Thursday, April 15th, 2010
Adoption may be grueling, but it is good
I’m not going to defend the woman who put her adopted son and an airplane and sent him back where he came from.
But I’ve known enough tragically difficult adoption situations to make me wonder if more knowledge of the situation might not make it easier to have a little empathy with her. Not that what she did was right, but that we might see how she felt driven to an extreme solution.
What we can say for sure is that she got in over her head and made a very bad decision.
This video gives a helpful overview of the situation and beginning at about minute 3:45 asks most of the questions that are at the front of my mind:
- Did this woman not receive adequate information about the child?
- Did this child receive good treatment in the orphanage?
- Did this woman get properly vetted ahead of time?
- Did the agency examine her home study and other information carefully enough to make sure this was a good fit?
- Did she receive training?
- Was there ongoing support?
I’d also ask:
- Was there adequate professional help available when she needed it, including from the adoption agency?
- Was thought given to the difficulty of single parenting, especially with the adoption of an older child, which everyone knows is likely to be more stressful?
- Were there a church and friends who were part of a personal, unofficial support network?
- Was there sufficient language translation help so mother and son could communicate and to help the child make the difficult transition into another culture and language?
In an ideal world, every child would have a loving home. In an ideal world, raising children would be easy.
In the world we live in, parents and children in a loving home–whether born into the family or adopted– may have the “just the normal” stresses and joys. Or they may face the realities that one friend writes about, regarding children with attachment disorder or other disabilities, including fetal alcohol syndrome.
The Joint Council On International Children’s Services has asked that bloggers talk about the truth–that adoption is a good thing. Here’s a list of some families that are posting thoughts about their adoption stories.
Our own adoption story begins here and each post links to the next.
7 Responses to “Adoption may be grueling, but it is good”
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Thank you for your thoughts on this. My husband and I have and are praying about adoption. We know that the time is not right, right now. Our pastor and his wife adopted from China last year. My pastor’s wife blogged about the experience and was very, very real about it. I appreciated her transparency.
I share so many of your thoughts! In the process of God placing adoption ministry on our hearts, we’ve found out so many things are not what they seem. I’ve been reading and signing petitions (even turning pics of our successful Moscow adoption), but I didn’t see the section about blogging today! Thank you for sharing with us…I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve linked my new post to your blog. Thank you again!!!!
Thank you for speaking the truth in love….With kindness and gentleness by His Spirit.
Thank you for this. I have been thinking a lot about this woman and her story. We have friends on their way to China right now to pick up their 2 year old daughter. Knowing my friends’ story and hearing this woman’s story has shed light on the whole situation. The caretakers and adoption agencies are not always as forthcoming as we would like to think. My friends had to do a lot of probing to find out what was really going on with their daughter (she has a heart deformity and condition that will have to be fixed before too long).
It was good to hear your opinion on this subject. Thank you again!
Yes, thank you for sharing your thoughts and for the link to the foster care post as well. You do write with grace and gentleness and truth.
Thank you for pointing out that there is more to the story than a mom changing her mind about the child she adopted.
I have also known families who have faced really, really serious problems due to the way their children were cared for (or actually not card for) before the adoption. I think it is so important for friends, family, churches, and other organizations to come alongside these parents and help them, just as we would for parents facing serious problems with their natural children. Many just don’t know how to help.
It seems like removing the child from the home should never be an option, yet we see that sometimes parents have had to make heartbreaking choices when their natural children experience problems beyond their ability to deal with–some go to stay with relatives, or to temporary foster care, or to homes for children with serious problems, or even inpatient hospital care.
And I think the most powerful way we can help each other as moms is through a commitment to sustained, united prayer for children.
Moms In Touch International (http://www.MomsInTouch.org) provides a wealth of support to women around the world.
When Mothers Pray (http://miti.christianbook.com/together-stories-power-transform-your-child/fern-nichols/9781589975590/pd/975590?event=HPF1) includes encouraging accounts of the power of prayer in helping families through all kinds of parenting challenges and spiritual battles.
Noel,
I meant to send a note the day this was posted, but got side-tracked.
I wanted to tell you that I was adopted in Virginia in 1962 (I was born in VA too). I was extremely blessed to be placed in a home with two people (MY PARENTS) that were unable to conceive their own children. They were not just parents, they were AMAZING parents!
My mother told me from the time I was placed in her arms that I was special-and I believed her! She told me they WANTED me, I was no accident! She also told me she LOVED my birth-mother for loving me enough to give me to others that were in a position to care for me. She totally changed the way I had been thinking of her, which wasn’t quite so kind.
Unfortunately, I lost both of my parents when I was 18 years old (my mom to a massive heart attack and my dad to cancer), but my boyfriend’s mom told me (and she was right!), I had more in 18 years than most have in a life time!
I was extremely blessed!