Anti-Adoption

[April]

http://www.antiadoption.org/

I recently stumbled across this and was a bit flabbergasted. We have considered adoption, but never considered this side of the issue. These guys, in a nut shell, completely oppose all adoption. They also to the kind of PC shit I hate - they only use "positive" adoption terms, like adopter (you know, for the people that raised you), Natural Mother (for the one who didn't), and "Lost to Adoption" (a term for giving your child up for adoption). I am not an expert on adoption, was not adopted, have not adopted, and am truly not of a firm opinion, nor do I consider myself currently qualified to state one. But, what to y'all think if this??? I thought it was a bit shocking.

[Six Gun Jim]

What the fuck. They are saying they oppose the practice and the industry, am I reading that right? Whoa.

[April]

Yeah, as far as I can tell they oppose adoption - they want it abolished. Their alternative is to have all birthmothers keep their children.

[golddust]

Hateful people always need to find some way to make life miserable for others. 

[ArmaGoof]

A quick glance at their home page leads me to believe they are concerned about mothers who consider giving up infants for adoption and not those children who are orphaned due to death of parent(s).  If I were on a debate team, I could imagine a fairly cogent argument could be made for children to stay with the individual from whom they were spawned, but I would also expect my argument to be shattered by the opposing team.  Many people who should never be parents find themselves with a responsibility they neither planned for, nor deserve, while many who would make excellent parents must jump through hoops for the opportunity. 

I take it their cause is directed at the person owning the womb from whence a child is born, an attempt at forcing them to become a responsible parent, usually in the face of either fear, ignorance, immaturity, selfishness, poverty, drug use, promiscuity or many of these detriments together.  Good luck with that one. 

[Chickengirl]

armagoof - totally agree.

my dad was adopted, turns out he has an older sister who stayed with their mum, but the dad forced her to give the second baby up. by all accounts he was a right arse. my dad would likely have had a better material life with them than he did with his adoptive family (they weren't real crash hot either  , alcoholics who didn't work), but he was wanted and loved (to be fair his mum wanted and loved him too but was in a pretty violent relationship at the time)

my mum is one of those people who would have been better off adopting us out than raising us herself - would have been safer for us, thats for sure 

[houseoftang]

Adoption, like abortion, infanticide, and welfare, do provide an "out" whereby people can offset part or all the responsibility of having children, and therefore tend to make those decisions more lightly.

Seems to me, however, that adoption is about the least bad of the options, in that it's bad only in that it allows a few people to have a child and not take responsibility--like babies from the third world adopted out to first world countries (a number of my friends are like that).  I'd speculate that in the majority of the cases in the US, it's not folks having too many kids and deciding to get rid of one, it's a matter of people who didn't even intend to have a child in the first place (whether or not their actions presented that risk).

And what about people (like, perhaps, myself) who can't have children with their chosen spouse?  Are they supposed to just suck it up, and children have to stay with parents that don't want them?

[turnipgirl]

my incubator is evil incarnate( a few years back I said in a post I'd give her a glass of gasoline if she was on fire-I wasn't kidding, my sperm donor a useless eater whose sole purpose in life is to keep the alcohol industry in business, and my step paternal figure is an abusive pedophile.

Knowing the exact moment when the maternal/paternal bond snaps is a very traumatic experience- it is almost audible in my mind.

Adoption is a good thing- I wish I would have been......but at the same time I think adoptions should be open so kids can find their biological parents once they are old enough.

Then again- I do believe wholeheartedly that without my background I would not have the mental and emotional coping skills that I now have, and believe that it serves a purpose in enabling me to make it thru whatever the future holds for me- I mean, it can't get worse than when I was a kid- seriously.

[golddust]

my incubator is evil incarnate( a few years back I said in a post I'd give her a glass of gasoline if she was on fire-I wasn't kidding, my sperm donor a useless eater whose sole purpose in life is to keep the alcohol industry in business, and my step paternal figure is an abusive pedophile.

Knowing the exact moment when the maternal/paternal bond snaps is a very traumatic experience- it is almost audible in my mind.

Adoption is a good thing- I wish I would have been......but at the same time I think adoptions should be open so kids can find their biological parents once they are old enough.

Then again- I do believe wholeheartedly that without my background I would not have the mental and emotional coping skills that I now have, and believe that it serves a purpose in enabling me to make it thru whatever the future holds for me- I mean, it can't get worse than when I was a kid- seriously.

Extremely well said.

[Annihilatrix]

Biological connections are over-rated.

[Bill Hicks]

My niece was adopted from China.  She went from being an unwanted orphan who would almost certainly have been allowed to die to actually starring in the touring company of the Broadway show Miss Saigon at age 6 playing the little boy in the musical.  As a teenager, she is off the charts smart and would in more normal times have a VERY bright future ahead of her.

These fuckers are REAL asshats.   

[lodo_bear]

Open adoption is the best way to go, since closed adoption leaves the biological parents in perpetual anxiety over the fate of their child and it leaves the children in perpetual identity crisis of who their real parents are. But worse than closed adoption is no adoption at all. As others have eloquently pointed out, some parents are in no way prepared for the task they've given themselves, and children deserve to have capable parents from the get-go. Forcing stupid parents to keep their children is not going to work.

The site raises some valid questions about the way adoption happens these days (see this article) but I consider their solution to be worse than the problem.

[April]

I think adoption is going to be a major post-peak, or perhaps at least a mid-peak issue as well. Poverty is a major factor in child abandonment - and it is obviously on the rise. Would you guys adopt/ do you have plans to tak eon extra kids post peak?

[houseoftang]

I think adoption is going to be a major post-peak, or perhaps at least a mid-peak issue as well. Poverty is a major factor in child abandonment - and it is obviously on the rise. Would you guys adopt/ do you have plans to tak eon extra kids post peak?

I'm thinking it's likely.  Even if I won't let the parents stick around, I'd be much more sympathetic to letting the kids stay.

[MissMachinegun]

<<Poverty is a major factor in child abandonment - and it is obviously on the rise. Would you guys adopt/ do you have plans to tak eon extra kids post peak?>>

I would prefer to adopt than have my own. In fact, I'd prefer to adopt a 2 year old than an infant. And I would take an abandoned child in a heartbeat if I have/had the means to support one or two.

There are a lot of people in my life that are adopted (or that were adopted out). The only time I've seen a negative consequence is when another relative adopted the child, and the adoption was kept secret and discovered later on in life. That person was crushed and didn't speak to anyone in our family until the last years of his life. It is true, that my best friend wishes she knew her real mom and grandparents, and had more of an exposure to her true heritage (Native American), but she'd never trade her adopted family for anyone else, and my other adopted friends (and a cousin) are thankful for the lives they have more than sad for the ones they didn't.

This issue is nowhere near as black and white as "good" and "evil" as this group seems to think it is.