"Saving" children
Don’t do it. If you are adopting to “save a poor little orphan” then please send money to Half the Sky, or Love Without Boundaries instead. You will be able to help a lot more kids with a lot less money. And you won’t be toying with the life of a child in the process.
Adoption should be about growing your family. It should be about wanting a child so bad you can’t bear the weight of your soul without that child in your life. It should be about having so much love to give that you simply must put a child (or another child) into your life.
It should never be because you want to save a child. Ever.
Because at some point the child will figure it out. And that is just too much to put on any child’s shoulders. They will never be able to be grateful enough. Ever.
I am the lucky one. I get to be my daughter’s mother. Hopefully I will get to be a mother to another daughter.
I am the lucky one.
April 18th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
I think people underestimate other people when they say they want to “adopt an orphan”. Regardless of family size. It’s totally different than what you see on the surface. Frankly if nobody wanted to ‘save’ a child, there would be no foster parents out there, and many, many more orphans would be left in orphanages across the entire world. Since we can’t get religious, I’ll have to leave it at that.
April 18th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
While I certainly ache for my daughter and I DO want her badly, I would be lying to say that I didn’t want to help a child who would have been left with no family. That was definitely a part of why we chose to adopt. I understand you think that’s a “bad” reaon to adopt, but I disagree.
I love my daughter with my whole heart. Wanting a child and wanting to help an orphan are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes they go together.
April 18th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
My neighbors foster, they do it because their kids grew up and they have this huge house and it felt empty and they wanted to fill it, but they weren’t prepared to commit for 18 years as a parent.
A coworker fostered because she wanted to adopt an older child and that seemed to be the easiest way for her. She adopted a 12 year old girl, and she continues to occasionally foster because she enjoys it.
In neither of these instances are the foster parents doing it to “save” anyone. They are doing it for their own reasons. And that is a very healthy way to do anything. If you go into something as an obligation it will show, and that’s not fair to the child.
Seriously, there are more prospective parents out there now than there are available babies – adopting to “save” a child is just keeping a family who desperately wants to “parent” a child from being able to do so.
As for the thought that saving a child is a secondary benefit… are you really saving them if there is a line of people behind you wanting to save this child as well? The child will have a family whether you adopt or not. Right?
April 18th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Amen! I wish the preachers across the country would stop promoting this idea of saving overseas orphans. If you read about how adult Korean adoptees felt about being “saved”, you’d realize that you may be doing more harm than good.
April 18th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
RQ, Your are an arrogant person. I am glad you’re the only one wise enough to figure that out. Stick to the rumors queen.
April 18th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Silly me, I didn’t post that we should be nice over here, too. Didn’t think I needed to, since we’ve done so well with manners lately.
But, for the record – it’s okay to disagree. Just state a rational reason why you disagree and be nice about it. Please.
April 18th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Do everything for your own reasons. We get it.
April 18th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
If you read about how adult Korean adoptees felt about being “saved”, you’d realize that you may be doing more harm than good.
So according to Avonlea you shouldn’t be adopting at all. Interesting. Let’s explore that.
April 18th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
We have a heckler posting over and over again so anon posting it turned off over here.
April 18th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
I don’t think that’s what she said. What she said is that if you are adopting only to “save” an orphan then you are doing more harm than good.
Adopting a child because you want to add a child to your family is a completely different matter.
April 18th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
I agree. I cringe just a little bit every time someone congratulats me for our decision to adopt a “poor little orphan girl from China” and now that we’re also adopted a SN child, the tearful hugs from strangers are almost too much to bear.
But I know they mean no harm so I gently inform them that my motives for adopting are no different than any other parents motives for wanting a child: We just want a child.
It’s nice that we get to do something special and bring home a child who might not have a good life otherwise but that’s not the reason we’re doing it. But it is a nice that these kids might need us as much as we need them. Still, I don’t expect them to be grateful since they didn’t ask for any of this and the path we’ve picked for them won’t always be easy for them. I have a teenager so I know gratitude even under the best of circumstances is rare! We’re not becoming parents for that reason though. Good thing since (if we were) we’d almost certainly be disappointed later!
:)
Donna
April 18th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Sister I couldn’t agree with you more!
The rhetoric about ‘saving’ orphans is very disturbing. When people give me the “Oh your daughter is so lucky” stuff I usually reply – “Lucky nothing! She ended up with me as her Mother. I’m the lucky one here!! Can you imagine me ever giving birth to a child this amazing and wonderful? Thank goodness that China let me have her!!
April 18th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
I am a first-time poster and I felt the need to do so to agree with RQ’s comments. I say this as a person who was adopted – I can’t imagine how I would have felt and continue to feel now if I thought my parents “did me a favor” by adopting me or “saved me.” My mom and dad never let me think that I was anything but the greatest blessing in their lives and I plan to do the same for my daughters.
April 18th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
I understand the tearful hugs and why they are offensive. They’re sappy & weird & inappopriate.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
I’m adopting for one reason. I want to be a mother more than anything.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
Nobody adopts to save a child. I honestly believe that people are too selfish to spend 30K and travel across the world to adopt and support another human being in order to save them. If they wanted to save people they could just give a few bucks to charity and feel good about it. I agree that many people tell themselves and others that they are doing it for a noble reason, but in the end anyone who adopts is doing because they want to be a parent. This “don’t adopt to save a child” crap is way overplayed. Nobody really does that.
April 18th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Thanks for saying this! I feel exactly the same. I’m not saving a child, I’m building a family.
April 19th, 2006 at 11:56 am
I’m adopting to give an orphan a home. I already have 4 children and I could have another bio child if I wished. But my husband and I feel that growing up without a family is a TRAGEDY, and we want to give one orphan a family. We contribute very heavily to charity already. Money was not enough for us. I have an adopted brother, from Mexico, adopted for the very same reasons. He is grateful and he knows that if he had not been adopted, he would have been selling newspapers barefoot on the streets of filthy Guadalajara at the age of 7, and abused and tortured. When I told him were thinking of adopting and asked him what he thought, he said: do it! And started to cry. He loves all of us very much, especially our parents who adore us all equally. My mother thinks he walks on water. And she also thinks she did a good deed when she adopted him while pregnant, with two other children, in her third year of medical school, for no other reason than that the barefoot orphans on the street at 2 am trying to make a couple of pesos so they could eat a tortilla made her cry. He bears my father’s name, a very big deal in our culture, and so does his little son, who my parents think hung the moon and the stars. You CAN give an orphan a home as a an act of deep love of humanity and also love that child as an irreplaceable part of your family, your family’s greatest blessing, if you will. Those two things are NOT mutually exclusive.
April 19th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
We also had two biological children and could have had more but chose to adopt 2 children because their were children who needed families!
April 24th, 2006 at 3:08 am
It is ok to be doing it for both reasons. Wanting to adopt and then researching it, and realizing that China abandons children is fine. The desire should be first, and the reasons for where to choose from can be incorporated. My pet peeve is when people say that they adopted because they failed at conceiving. I understand that it is a major reason that people adopt, but it is so damaging for a child to think that they were adopted as second best. If someone decides to adopt for those reasons, I hope they do not incorporate that story into the child’s adoption story.
April 27th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
I hear ya sister… I too am sponsoring a child through ‘Half The Sky’ so that they had the chance to get an education etc. I can have children if I wanted to but I was adopted myself and always said that I wanted to do the same thing. I look forward to getting my little chicken… not only are my husband and I looking forward to getting her but her whole family here in the US and in Australia are really looking forward to her becoming part of our families. Actually, as I speak she is considered part of the family now. Her Grandmothers say that they have another Granddaughter waiting for them to give her lots of kisses. This girl will be SO loved it will be scary :) As for ‘saving’ a child, I am not fussed on that term… I am adopting cause it was something that happened to me and basically that is what I wanted to do… I was lucky my hubby agreed to the whole thing:) Take care…