National Adoption Day, Nov. 17, is an effort to bring awareness to the 117,000 foster children waiting to be brought permanently into their families. Families who were created through adoption understand how annoying (and limiting!) myths around adoption are. Here are a few more things they also understand.
The Real Parents
Adoption Is Secure
Adoptive families don't go to bed every night worried the birth parents will ask for the child back. Yes, sometimes birth mothers change their minds during the period of revocation, a time before an adoption is finalized for birth parents to change their minds. But it's rare. After the adoption is finalized, the family is permanent.
Open Adoption Makes Sense
Open adoption is not only better for the child and the families, but it makes sense. It helps adoptees feel secure in their identities. And they may find answers to questions they have throughout their lives.
Adoptee Questions Are Good
Asking questions is healthy! Just because an adoptee asks their families for details or more information doesn't mean the attachment to their parents is weak. It simply means they're developing their identities—and that's a good thing.
Searching for Birth Parents Is Healthy
Though finding one's birth parents or meeting them for the first time doesn't always have a happy or satisfying ending for adoptees, the search for answers about them doesn't mean they're unhappy, insecure or dislike their parents.
It's Not Second-Best
Adoption isn't settling. It's not the second-best way to form a family. Adoption is family. Period. And the best for families who do it. Saying otherwise is hurtful to adoptive families and their children.
Lifelong Process
Adoption goes beyond the day a child is brought to their parents, beyond the day things were legally finalized. Adoption is part of a child's identity and, therefore, a lifelong process. As they grow, new questions and feelings arise. Openness and the willingness to seeks answers is a special part of the adoptee's (and the adoptive family's) story and history.
