Before You Adopt

Ask adoptive parents a few years after the adoption, and they will likely tell you that they don't regret their choices. They will probably say that being an adoptive family hasn't been like what they expected, either. And it might have been nice to know in advance some of the things they learned on the job. Parenting an adopted child may be new territory in you family. Raising a child from another country could be unusual in your neighborhood.

As you consider adopting, some of the things you should know are:

Adoption is not the same as having a baby.

Many women have a need, deep within, to get pregnant and give birth. Adopting does not fill that need. Most American girls are raised with the belief they will grow up and have a baby. When that does not happen due to infertility, it can challenge the self-confidence of women who find themselves competent in all other respects. Many men need to pass on their legacy to a child of their own genes. They believe that adopting a boy or a girl that is born to another couple is not the same.

If your need is to be a parent, adopting fills the bill nicely. After all, parenting lasts pretty much for a lifetime. Nurturing, guiding, education, and enabling children into adulthood are rewarding endeavors.

Adopting won't fix a troubled relationship between parents.

Bringing a child into your home is most successful when it comes from a desire to share your lives rather than from a need to fill emptiness. A new personality in the family changes everything. There are new demands, new expenses, and more opportunities to argue and misunderstand. If you find yourself thinking of a sentence, which sounds like, "When we have a baby, _________ will be better" think again.

You will give up control, at least for a while.

Like most people who have been successful in life, you have set goals and met them. You have made decisions for yourselves, and now you are about to put your future into the hands of people you have never met. Strangers will assess your stability to adopt, guide you toward a particular country, and make decisions about which child you are offered.

The agency, the court, INS (Immigration Naturalization Service), and the others will eventually get out of your lives. But for many months, they will be present at your breakfast table conversation. Their paper work will clutter your desk, and their bureaucratic regulations will challenge your patience.

Not all of your family members and friends will be thrilled with your choice to adopt.

A lot of people have heard stories about adoptive parents who have had their hearts broken or lost custody of their children. Some do not believe it's possible to love an adopted child or will think you are settling for second best. Don't be surprised when you meet people who think you are selfish and those who are sure you are saints. Though you never intended it, adopting internationally is a political statement of sorts. You may discover that some of your co-workers or neighbors believe that Americans should not uproot children from their home countries. Some relatives will not notice the difference between your adopted child and all of the other nieces and nephews. Others will. You will learn first hand what it means to be different.

You're about to become an inter-racial family now and forever.

Your child will look different from his playmates. When he grows up and loses his baby fat, he will still have skin of a different hue than most of his peers in American. Try, as you will, you won't be able to show him how to be an Asian person in a Caucasian community. Though you will stand by with support and encouragement, he will have to learn for himself how to live out that destiny. You will be noticed in public and your family will discover subtly and blatant expressions of prejudice. Some will hurt you deeply. All will be opportunities to learn and grow. The reality of being an interracial family will impact where you live, who your friends are and how and where you socialized. Your child will have the added challenges of integrating his ethnic heritage into his sense of who he is.

Your child's life did not begin when she was adopted by you.

Regardless of how young your child is, she had a life before she came into your family. Her genetic makeup is not of your lineage, and the differences will probably be more apparent 15 years from now than when you first adopt. You are forever linking your family with that of another family largely unknown to you. It is their genetic yearnings that course through your child's veins. In time, their medical history will come to life in your household. Their talents and propensities may be more obvious in your daughter than the skills you nourish through athletic and music lessons you make available to her. Your job, as her parents, is to encourage her to become all that she is meant to be.

This adoption--like all others--was born from a profound loss.

Grieving this loss is only natural. If you have struggled with infertility or the loss of hoped for children, you know what I am talking about. You may have already considered that your adopted child was once bonded to his mother (and perhaps to others in his family or to care givers in his early weeks or months). We are told that an infant knows the sound of its mother's voice from long association in the womb. Imagine the terrible loss when that voice is suddenly gone. Your adopted child from abroad will travel in unfamiliar vehicles to get to America. He will eat unfamiliar foods, be exposed to foreign smells and sounds. He will sleep in a strange bed and be comforted by your hands--the hands of strangers, murmuring unfamiliar words to him and singing unrecognizable nursery songs.

You may not yet have considered that you too will grieve as you raise you child. You will ache for his losses and hurts. He will become yours, and yet you will be powerless to heal all the hurts of his beginning or the new hurts that will visit him. As your child grows, he will experience those losses in differing ways. He may long to see or know about his birth family, or he may wish for a relative who looks like him. He may fear that he will be abandoned again.

Most adults know that no one ever totally "gets over" a major loss. We learn to live on and enjoy life, but the loss is always present.

Adopted children are over-represented in the offices of counselors and psychotherapists.

That doesn't mean they have bad lives or bad parenting. It means that adopted persons have psychological challenges that those who are not adopted don't have. For them, growing up means learning to integrate their beginnings and losses with their experiences of being adopted. It means coming to terms with the missing parents without the advantage of having them around to help with the process.

Love grows.

People worry about whether they will love their adopted child right away, and they worry about whether the child will love them in return. After the rush of the first days or weeks together, some worry that they don't feel the way they think they should feel. But love is not a feeling. It is a process of growing. It is a decision to commit your life to another. Ted, an adoptive dad, recently observed that loving his son sort of sneaked up on him. He noticed one day that when something went wrong, his first thought wasn't about how he would explain the situation to his adoption worker or what his neighbors would think. He said, "When my first thought was concern for my son, I knew I loved him."

Knowing all of these things won't lessen your enthusiasm. Knowing however might make you a wiser consumer and perhaps less surprised as a parent. Good wishes on your journey!

© Dixie Van de Flier Davis, Ed.D.

Credits: Adoption Today