A woman facing a difficult or unexpected pregnancy might think she has exactly two, polar-opposite but equally daunting options: either she can abort her child, escaping her dilemma entirely but often at the cost of her conscience, or she can keep her child and expect to raise him or her for eighteen years or longer. However, all women ought to know of a third option: they can give their child up for adoption after birth. Adoption affirms the value of unborn children, allowing them a chance at life, but relieves women of the many challenges posed by raising a child.
There are two primary types of adoptions in the United States. In open adoptions, the biological parents take an active role in the process of placing of their children with an adoptive family. As the name suggests, there is open communication between biological and adoptive parents, which may even continue after the completion of the adoption process. Closed adoptions, by contrast, allow no communication between birth families and adoptive families. Open and closed adoptions present the two extremes of adoptions, but many adoptions today fall somewhere in the middle, with limited communication between birth families and adopted families, often conducted through a third party.
Unfortunately, the many stigmas surrounding adoption leave people hesitant to give their children up for adoption or become adoptive parents themselves. Some people struggle to acknowledge adoptive families as “real,” because most families are made up of biological relatives. However, while most families grow from the biological ties between parents and children, it is love and loyalty which makes families last. Other people feel that offering one’s child up for adoption, whether open or closed, indicate bad parenting. This is not true! If one does not have the time, money, resources, or desire to care for one’s child, giving that responsibility to someone who does may often be the most loving thing a parent can do. Adoption challenges all parties involved – birth parents, adoptive parents, and children – but that doesn’t make adoption the wrong choice. Parents must do what is best for their children, and while most of the time this requires taking an active role in their children’s life, on rare occasions it does not. Rather than shaming mothers who choose to give their children up for adoption, our society should support them and remind them that they are not failures. Furthermore, their children ought to be supported, before, during, and after the adoptive process.
Beyond these social stigmas, the flaws in America’s current adoptive system deter people from choosing this mode of parenthood. Adoption poses a number of financial and legal challenges to prospective parents, which are not easily met. Despite the many children, both at home and abroad, who need parents, the process from start to finish is long, expensive, and time-consuming, and does not always end in an adoption. Advocates of adoption hope to streamline the system, making adoption cheaper and easier without allowing children to end up in unqualified or unprepared families. Increasing this conversation in our culture may best bring about these changes, as more awareness will lead to greater support for adoption agencies.
Perhaps the greatest barrier to adoption is fear. Parents fear placing their child for adoption because they think that it will be bad for the child. People fear adopting a child because they worry the child may have greater needs than they can handle. Because of these fears, pregnant women decide to abort their children rather than place that child for adoption, at a ratio of 50:1. Providing education and support to biological and adoptive families would not just improve the process of adoption and the lives of children, but it would increase the number of children who are given a chance at life in the first place. Birth mothers, too, would benefit, and instead of suffering, often in silence, from the guilt and shame surrounding adoption, they could rest assured that they did what was best for themselves and their children.
Ruth Moreno, 2022
Article by champions4Life .org