14 Common Stereotypes About Adoption

In Patricia Irwin Johnston’s book, Adopting After Infertility, the author discusses the mixed reactions people have when we inform them we’ve decided to adopt a child.  She lists 14 common adoption myths:

Adoption is second best. Birth parents don’t live up to their real responsibilities, children don’t live in real families, and adoptive parents aren’t real parents.

Birth parents are irresponsible. Even though it’s completely acceptable for people to become pregnant out of wedlock, society says that those who do so and place their child for adoption are irresponsible.

The flesh and blood bond is sacred. No civilized person would give up their own flesh and blood.

Family should come through. If you’re too young to parent a child you birth, your family should accept the responsibility.

Birth parents forget about their child. Not only do they forget, but they’re supposed to forget, according to the stereotype.

Real parents give birth. Fake parents adopt.

You can’t really love a child unless you birth him or her. The love an adoptive parent has for a child is less than natural, less than complete.

The only logical reason to adopt is because you’re infertile.

Adopting is the easy way to have a child.

Real children were not adopted.

Adopted people are so lucky that saintly people adopted them.

Adopted people wouldn’t search for their birth parents if they were grateful to their adoptive parents.

When adopted people from open adoption locate their birth parents, their adoptive parents become secondary.

Adopted people are less emotionally healthy than other people.

Johnston points out the mixed messages these myths send, saying that the stereotypes boil down to one public image of adoption:

either we Did It when we shouldn’t (and must suffer the consequences( or we Tried It and we couldn’t (and must suffer the consequences). And at the center lies the innocent adoptee: poor baby, he’ll never know real mother love, but isn’t he lucky?

For more news and information about adoption, please visit my Web site, www.laurachristianson.com.

Comments

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I started my process to adopt seven months ago. So far, it's been the worst thing I have ever experienced. In the beginning I was told I could have someone in as little as three months. Once I finnished with the required classes and my Home Study, it changed to nine months to one year. They lied about the time frame. Their attitude now is "Get used to it". It's a shame these children have to wait for these careless case workers to do somehing other than have thier nails done.