Nanny to Mommy

Adoption is one of the most charitable things that one human being can do for another. Essentially, you're bringing up the biological child of another person. And you're doing it for no other than the reason that you want to and feel that it's the right thing for you and your family.

Raising children who are not your own is a big sacrifice and something that is entirely admirable in our society. It's also incredibly challenging to do and takes a lot of soul-searching, especially when you first commit. You wonder whether you're the right person for the job and what the dynamic will be like. You fear that there will be differences in how you treat your biological and non-biological children. And all that stress can ultimately take its toll on your mind. It's not an easy path.

Prejudices against adoption, therefore, tend to make the matter even more challenging. You'd think that people would see the act as wholly good. But there are problems that adoptive families and their children regularly encounter. 

The first prejudice is that adoption causes problems for kids. The idea is that children can only be happy if they're with their natural parents, not their adoptive family. Anything less than a genuine connection with genetically-similar family members is a travesty. 

However, adoption is often the best outcome, especially for children who have ended up in care. The system doesn't provide the kind of stability that young people need to see them through to healthy adulthood. Furthermore, many children of natural parents experience dreadful upbringings. The family unit is no protection against trauma. 

This argument doesn't make much sense either, but it is common in the world of adoption. There's an idea that parents can never truly consider an adopted child one of their own. They don't have a biological connection with them, and so, the thinking goes, that undermines their capacity to love. 

Nothing, however, could be further than the truth. People love others in families outside of their own in their romantic lives - and that doesn't seem to bother anyone. They even love their pets, and they're not the same species. The capacity to love has to do with empathy, not weird, fleeting hormonal interactions. 

There's another common prejudice out there: birth parents can turn up at any time and reclaim their children after a long absence. Checking family law soon reveals that this isn't true. Post-adoption revocations are extremely rare. And they only usually happen if the biological parent can prove some dreadful wrongdoing on the part of the adoptive parent. Or it occurs when the biological parent lost custody of the child for reasons entirely out of their control. For instance, they crashed on a desert island and weren't rescued for several months. 

Adoption doesn't have to be prejudicial, but sometimes it can be. Even so, it is still well worth your time and effort. It's one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.