I understand that it seems wrong to you. But I disagree. And I think that's a very relevent consideration for anybody (kids already in the house or not) who is open to an out-of-birth-order adoption, but unwilling to have the whole family drown in a situation that they weren't given to expect and cannot cope with. Making an unbreakable commitment to, say, an eight-year-old that you've never been alone in a room with is, to me, a self-centered intellectual leap that dehumanizes the child in question. It's like deciding to marry somebody after a first date and then pursuing that goal without deviation even if emerges that you are desperately unhappy being with person and they are desperately unhappy being with you. That's not for me. One of the many reasons I wan't interested in international adoption.
As long as we have older kids in the system, out-of-birth-order adoptions are one way they they can have permanency. There are so many kids who can thrive in loving homes, even if they're not the baby! There are probably even some kids out there who specifically do not WANT to be the baby in their forever family. I don't question the conventional wisdom that it's a challenge to successfully integrate an older sibling - but I'm noticing a lack of a corresponding conventional wisdom that it can be pretty darn difficult to forge a strong bond with an infant that somebody else carried, and the infant may grow up to deal with trauma that they don't consciously remember and thus find it very hard to process. One family might be best adapted for that challenge, while another family might be best adapted to cope with transitional stress and emotional scarring of a child who can, you know, TALK. Some of us do better with the talking-and-moving stage than with the neonatal stage, after all.
It can go well. It can go poorly. If you don't embrace emotional risk and the possibility of pain later on for you and whoever else you call family, then adoption is not your path.
That said, doing some research and asking to hear people's stories about out-of-order adoptions and deciding not to go down that road is a perfectly acceptable response. It's just that the other response is ALSO acceptable.
As long as we have older kids in the system, out-of-birth-order adoptions are one way they they can have permanency. There are so many kids who can thrive in loving homes, even if they're not the baby! There are probably even some kids out there who specifically do not WANT to be the baby in their forever family. I don't question the conventional wisdom that it's a challenge to successfully integrate an older sibling - but I'm noticing a lack of a corresponding conventional wisdom that it can be pretty darn difficult to forge a strong bond with an infant that somebody else carried, and the infant may grow up to deal with trauma that they don't consciously remember and thus find it very hard to process. One family might be best adapted for that challenge, while another family might be best adapted to cope with transitional stress and emotional scarring of a child who can, you know, TALK. Some of us do better with the talking-and-moving stage than with the neonatal stage, after all.
It can go well. It can go poorly. If you don't embrace emotional risk and the possibility of pain later on for you and whoever else you call family, then adoption is not your path.
That said, doing some research and asking to hear people's stories about out-of-order adoptions and deciding not to go down that road is a perfectly acceptable response. It's just that the other response is ALSO acceptable.
