To wonder why people don't adopt more?

[TheOtherMother4]

To clarify, I don't have any children of my own and really don't want to offend anyone but I was thinking about the lengths people go to for IVF, especially in countries such as the USA where it can't be covered by a health service and was wondering why people don't adopt more often. I understand that it may not be the same if you were unable to conceive naturally but surely if you wanted a child that badly then you could adopt and drastically help an existing child's life. Just wondering.

it must be hurtful when you bring up an adopted child and treat them as your own then they go and seek out their birth parents and they get a connection with them?
Kind of like the saying blood thicker than water?

Our adopted DS is still under 2 so him meeting his birth mum is a long way off, but we are very prepared for it happening. We have met her. I've held her as she cried on me. I love her, she is a part of him, she made him. And if when he is old enough to make that decision, he decides he wants to meet her, she will be welcomed into our family with open arms. Maybe it's easier because she hasn't done anything "wrong" to lose him, she just was not capable of being a good enough parent for him.

CookPassBabtridge - What a sad thing to say. I am a grandparent carer and treat the boys as my own - albeit once removed. You know you love them when their pain is your pain and their wants and needs are more important than your own. One is a moody difficult teenager but on the worst days I look at him and know that he needs me.

I am adopted myself and have had limited contact with my birth family. My birth mother simply rejected me all over again. I never appreciated not just my adopted parents but worse, my eccentric and rather mad wider family who never treated me any differently, were godparents to me, never forgot my birthday and wrote me lovely letters and came to watch me get married. Their happy faces made my day.

I am in my fifties and when my aunt died recently in her eighties, her daughter said she found a little note to me in her handbag that she carried around.

What counts are the people who love and care for you and these are not necessarily your biological family, believe me.

I wouldn't be able to bring up a child who isn't part of me. I look at them all the time and see bits of us.. When I feel myself getting wound up I look at them and get the rush of love because they're mine.

I completely understand this but there is so much more when it comes to nature vs nurture. My son physically looks like me. He is almost identical to how I looked at his age. He sings to himself as he's falling asleep, just like DH did when he was a baby. He is fearless just like his big brother (not biologically related). I see myself in him every day.

When I read these threads I always feel sad that my DCs'friends parents are thinking:
She doesn't feel a rush of love for her DCs.

Her DCs will never really be hers.

It's so cruel that they are with her instead of their real children (well, in a way it is - life had some very cruel things in store for my DCs that shouldn't happen at any age let alone as babies).

I'm sure her DCs will betray her by seeking out their birth families as adults. This will mean they never really loved her.

Her DCs won't take after her, she won't see anything of herself in them.

I guess if I only heard what people say to me I would live in blissful ignorance.

If it’s any consolation drspouse, even though adopting isn’t for me, I would never think any of those things about any family with adopted children. I’d assume that your relationship with your children is like any other parent/child relationship.

So would I.

@CookPassBabtridge you said that you "get the rush love because they are mine"

It is clear from your post that when you say "they are mine" you actually mean that they are biologically your's.

So I take that to mean that you believe I couldn't possibly have that rush of love because my children are not biologically mine.

Us adoptive parents get this crap spouted at us all the time and it is very hurtful so we get sensitive.

So many people in this thread have such set ideas about adoption and yet know absolutely nothing about it.

As for the thing about adoption being all about finding a family for the child and not about finding children for infertile couples -
Yes it is true that that is what the adoption system is for but I can tell you without any guilt that I adopted for a completely selfish reason - I needed to be a mother and IVF failed for me. Most of my network of adoptive parents will say the same thing. I know there must be couples who adopt for good and unselfish reasons but I've not met any yet.

Adoption has been the most positive thing to have happened in my life. People are always telling me how lucky my kids are to have me. I always correct them - I am the lucky one.

If my children want to re connect with their birth parents when they are older I will whole heartedly support them in any way I can. I will not feel betrayed or rejected. I will be happy for them if they get the outcome they want and I will support them if it goes wrong. That's what parents do.

The problem I have is with the system spouse not you personally and without knowing the reason your children were removed from their birth parents, I wouldn’t judge.

I have always wanted to adopt. We tried to conceive for a short while (DH felt he wanted to try before committing to adoption) and it didn't work out so we enthusiastically applied to adopt and everything was going fine until they discussed our return to work plans. We were told outright we wouldn't get a child placed with us if we both planned to work full time. Despite our full time being a lot less than most people's full time with huge flexibility and very long holidays.

Financially we couldn't have afforded for one of us to halve our income and had to halt the process. I was gutted but I can understand that adopted children need more time than we could give because of their background. I know other people who have adopted and both work full time but not in our area/through our local council and we were given a flat no. And more importantly they could afford for one of them to give up work if the child needed it, we couldn't.

We were happy to consider a single child or sibling group, and specifically wanted older children so those typically hard to place children but were still turned down.

We now are planning to work our arses off, me retire super early and foster as many children as we can.

I don't think people realise that it's not just a case of deciding to adopt and being allowed to!

angels Yes I did mean that I only feel the rush of love due to them being biologically mine, that is how I feel, for me. I don't think adoptive parents don't feel the same rush of love and never said this . I know it's a hugely sensitive subject so can understand people getting defensive but you are projecting, I was talking about my personal experience of why I don't want to adopt.

I'm adopted and my dear old mum was always supportive of me tracing my birth mother, she just said she'd understand my need but would never want to meet her herself. I never bothered in the end and Im not sure I ever will. I'm 50, she'd be 69.

It's only now I'm older that I realise how fantastically they raised us, telling us we were adopted at such a young age that it was never a 'big thing', just accepted, which considering I was born in the late 60s was quite a thing then. A friend was told on her 18th birthday .

We were always allowed to ask questions and talk about it and mum always emphasised that it wasn't a rejection it was just an impossible situation that a young Irish girl found herself in at a time when that would have been incredibly difficult. And she was sure she loved me etc.

I had very cool adoptive parents. They were married 20 years before me and my brother came along!

CookPassBabtridge I only feel the rush of love due to them being biologically mine

Just to balance things out, every time I look at my (adopted) DC I feel such an immense rush of love.Sometimes I lie in bed thinking how lucky we are to have them with the biggest grin on my face. I would literally do anything for them. Whether they grew in my womb or not is irrelevant - they have grown in my heart. My parents say the love they feel for their adopted GC is exactly the same (if not stronger) than the love for their biological GC. If anything, I think they as GP and we as parents are overly protective of our DC (and yes, defensive too in the light of some of the comments here). I can say with absolute honesty that I am now glad I did not have biological children as if I had, I would never have had the privilege to have my two amazing DC in my life.