Reasons to adopt

[future1]

Hi, apologies in advance if I word anything clumsily or insensitively. I have had recurrent miscarriages and ivf for years and it’s become apparent I can’t carry to term. Though I am more desperate than ever to be a mother and have a family.

Growing up I knew a lot of people who were adopted and they thrived every bit as much as children who grew up with their biological families (and they still are thriving as adults). I know modern day adoption is different and most children will be coming from backgrounds of trauma or neglect and it’s very different to raising a birth child. But the overwhelming narrative seems to be that it’s hard and bleak. I feel as though I’ve read far more negative stories than positive ones, though I know people don’t tend to share when things are going well.

I know every situation is different and every child is different but guess I’m trying to understand if, yes, it’s hard and can be bleak but is it also joyous and worth the tough times to be a parent?

Also, did you adopt after infertility or was it something you always wanted to do for a child?

I'm an adoption social worker and all I can say is you are very right when you say that people don't share when it is going well. You sound as though you have a good understanding of what it entails. My advice would be to get in touch with an adoption agency and have an honest chat with a worker about your thoughts. This will only be a positive as if you do progress to an assessment,it will demonstrate your realistic expectations and thoughtfulness. Best of luck

One of my best friends was adopted as a baby (her birth mother was a young Catholic woman who would have faced the stigma of being an unmarried mother in the 70s). She regards her adoptive parents as her 'real' parents, and it has worked very well. Another school friend had a brother who was adopted, and who took his own life as a teenager for a whole host of complicated reasons, but none of which was to do with his adoptive family (who were lovely). Another of my very good friends has two adopted children and is finding it very, very hard. They are now teenagers and are very challenging - plus they were born to an alcoholic/drug addict mother so they both had to go through drug withdrawal as infants (they are full siblings). Their teenage behaviour is within the 'hideous but normal' teenage spectrum; however, I think my friend has to draw on additional resources to cope with it. One of my DC was horrendous as a teenager, and the only thing that kept me putting one foot in front of the other was the fact that they were my biological child. So I salute anyone who can take on an adopted child. They are very, very special people.

I'm sorry to hear about your experiences with miscarriage.
We are in a same sex relationship so adoption was our first choice.
We are very very early on in our journey but we've done foster to adopt. This doesn't by any means negate any of the potential difficulties adopted children can face, but it is usual that children are placed with you from birth / hospital. We met our little one at just a few days old, they have only ever known one home / one family eliminating unnecessary disruption with placement moves. It has different risks than traditional adoption as the first part of the process is fostering but it is worth looking at. I'd recommend a conversation with your local authority or adoption agency. There may be more than one and a lot have open / info evenings. All the best with whatever you decide.

I think you adopt because you can't im

I think you adopt because you can't imagine not having a child in your life.
I have a birth child and an adopted child. There is no difference in the love I feel.
There is very much a difference in the way I parent them.

Im adopting after recurrent miscarriages. Decided not to go for ivf. Adoption has always been a consideration after our first loss so when faced with a choice to go for ivf i opted not to do it.
That said, we took about 9 months out of TTC before we applied. In that time we holidayed, spent money, all the things we put on hold for years while trying to prepare for a baby that never came.

My outlook on adopting is so different to my feelings towards getting pregnant and having a birth child. I feel like i grieved and closed that chapter of my life. As the training progressed and I read more I felt more at ease looking at slightly older children too!

Its a really difficult process and its going to be difficult forever. Theres going to be challenges along the road and ultimately you didnt give birth to them, you cant sweep away any bad things that happened to them and they will always have that other side of their life (Birth family) but i think it will be incredibly rewarding if you choose to do it!

Go to a couple of info evenings, there's no hard sell or anything!

Thanks to everyone who responded. I know I could love a child that isn’t my own but my big worry is dealing with the behaviours that can come as a result of trauma or neglect.

I don’t know if things like this are rare and just part of that overly bleak narrative I mentioned, but some of the things I’ve read about on adoption forums really terrify me. Like violence towards adoptive parents, stealing, gangs or drugs use, police involvement as teenagers. I just don’t think I could cope with that.

So when I see others do feel able to take that risk I wonder if they are motivated by something I’m not. That they would feel rewarded by helping a child or teenager through all that even through the suffering. And does the fact that I can only see the negatives mean I’m not cut out for adoptive parenting?

I just find myself dwelling on worst case scenarios. Maybe it’s a result of all the trauma I’ve been through with the miscarriages.

I also fear those scenarios. But going in prepared and wide eyed helps.
You start putting in the structure and scaffolding from day 1 to get you through the teenage years. You look for preschools conversant with ehcp applications so they're set up when they start school. You take attachment issues seriously. You tackle the root cause of behaviour and parent differently.
It is intense. It cost me my marriage.
Armed with knowledge of my life now - but without knowledge of the love - there's no way I'd adopt.
But the love makes you battle through.

Hi OP,

I am an Adopter.

What you need to be prepared for is that there is NO way of knowing what challenges may/may not occur. You really are going in blind. Families can experience challenges from day 1, from when the child reaches school age or the teenage years.

When I say challenges read up about the high level challenges and be prepared to deal with them as that may well happen. My no issues child at Placement was a completely different child within months . Significant child to parent violence - hitting, biting, kicking..., having things being thrown at me, poo smearing, food hidden everywhere, running all over the school.... significant issues at school. ADHD/AUTISM. Hardly any sleep.

I have had to give up work. My entire life is dealing with adoption issues. Family and friends have drifted away... they cant deal with an SEND child. Dealing with school is a constant battle- emails, phonecalls, meetings. Social Workers aren't interested.. getting the promised support is a joke.

Significant Attachment issues, Sensory issues. Regression.

It requires a totally different way of parenting but this does work. Things are improving. There are lots and lots of good times too.

There are 1/3 of families who are finding things a lot easier, 1/3 muddling through with ups and downs like me, 1/3 of families in Crisis point.

Social workers really don't prepare you. Adopters attending training are chosen to give a positive spin on adoption.

Our children can be incredibly traumatised and are acting out of utter fear. We have to change our ideas of what being a parent is and change our parenting to help the child.

You will find many adoptive parents who so far are having a pretty normal life with no real day to day issues. And many with experiences like me, or worse.

Adoption is the best thing I have ever done. It's been incredibly challenging but things are definitely improving. Things would have broken down a long time ago if I hadn't been 100% committed, resilient and prepared to stick by my child no matter what.

Read up, read up and look at the FB groups and other online forums... they tell you the realities of adoption
.. the good, bad and ugly. SW's dont want you to look at these pages...because they want you to believe the much more rose tinted version... and to believe that they will give Adopters lots of support - they dont and run for the hills as soon as the adoption has gone through.

Lastly Adoption is giving a child a family. It is not about giving a family a child.

@future1

people adopt because they want to be a parent, some may have some more altruistic reasons as well, but fundamentally its about wanting to be a mum or dad.
@abc121 post is excellent.
I’m in that middle group, or I was. 10 years along, my son is doing great and we are a fairly ordinary family, albeit with a few knobs on.

I do really dislike use of the word negative when talking about adoption though. A ‘negative’ story is someone’s life, someone’s child. Yes its hard, yes its challenging but our children are not ‘negative’

I think the key thing to remember is that when you are reading these stories, you are reading about people who mean nothing to you. They are just names on a page. I know lots of adopters, some of whom are having very tough times. So when they say Bob had a meltdown, trashed the house or whatever - I also know that Bob is funny, charming, is a talented musician or artist, or is really good at maths or has an amazing smile. So I know the whole picture - not just the difficult bits.
so when you adopt, the child ceases to be a stranger, they are yours, you love them and will do anything for them, just like any parent would do.
And thats why you adopt

As a long-term singleton, it was the desire to be a parent that motivated me to become an adopter. And it is enduring love that keeps me being an adopter, even in the most trying of circumstances. I ran through your checklist and I could tick nearly all of them off: the police, the stealing, the violence etc! I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my DD1(nearly 15) doesn’t succumb to drugs as it was her birth mother’s addictions that caused my DD to lose her sight at 11.

Adoption can be a triumph of hope over experience but you have to weigh up your own personal ability to face uncertainty. We all hope that we’ll somehow win the golden ticket and dodge the bullet and our children will remain unscathed by their in utero and developmental trauma.

I actually think it’s healthier to have a more questioning mindset and to worry about the issues you mention; the would-be adopters who concern me the most are the folks who try to pull the wool over their assessing SW’s eyes and believe that babies and young children will be unaffected by their histories.

Oh, and I most definitely don’t feel rewarded by helping my teen DD through all of her massive life ‘stuff’! 😅 But I do it because I love her and I’m all she has, even when she is hating me and hurting me. Like the majority of adopters, I’m not a superhuman, I’m just a very flawed human trying to muddle through and do the best I can. If I can do it, you can do it. IF you want to. And, if you don’t, then that’s absolutely fine, because you don’t have too.

My path to adoption is a little different to most people. I was at work my eye on promotion (midwife and paediatric nurse mother to 3) working on SCBU when a baby with Down syndrome appeared I was smitten. Parents felt they could not cope and the rest is history! Several more followed. It was easier all those years ago 🤫good luck!

I agree with @Ted27 - When you adopt, there is a whole person there, who you love to the ends of the earth. Yes there can be some very very hard times, but for another perspective there is a thread here called Good News with many posts sharing what has gone well. Scroll down and you’ll find it xx

We are about to adopt a little girl (introductions starting next week). When we started considering adoption I spent hours reading this forum and other places looking for positive stories. I think, like you have said @future1 , I read so many stories about dealing with bad behaviour, violence, aggression, stealing, all that, and I saw that as negative. But in all the reading I've done I guess I've decided that if, at the end of my life (or whatever) I feel like my life has been enriched by loving a child, that will be a positive story, whatever we'll have gone through in the bits in between.

At panel we were asked what we were most looking forward to, and I almost wanted to say I'm looking forward to her being 25 and us going out for a coffee or a meal or whatever, having a loving and honest parent-adult child relationship. I don't think I'm naive to the ways in which this might be difficult (though I guess I am naive to what that means, but I imagine everyone is). I certainly hope we'll get through without too many major incidents, but whatever happens I do ultimately trust that we will get that coffee!

Sorry the above is super cheesy!

I'm sorry for your losses.

Adoption is not the solution to infertility and should definitely not be used as the way to absolve your grief over that. Adoption is trauma and the child does not need that compounded by being a replacement or consolation prize.

I totally understand you ok. i'm early 50's trying to find the courage to go ahead with adoption and very very scared I'm about to destroy my life as a result.

@BastardChild , I’m very sorry that your adoptive experience has apparently not been a good one.

Honestly, I don’t think anyone here thinks that adoption is a ‘solution’ to any circumstances which result in any adult being childless. I think we all recognise that it is the least worst scenario for all involved. What is the answer? Babies will keep being born in less than ideal circumstances and there will always be adults who are unable to bear their own offspring, for whatever reason. It is an endless conundrum for society.

@redbluegreenwhite , as many of the posts here have illustrated, adoption is a massive leap of faith, if not a triumph of hope over experience. For those of us who, for one reason or another, have not managed to tread the fairytale path of happy ever after, sealed with a couple of birth children, adoption is a lifeline to parenthood. We jump through so many hoops we could join a circus, we research, we learn, we flex, we bend, we change our lives to accommodate. We glow up in terms of being human beings and we do the very best for the babies and children a multitude of ‘experts’ deem us capable of parenting.

None of it is easy. But I think the vast majority of us (and I obviously speak for no one but me) consider ourselves privileged to have our adopted children in our lives.

As others said you can’t really predict how your own adoption will work out and the potential issues and challenges you might face. It seems that my experience with adoption is very different to most people in this forum, but maybe that’s because most of the time people only post in this forum when they are having a hard time.

I have three adopted children of different ages from the same birth mother. The birth mother is young and has issues with drugs and alcohol. I adopted the children when they were very young (between 1 and 3 years old) and we’ve been a happy family for 5 years now. One of them was even born with drugs in their system. I consider my experience very positive and I haven’t experienced any behavioural challenges beyond what’s normal for little kids. The three of them are healthy, smart and kind, and are developing normally. Only one of them has some difficulty pronouncing some words properly. Maybe we were just lucky!

Our parenting style is slightly different to some adoptive parents we know personally, though, and we don’t make it all about adoption if you know what I mean. We’re trying to give them a happy childhood but without making them feel as if being adopted is the primary thing in their lives and as if they are damaged because of it. Our children know they are adopted and we talk about their past often, but we don’t attribute every single thing that they do to adoption or try to make them feel that way. For example, if they throw a tantrum, which all kids do, it doesn’t mean that it’s because they are adopted or because of the trauma they experienced. I think socialising with parents with biological kids has been important in that it has made us realise that they also experience these things. We also apply a mix of therapeutic parenting and traditional discipline/consequences in our household which I think helps. Some of the adoptive parents I know get stuck in the therapeutic parenting approach, which in my view doesn’t always work as sometimes children just need to learn about boundaries and consequences. However, this is what works for our children who don’t have any serious behavioural issues. The situation would be different if there were serious underlying issues such as ADHD, mental health issues, etc., which luckily our children don’t have.

So in summary, I just wanted to let you know that there are also positive experiences with adoption, and that the things you read about in this forum may not give you the full picture/spectrum of experiences.

@EmmatheStageRat by using the phrase "a lifeline to parenthood" you have illustrated my point perfectly.

This is placing adopters desires above the needs of the child via the misperception that there is a right to be a parent through any means available.

To patronise me by apologising because my adoption apparently didn't work out demonstrates again your complete lack of understanding and centring adopters rather than the children in all of this (you will no doubt believe that this is not the case).

I am not anti adoption per se, but there does need to be a shift in understanding, this will be uncomfortable for most of you, but if you really want to do right for the children I suggest that you take a look at some of the links that follow.

Adoptees are conditioned to appear grateful, to not contradict the narrative of their "saviours" lest they be rejected again.

This blog post is a start, I recommend the whole site, frankly, your adopted children will be no different:

howtobeadopted.com/blog/2018/why-are-you-so-angry

@BastardChild , I genuinely did not mean to patronise you.

EmmatheStageRat - thanks so much for your reply. I really appreciate people like you being honest and open on these issues

BastardChild- I can assure you that the narrative I have encountered time and time again in all adoption processes I have been involved with over the past years is the direct opposite to as you state ' placing adopters desires above the needs of the child via the misperception that there is a right to be a parent through any means available' or that 'Adoptees are conditioned to appear grateful, to not contradict the narrative of their "saviours" lest they be rejected again.' The website you link to is referencing adoptees from the 1970's- a world away from what is happening now and therefore although useful and vital needs to be read in tandem with what modern UK adoption is about now.
In fact I am in absolutely no doubt how incredibly inferior everyone involved with the modern adoption process considers me compared to any biological mother of any child I may adopt. In fact adoptive parenting is considered so inferior that thousands of children all over the UK are being left in abject violence and neglect and abuse as the primacy of their superior biological parents is treated as so so superior . They can do like to their children both in -uetro and after birth until they are so traumatised that people like me will be 'picking up the pieces' (horrible term but you know what I mean) with next to no support for the rest of their natural lives.
So I am in no doubt that no child I adopt will EVER be brought up by me to be grateful - but the rest of the country should be grateful for people who do adopt and stop piling in on the people who step up as you have done in my opinion on this thread despite saying you are not-anti adoption. I am not sure I have the guts to do it - so huge kudos to those who do and love these children in such amazing ways- far beyond what the huge majority of biological parents have to do. And you are being patronising to assume that modern adopters don't know about this whole issue. If you would prefer children to be in care homes and foster homes fair enough- I completely respect that- although you deign to say you are not anti-adoption. But I don't want anyone who hasn't a current perspective on adoption to read your comments get the wrong end of the stick about what modern adopters know and think. The website you link to is like month one of training - not the great revelation you think it is in 2022. But please keep raising awareness as it is vital as you say.

and thank you so much for sharing UKABC. I can't tell you how it helps people like me

We adopted after 'unexplained infertility' and one round of IVF not working.

We enjoyed holidays, days out as a couple, lovely meals and late night drinks, but just thought 'Is this it? Is this it now for the rest of our lives?' and we wanted to share our lives, and we had so much more to give and offer a child.

Our son came to us at 6 months old, and he's just turned 5. He is a bright, intelligent boy, has no 'issues' or trauma, and we are so lucky to have him.