Ever since we've dated, DH and I have talked about adoption. It's just something we both have always been interested in. DH always liked the idea of having one or two biological kids and then adopting. About three years ago he read an article about girls in India and has talked about adopting a girl from there since then.
Since I'm on my second HG pregnancy and I'm very, very sure that I cannot handle a third like this. But we've always wanted three, possibly four kids.
So we've discussed adoption more lately, especially from India or another country where girls are treated very poorly.
Something someone posted last week made me re-think some of that though. I think it was Fredalina who said that adoption shouldn't be about 'rescuing' a child, since that can create issues for the child, who feels like he or she needs to be grateful all the time for being 'rescued' from a bad situation.
We'd pursue adoption to add to our family and because we want a third child. But DH would like to adopt a girl from India because of the way girls and women are treated there, and he knows that many girls are unwanted and mistreated there. But wouldn't that mean that one reason we adopted a child would be to 'rescue' her from a horrible life? The reason to adopt is to grow our family, but the 'rescue' aspect would influence where DH wants to adopt from. We won't be adopting for another few years (we'd have to wait till DH is making actual doctor salary), but we're very interested in pursuing it. So this is a very long-term 'what if' sort of situation.
I guess my question is, if we do indeed pursue adoption, should we reconsider adopting a girl from India in order to avoid the whole "rescuing a child" thing?
Re: XP from parenting: Adoption worries
If your ONLY reason to adopt is to save a child, my answer would be different. If it's one of many factors that's influencing how and where, and you don't make that the focus, i don't see a problem.
You just made me cry a little and eased a lot of my fears. We're obviously a ways out, but I want to start thinking through some of the basics and the difficulties.
I just want to make sure we come to this for the right reasons and with the right desires so we're ready to be parents to another child.
We aren't sure yet if it will be a young toddler/young child/older child or teen adoption, and we know the process can two a year to two or more once started.
I know we can start researching some things, but would parenting classes in general help if we decide to pursue an adoption of an older child?
I vaguely remember reading a discussion about the trouble with adopting out of birth order. My take away was that it disrupts (may not be the right word) the family and that children gain a lot of security from their birth order and changing it up impacts all the children. I think I remember one poster saying that it can put the younger children at risk if the older child has some issues (this poster may have been flamed).
It's definitely something I need to look into more. We're in no rush, and if it would be better for all our children and we decided to do older child adoption, we would be happy to wait longer.
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