i think there is a lot of wierd stuff going on in this thread. bizarre stuff. but oh well. some has been refuted and some not.

adoption is tough. no. doubt. about. that. very tough. tough for everyone. but its also noble.

some people adopt for the wrong reasons, they want to be pious and feel good about themselves for saving the world, so to speak. they have no clue what they are getting into.

some folks are great at it. some arent. no different for parents with their own flesh and blood, i suppose.

there is some irony to this whole discussion. many want to adopt to do right to a child and the world, but they are just too busy to volunteer in the trenches where kids are in great need. places like jails, bad schools, hospitals, mental institutions, dangerous neighborhoods and dark sides of the world. in mormonism, much of that is because we are too busy serving god to serve needy people, and then there are complaints when the missionaries bring the crazy ones to church. as if the church would help them, really. and dont pretend you dont know what i am talking about. you have all had the crazy convert experience, politically incorrect or not. you talked about it.

now for my rotten story of the day. i know a guy that is retiring from his job as a defacto social worker. he has long hair. he rides a motorcycle, but not like those yahoos buying west coast chopper bikes. he is worn out. he has aged. but his face would intrigue you more than any other. he is gay. he volunteers at a clinic for men. he has been at that clinic, unpaid, for decades. his paid job is to find homeless people in his community, track them, learn about them, determine if they have aids, and keep them alive. he has done it for decades. he knows the underbelly of his environment. he has had doors kicked in by police while taking blood from an aids victim, and was poked by the needle. he has seen the good and the bad. he adopted two kids, they were orphaned by their aids stricken mother. he raised them up as a single parent. and they are great people. he loves them. and he served them. he taught them by serving in his community.

he is an amazing dad.

he will be missed by many. sadly, some folks will certainly live shorter lives when he leaves his job.

so how is this relevant. good question. i am wondering that myself. but i think its relevant because you dont have to adopt to serve those kids. and its just plain goofy to me that parenting is considered to be some grand service when most of us just plain aint good at parenting. and even fewer of us are good at parenting a lot of kids. and some of us just plain screw up kids by compounding our commitments.

[no snarky comments, i censored those]

the end.

It is possible to love a stranger with ties stronger than death. I married one. Not all strangers bond, however. We had a friend who adopted a son, but their nature parts were absolutely crossed. For example, my friend brought his son over to play ping pong in our basement. J, our friend, was mostly useless. His son, C, however, having never played before, was brilliant. This was representative of their entire relationship. Their relationship was very difficult.

Having raised a few I can attest that even with 100% it is sometimes difficult.

To adopt or bear children… In the US and Europe, the birth rate is well below ZPG. Having children is not much of a burden on population. In the US we are growing more rapidly because of immigration, not birth. If we raise our children well, they become an asset to the world rather than a burden. They will solve more problems than they create.

All-in-all, I am very pleased to see my wife’s maternal great grandmother when I look into the face of Sarah. I like seeing the Swedish great grandfather in Debora. I like the fact that they are like us, and we have seen this before and that, we know how to help. We know how to talk on a visceral level because of the 100%. I like seeing the mixture of me and my beloved in these children. I love my wife for her love of the children and honoring me by allowing me to be their father.

Some are called to be adoptive parents, some are not. The ones who are called are blessed because they take responsibility for a stranger’s happiness. It is a sacrifice. All child-rearing is a sacrifice.

I have never seen any research supporting this.

The National Association of Black Social Workers has many position papers on this issue, and has done a lot of research on it.
You can read more at their website:
nabsw.org

This is much less of an issue today, since the majority of infant adoptions performed in the U.S. are open. Most children adopted as infants know their birth mothers placed them for adoption out of a selfless desire to give them a better life–NOT because they “didn’t want them.”

“There is a lower probability of parent child bonding and a higher chance that the adoptive parents could get burned out and reject their children.”

This may apply to older-children adoptions, but it does not apply to infant adoptions.

8: “Another issue is in mixed families, adopted children almost always feel “loved less” per research I can not site at the moment.”

I have never seen any research supporting this.

That all being said, I don’t think it matters. We should still adopt. No one is going to argue that adoption is not a good thing. What if a couple doesn’t feel the same? The moral dillemma is do they leave them in the orphangeor foster care? or do they take them home and do theri best?

I know my BIL, who is adopted, also had many friends who were adopted–the ones who were in families with thier own bio children said they did not ever feel like they fit in like the rest of the children.
My sister who works for a troubled you program at one time had 10-15 kids in treatment, and all had been adopted. It is common for the kids in treatment to have ben adoptreed. I am not blaming it on adoption, and I plan to adopt someday too, but it all things should be conseidered.

So is it ok to adopt even if it won’t be exactly the same as having your own children? I think it is, as long as it is done morally and ethically with all things considered and with realisitc expectations of youself as a parent and of the child.

You are being very idealistic in asking this question, and I commend that idealism. However, you are also being incredibly naive. There is an entire other side to this which isn’t being discussed, which is the interests of the adoptive child.

Raising a child requires an emotional, time, energy, physical, and financial investment that you simply can not understand as a non-parent (regardless of how many of your freinds, siblings and other people close to you have children). That cost escalates exponentially when the child suffers from a disability. Now there is no guarantee that your own biological children might not suffer from disabilities of some sort, but the hard facts are that you have a much much much better chance of assuring the best prenatal and early childhood conditions for your own biological children than for any adopted child. And the chances of suffering from traumatic prenatal or early childhood conditions are very high for children available for adoption.

I know you will respond that those conditions make it all the more “ethical” to help those needy adoptive children. With all due respect, why do you assume that you have the ability to help such children when you haven’t gone through the experience of even raising one child with the optimum prenatal and early childhood benefits you could provide your own biological children?

I also think that the discussion here is underplaying the difficulties of a child being raised in a family where they are from the start obviously different because of race. It’s easy for parents to be idealisitic about treating all of their different race children equally, but the emotional world of the child itself and its peer environment are not going to be nearly as mature and idealistic about such differences.

If a couple is unable to have their own children, or already have their own children and are knowledgeably comfortable with their ability to handle the special needs of adoptive chidren (and there will ALWAYS be special emotional needs even if they are physically fit) then adoption is very praiseworthy. However, in your situation, assuming in fact you are able to bear your own children, I would want to know if you can handle the huge burdens of your own favorably situated biological offspring before determining that it is more “ethical” to impose yourself as a parent on someone else’s child.

Questioning whether it is more ethical to adopt than to raise one’s progeny assumes that we have a choice. I am not sure that is the case.

No species controls procreation. Humans may have gotten close but even the best birth control retains substantial error rates.

Moreover, subconscious and unconconscious attitudes shape our relationship with our children. At some level, the desire to have children and our love for them is a drive.

(That’s one of the reasons why the family values agenda is unsound. It exaggerates parental virtue by ignoring parents self-interest in the well being of their children. Jesus teaches that love for one’s enemies, rather than parental affection, is the ultimate manifestation of love).

However noble it may appear, it would be foolish to ignore our nature and forego physical children in favor of adoption. People are not the masters of their drives. With luck (or the help of God) we can direct them but we cannot stop them.

There is no way that people can predict their attitudes towards children. There’s too much in our psyche that we cannot control. We are not in charge of our bodies.

That may be one reason why Christians are supposed to be humble.

Patrick is asking a noble question. He must be a sweet man. Unfortunately, our bodies don’t work that way.

The wise choice might be to acknowledge our limitations and go ahead with the red haired babies, which may turn out to be brunettes.