Sometimes the mentality out there is that everyone who adopts is the same. Because we all welcome into our fold a child not born to us, we must all somehow be of the same spirit and beliefs. Often people paint the thoughts and imagined experiences of adoptive parents with one broad, generalized brush, but in truth the reality is anything but uniform sameness.

A person could know several adoptive parents, and never know any two who are alike or even vaguely similar, except that they adopted. People who adopt can be young or old, single or married, wealthy or low income, and from all different walks of life and religion. If you also looked at the variety of ways that people bring a child into their family through adopting, you will find differences abound here too.

With all the ways in which someone could adopt a child, this concept of all adoptive parents being alike, or fitting into the same mold becomes a stretch to understand. Parents have adopted from all over the world, brand new infants, growing toddlers, and children who are facing their final years of adolescence. These families have welcomed healthy children, those with mild mental and physical concerns, and others who are seriously ill and show little hope for improvement or recovery. Children have found their family through private adoption, agency placement, foster care, and step parent and kinship arrangements. Many families may have several children, who have any number of combinations as mentioned above.

The preferences parents have about how an adoption should work are also as unique as the persons involved. Some adoptive parents still elect to have a closed adoption (as do some birthparents). Others prefer to have an open adoption in any of its varied levels of contact and commitment. There are some who prefer the structure and guidance of an agency adoption, while others might look toward taking greater control in their own hands and consider an independent adoption.

Adoptive parents also seem to have a wide spectrum of views about adoption practices and ideas about changes and reforms. Many lean heavily toward finding reforms, greater protection of first family rights, and protecting women from coercion and unwarranted loss of their children to adoption. Still others find making the process of adoption more ethical and preserving the rights of the adopted of the highest importance. There are also those who believe that things in the adoption process are, while not prefect, working well to protect families and children.

By all accounts the differences are sometimes vast.

While most adoptive parents are really nothing alike in most ways, I do believe that in one very core way they are really very alike and that is their love and concern for the children of the world. If you have to agree (or all be so alike) involving any one thing then I believe that should be the one thing.
Love and concern for our children, we adoptive parents are all alike there.

How To Totally Confuse Yourself About Adoption

Coming Out As An Adoptive Mom- Part One

Coming Out As An Adoptive Mom- Part Two

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