Are You Aware? National Adoption Awareness Month

November is National Adoption Awareness Month, before we all get swept up in our do-gooder intentions please read Are You Aware? The Mantle.

Adoption is a very complicated issue and before anyone rushes out to save the soul of some pitiful waif, they should at least be aware of the different sides of the adoption issues.  Adoption is not all sweetness and light.  Nor is it in my humble opinion, useless and obsolete.

I have never been adopted, though I was raised by an adoptee, and I spent several years as a ward of the state of Michigan.  My childhood experience is evidence of family generational cycles and that the wounds of unaddressed childhood traumas such as abuse, languishing in the foster care system and being adopted by the woefully unprepared have lasting affect for generations to come.

Adoption in America should be an option in the case of impending abuse and of neglect.  Adoption is not now or has it ever been a cure for infertility.   Adoption is not an acceptable form of birth control.  Adoption should only be an option for a child when all else has failed. 

If you think you may want to adopt / foster a child, you are taking your ego out of it, you are doing it to fulfill the needs of a child, rather than your “need” to be a parent, a savior, a martyr, do your self and your adopted / foster child a favor:  seek out all sides of the adoption issue.  Do not tune out the so called “Angry Adoptees” because they make you feel yucky.  Listen and learn.  Your kids and grand kids may just reap the benefits of your discomfort and open-mindedness.

Then maybe pop over to Real Daughter: November is National Adoption Awareness month for Linda's...on the subject.  

 

 

 * This post is a part of my National Adoption Awareness Month, a post every day in November campaign, to remind perspective adoptive parents that there are 140,000 kids for whom family preservation is not an option, who through no fault of their own are currently available for adoption in the U. S. foster care system, right here in our own back yard.  If you are considering adoption please consider adopting a foster child.  

 

Or vistit Amanda at The Declassified Adoptee: National Adoption Awareness Month...I Guess They Missed That Memo