Adoption from Foster Care and Saving a Child

Adopting from foster care generally means that you know, with a very high degree of certainty, that the child would be much better off with you than in their original home. I'm putting the "generally" in that sentence because not all children in foster care are there because of abuse or neglect. A tiny proportion enter the system through voluntary relinquishment at birth; another reason is that their aging relatives just can't care for them anymore because of illness or death. I'm also not counting the children who don't need or want to be adopted.

The high degree of certainty comes from court documents, police records, maybe the psychological or physical scars carried by the child.

To be honest, this is one of the main things that determined my choice of adoption route. Besides not feeling the necessity for adopting an infant, I'll try to list all the reasons:

1. moral certainty (what I mentioned above)
2. patriotism
3. money
4. practicality

All of these reasons could be argued against. They probably all have a dark side as well as a positive side. They work for me, but I'm not saying they would, or should, work the same for every other parent. My husband's reasons are very similar although he doesn't articulate them the same way.

For the reason of patriotism -- I have a unique take on patriotism, and I guess it's that I have a very strong sense of myself as an American. I still feel very deeply about problems in other countries, and don't think their citizens deserve less than Americans do. I don't buy into the sentiment "you shouldn't adopt internationally when there are so many children waiting here" because so many children in developing countries suffer horrible fates. The implication is that a foreign child deserves less than an American. If I don't adopt a child out of the foster care system here, they might age out in foster care, which is a sad fate, but almost certainly better than aging out in an orphanage in Russia.

On the other hand, parents who favor international sometimes say "the foster care system in America is so bad, we couldn't use it". Newsflash: America has some of the best childcare services in the world. Pretty much all the countries you are looking to adopt from have worse childcare services. We have a lot to improve here, but we don't let starving children sleep in cardboard boxes in busy streets, or work for a living as soon as they can toddle. I think honest adoptive parents shouldn't put down the system here unless they are really comparing it to a better or improved system. If ours was really so bad, they should work harder to save children by taking them out of it, and not go outside the country instead.

Since I'm an American and I know America so well, I also know its problems more deeply than any other country. A good kind of analogy would be, if your goal is to plant trees, should you spend your money planting a tree around the corner, or planting a small grove of trees in the state next door? You'll accomplish more if you plant the grove. But since you don't know that much about the soil or the climate in the next state, you could plant the trees the wrong way, or plant the wrong kinds of trees. It's the local versus global dilemma. In adoption terms, I'm worried about abuses in the worldwide adoption system and unethical activity. I wouldn't want to be a part of that. Adoptive parents can do a lot of things to try make sure their adoptions are ethical, but in many aspects you have to rely on the word of strangers, bureaucrats and agency representatives. As a local, American adoptive parent, there's a lot more transparency to the process, which I guess goes back to reason number one, moral certainty. Plus, I actually feel ashamed, as an American, that we have so many waiting children.

Money and practicality: these are easy to explain. State adoptions are free and subsidized. We're in a decent financial position so we don't need the subsidy right now. Instead, it can go straight to a college fund. If we fall on hard times, it would be great to draw on. The children all have paid healthcare, which is vital because abuse and neglect lead to physical and mental health issues that will need addressing. Practicality means that since we would be adopting locally, from "around the corner", it would not be hard to find schools or services that would be a good fit for the child. Many older children come with established links to biological parents or siblings or other relatives, and it will be much easier to maintain these links.

There are definitely sacrifices and tough emotional patches in choosing adoption from foster care. A lot of them are obvious, and I've already posted about them. In foster-to-adopt, you have to steel yourself to give your child back if necessary, to think of them as possibly your own, but not really your own. I read a lot of blogs from people who've done it. Just reading about a "giving back" is heartwarming but emotionally wrenching. "I've been crying for weeks straight" is a frequent response. In straight or general adoption you'll have more permanence, but also so many difficult decisions about what you can handle and what you can't, and if that makes you a selfish person or not. I think very few of these parents -- at least not the ones I've met in person or read about -- see themselves as martyrs, simply because there's always another parent who can take on something you can't. "Mr. and Mrs. X, we have a 15-year-old boy who needs a home. He's 'all boy' and a real bundle of energy. He's mildly to moderately severely emotionally, behaviorally and developmentally disabled. But not physically. In fact it takes four police officers to restrain him, don't ask us how we know this. Can you take him?" "Sure".

The idea of sacrifices brings me to the idea of saving a child. Is it all worth it for the moral certainty of saving a child, or at least trying to save a child? And how problematic is "saving a child"? What does it really mean?

I look on "saving a child" as kind of a service or duty. Or privilege. That doesn't mean it's selfless. I'm getting a lot out of the deal as well; I get to be a mother, I get to feel I've done something right. It’s so complicated! But here's a very simple and beautiful expression that helped me a lot. It says everything so much better than I'm saying it.

From the older Baggage That Goes With Mine blog:

Thirteen Things about adopting an older child from foster care.
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5. Adoption is a one time event. Don't adopt to save a child. You can "save" them once, but after that it's called "parenting."
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The problem with the expression "saving a child" in the context of adoption is that it implies "saving" goes on and on, and so should the child's gratitude and society's gratitude. It doesn't have to be that way. If a mother sees her child drowning, and jumps in the water, and saves them, there's no such implication. After you adopt the child, the "saving" - if there is one - should be a happy event that recedes in time, never a burden on the child's shoulders, or a flashy martyr's cross.