Specifying gender

[Fakinit03]

We are about to start stage two and we already have a birth son. We have never thought we would specify gender but have been told recently by our social worker that they usually recommend to be matched with the opposite gender to birth child. Just wondering if anyone else has been told this and whether they went with advice or not and what they're experiences were?
Thanks

We didn't have BC so this didn't come up, but I think this is so the BC doesn't feel threatened as 'the boy' or 'the girl' and also it makes it harder for the younger to compare themselves against the older one.

Yeah that's what they said I just never imagined specifying and feel a bit weird about it so wonder what other people have done

We have a birth child who was 4 when we were going through matching. Gender was never preferred and never a conscious decision. Whether we could meet the adoptive child’s needs was the only consideration. When we were looking for matches there were more boys looking for their forever home and we were matched with a boy. We have a birth daughter. Hope this helps

We were never encouraged to go for the opposite gender. But in the end we asked SW if we could. As PP said, we hope it will stop too many comparisons to our boys.

They can recommend, but you don't have to specify anything you don't want to. Just tell them you would prefer to keep as many options open as possible, and you will factor this in when you are looking at actual children, alongside all the other considerations.

Its funny how things work out, I thought I was open to both boys and girls, when it came to looking at real children, I looked at two girls but only seriously considered boys. I'm definitely a boys mum !

I honestly think it could go either way, two girls or two boys may have more in common but could also see each other as rivals. I would find it very difficult in this current age now to suggest that one or other sex would make a difference. Better to have a match based on your meeting the child's needs.

Better not to miss out on a good match because of anyone's preconceived ideas about what would or would not work.

My own situation is that I had a birth dd, and when she was very little we realized we could not have any more children. We looked into adoption abroad and I thought we may adopt a girl as that country had mostly girls for adoption. When we realised (for many reasons) that we could not adopt from abroad we adopted domestically.

At first I felt we should adopt a girl, we knew what to expect (which is a massive joke as all kids are very different).

I watched a documentary about boys in care (looking for matches) and decided to be as open as possible. We adopted our little boy almost six year ago. And we were totally right to accept that match.

Good luck

When adopting out first we didn't specify boy or girl and we adopts boy.
Second time I really wanted a girl so we specified a girl.