"Adoption is a choice....
It is a choice in a lot of different ways. Adoption is a choice for parents who are unable to care for their children. It is a way for them to provide for their children. For some parents adoption is a choice instead of abortion. For some parents adoption is a choice instead of extreme poverty and suffering. There are many other reasons a parent could choose adoption for her child. It is certainly never an easy choice for birth families, but it is a choice.
Adoption is a choice for parents who want to expand their families. For some people, adoption is a choice instead of infertility treatments. For some people, adoption is the only choice to become a parent. For some people, adoption is a just another way to bring a child into a family.
Transracial adoption is a choice. It is choosing not only to love, parent and make your own a child that is not related biologically to you, but also to love, parent and make your own a child that does not look like you. It is choosing to take on issues like racism, prejudice and white privilege. It is to care about a culture other than your own. It is taking on the criticism of those who see color of skin as a way to segregate people. It is complicated."
"Adoption is also a business, expensive, hope, life changing, love, complicated, a roller coaster, risky, making connections, necessary, something to be thankful for, hard, beautiful, and family. When you put all of those pieces together, that is what adoption is to me. For many reasons, adoption is one of the things I am most passionate about. Because adoption is hope, is love, is something to be thankful for, is necessary, is life changing, is beautiful and is family, I believe that it is a very good thing and I believe that it is worth advocating for. On the flip side, because adoption is also a business, is expensive, is complicated, is a roller coaster, is risky and is hard, I also think that it is important that adoptive parents, prospective adoptive parents and adoption professionals work at educating others and always strive to keep ethics a top priority.
And because adoption is only necessary and only exists because of social, personal and economic hardships that exist in this world, I think that we also need to work at trying to make a difference in the world and trying to make things better, so that less children have to suffer the trauma of being separated from their first parents. Fighting against hunger, poverty, social stigmas and preventable and treatable illnesses will lead to less orphans being created.
In a perfect world, adoption would not be necessary, as every child that was born would be born unto parents who were ready, willing, desirous and able to parent him. Since we do not live in a perfect world, adoption is a wonderful second chance for many children. I hope that we all can be aware of the millions of children across the world who do not have families to belong to. I hope that we can be aware of the tragedies that are causing these children to be orphaned in the first place. I hope that we can find ways to promote ethical adoption. I hope that for as long as there are children in this world that end up orphaned and alone, that adoption will be an available option to unite those children with new families."
We can't wait to become a "forever family"! We just received notice that all of the letters of reference have finally arrived ( : In order to complete the agency approval process we will attend a two hour panel interview in a couple of days...and at that time we we hope to hear those magic words "you are approved"!
Thank you for always sharing such great information! I am so excited to be an Auntie!
ReplyDeleteI have an entire folder full of adoption articles and quotes including some of what you have here. I will have to share those with you. I also have many beautiful children's books explaining adoption to your child. I will have to compile a box of stuff for you since it is now your turn...
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