Aaaaaah, we were talking about adoption!

While still on that delicate topic of adoption - I had often wondered why people adopt within the family when the child's parents are still alive. I had a cousin and a friend who were adopted that way. My cousin's birth mother and adoptive mother were real sisters. My friend was adopted by a single aunt who never got married. Her brother had four girls and she was the one who got adopted. Luckily, for both of them they had very happy, healthy, well-balanced childhoods and were well-loved in their respective adoptive homes. I never did ask my cousin how he felt about being an only child (although he had other siblings) or the adoption, but, my friend herself mentioned once that she often wondered why she was chosen to be given away by her parents. She calls them "Uncle" and "Aunty" - yet knowing that they are her birth parents makes it so wierd. She grew up without siblings, except when they were all together in the same house and same city - even then she was the one who did not really belong, they were her cousins by adoption - not e her real sister. How awful is that? Fancy missing out on such special relationships, because the people who created you did not think about your needs, wants or desires. My thinking is - how could one do that to one's own child? I know that the child was given to the adoptive person because,the adoptive person was well loved and they wanted to give that person the joy of loving their own child. That is a very lovely thing to do for another person. However, on the flip side of the coin - is this beautiful baby whom you have brought into the world. She/he is not a toy or gift that you can just hand over to someone else, because you love them a lot. What about the baby's feelings. How does a child who has been given away by a parent cope knowing that they loved someone else more than they loved her and so they gave her away to the other person. What a terrible dilemma and thought to have to live with for the rest of your life - it would be so much easier to accept if the parents were dead. Life is hard enough without adding more dimensions to it than God had intended for that life. The world is full of children who are without parents. They are the ones who really need to be adopted. They are the ones in danger out there - alone in the world. If you are going to adopt why not adopt out of them, so that you really do some good for another soul. Instead, by adopting within the family or friend's circle you create more issues for a poor child to have to deal with right through their life. Why is it when people think about these things they never seem to think from the eye's of a child who has been given up for adoption. I too, many years ago was put through the same test. My ma-in-law wanted me to give up one of my babies (even those not yet born) to be adopted by my brother and sister-in-law. Wow, that hit me like a ton of bricks!!! I should have expected it but I did not, and when it came it knocked the very wind out of my sails! She had made my brother and sister-in-law, whom I had grown very fond off, wait for 13 years - telling them that when their brother married they could adopt a child from him. She did not want whatever they had materially, to go to another child - it should go to a child from within the family. How selfish is that and how mercenary?:( Instead of thinkig about the child's feelings, to be thinking about keeping whatever is in the family - for the family. Anyway, I had to politely but assertively tell her that 'sorry but no way am I going to part with a child'. She said if you plan to have 4, just have one extra to give to them and I had to tell her that no matter how many children I had there would never be an extra one. All of them would be very welcomed into my home and my heart. I tried to explain to her that I could never do that to my child and that it was important to think of that child before all else. Also, I tried to tell her that any child that came into the house as an adopted child would for all intents and purposes be the loved child of those parents and there should be no difference between him/her and a child born into the family. However, I don't think she quite understood - or forgave me for not giving away my child. The irony of the whole thing is that those beautiful children that my brother and sister-in-law adopted, after that incident were the ones who were around her to give my ma-in-law all the love and care that grandchildren do and she knew them more than she ever knew any of the children actually born into the family.