"You're so good to be doing this."
"Wow. It's such a good thing you're doing - adopting this baby who would have had a horrible life."
"You're a good person."
No, I'm not.
I mean, I am, but I'm not when it comes to adoption.
If I were a truly good person, I'd be adopting a 15 year-old away from foster care and dealing with whatever behavioral and other issues he/she might have from years of being shuffled in and out of foster care. If I were a truly good person, I'd donate the money I'm spending on adoption to family planning clinics to prevent the crisis and unwanted pregnancies that lead to adoption in the first place. Or I'd consider working with a family who is considering surrendering a child purely for financial reasons by providing them with the resources necessary to help them keep that child.
There are all kinds of things I would do if I were a good person when it comes to adoption.
"Just think of what kind of life this child would have led if you weren't adopting her."
Well, it would be a different life, but not necessarily a worse life. I hate the assumption that people seem to make that a child who is given up for adoption would have led some terrible life had they not been adopted. I imagine that the vast majority of women who place children for adoption do so because they lack the financial and familial resources to raise them. Because they are poor, overwhelmed, and want to give their children the life and opportunities they feel they cannot provide.
The child we're adopting - would she have had a worse, terrible life with her biological family? I don't think so. Simply a different life.
Am I doing a "good" thing by adopting a baby?
Not really. But this is the way that my husband and I will be able to have family. It's our reality. It's neither good nor bad...it is what it is.
So, for everyone out there who has told me that I'm doing this good thing - I do thank you for your kind wishes. Really. I truly appreciate that you think so. But really, I'm just a woman who wants to be a mom and this is my path to motherhood.
