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What is the applicant’s view or expectations about the characteristics, ages or number of child/ren that they hope to adopt? 29
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Which means we have to state clearly and with reasons, what sort of child or children we would be happy to consider. The categories are as follows:
Background
Child as s/he is
Sexual Abuse
Health Issues
Physical Impairments and Learning Difficulties
I do understand why these things have to be considered - the matches made by social workers need to work in the best interests of the children as as well the parents but I do feel very uncomfortable making the choices. We are not allowed to have designer babies but this process appears to give adopter the chose to design their family from sex to physical characteristics and other inherited traits. Of course there is often no way to tell what issues might become prevalent in the future but we are given the choice to 'reject' (for lack of a better word) children that, had they be born to us naturally we would have learnt to cope with.
For example - had we have had a baby with Downs Syndrome we would have loved that child, given it the very best life possible and learnt how to manage any issues this condition might bring. Now we can decide whether we will accept a child with this condition and whether we are prepared to learn how to cope with it.
It feels very wrong.
Children should come into your life and be love no matter what.
There is a whole tick list of conditions we can say yes or no to and I think that this might be the hardest part of the process. The advice we are given is to read up and discuss these conditions but there are so many of them we are struggling to know where to start. We thought the physical impairment section would be the easiest - our first reaction to children with severely limited mobility was a no as our home is not set up for them but I feel awful saying no despite knowing it is probably for the best all round.
We have some time before we have to fill in this section of the report, time to think, read and discuss as well as try to decide. I just hope we can make the right decision.
This was probably the hardest meeting we had with our Social Worker, because it does make you feel incredibly guilty when you say you would not take a child with a certain illness or disability, or a particular history. I hope we were realistic about what we would and wouldn't both be able, and want, to cope with. But, I firmly believe that just because you would cope with something if it happened to your biological child, doesn't necessarily mean that you would volunteer to take it on, or that you would choose that for your child. Adoption in and of itself can already lead to a lot of problems for children, and there are always a huge amount of unknowns.
ReplyDeleteI would view the choices that you do have as simply a balance against the choices that have been removed from you. Some local authorities and some social workers will put a lot of pressure on you to consider children that are either older, or have more problems, than you would really like, because they're so difficult to place. Given the length of the commitment you have to think about your happiness and what you want from your family, as well as what you could do for a child with specific problems.
Another thing to bear in mind, is that the probability of you having a child with, for example, Downs, is very low. A disproportionately high number of children with severe health problems do end up in care, whether because their parents can't cope with it, or because their parents have caused those problems. Additionally, lot of people say a definite no to some of the more severe problems they list, so if you say yes, your chance of having a child with one of those problems is going to be pretty high. I think you have to be quite cold about it, and ask yourself if you really want that to be your life. It is not the same as the risk you take when you have your own biological child.
I hope you manage to make decisions that you're comfortable with on this subject.
Best wishes,
Ilyssa