children, there are over 90,000 "looked after" children (for any reason not just for addiction reasons) only about 4,000 children have a plan for adoption. It doesn't take a genius with numbers to work out that children of addicted parents are not removed on a whim.

I have never read a thread on the adoption forum that is not very understanding of birth parents even when adoptive parents are going through phases of extreme anger about the abuse their children have suffered. Many of us believe that intervening and providing support at an earlier stage might prevent some children being taken into care.

No-one was rude to you until you started being offensive (and the posts that were rude were removed IIRC). Its a bit like walking into a local pub where you've never been before and starting to slag off the regulars. Its not hard to see why people wouldn't warm to you, is it?

For example (wonders why she's bothering)...

'slap us on the back, haven't we helped society' thread, now you see this is just rude. Because none of us have said this and none of us believe it. I can't count the number of times that I've read on here how much we hate it when people call us "wonderful" or "marvellous" (as you did yourself did to someone who suited your criteria of suitable adoptive parent), how irritating it is, how patronising it is and how we are just parents doing their best for their children just the same as anyone else.

And the reasons we don't generally slap ourselves on the back is because we've just about all been through phases of feeling totally fucking inadequate.

And for the record - I don't believe there was anything about my post of Thu 07-Nov-13 00:48:38 that deserved the response you gave which would have been extremely offensive it had actually made any sense or if I had been in any doubt about my feelings for my lovely boy.

I don't think it makes sense for me to add any more fuel to this fire so will try to resist entering into another late night tit for tat argument discussion and I do wish you well if you truly want to get into foster care. I am absolutely certain however that you shouldn't tell any social worker that the best approach to fostering/adoption is to ignore any trauma a child has gone through and then they'll forget all about it. Maybe leave that until the second meeting.

Yeah follow Kew's advice. You can let them know how great the EDL are in stage 2.

I would also suggest that if you really want to enter into a discussion

1. start your own thread or keep to the OP's issue

1. your personal experience is just that, 1 experience and cannot be used to judge everything that may be slightly connected with said experience

1. familiarise yourself with the system you are discussing

1. because some is not said explicitly do not assume it is not so ie because posters do not state in every post that they love their DC does not mean they do not love them

1. it is useful if you know something about what you are discussing

It is essential for a child to feel loved, but it isn't more important than safety, food, etc

Also, I'm going to seperate love from caring actions. I know some people disagree, but love is an emotional state, a feeling, not an action. Just because someone is cuddling their baby and soothing them and coocheecooing doesn't mean they have actually bonded with and love their baby yet, similarly you can't assume that because a child has been horrendously neglected and is permanently brain damaged because of neglect, that their birth parents didn't feel some love for them

I didn't bond with or love my children for months, yet my lack of love never stopped me from performing caring nurturing actions, hugging, soothing, etc. My hugs and cuddles and soothing were loving actions but they weren't love itself.

So in my humble opinion whilst love is very important, it's not the best place to start if you want to put it in preference to adequate nutrition, safety from physical harm and comforting/loving actions (which are not love themselves, you don't have to love to perform a loving action). Actions over emotion.

A baby who is loved but is not being fed properly and left in their cot alone for 15 hours at a stretch, is in way more danger than a baby that isn't loved because his/her mother has, say, PND and can't bond, but is being fed every 2 hours, burped, nappy changed, kissed and walked up and down. Baby 1 could be permanently affected and hurt very quickly, baby 2 will be absolutely fine long enough that the mother has time to get help and eventually start bonding

You do not have the luxury of time with baby 1, because the love will not sustain the baby or do anything to prevent serious harm.