For many adopted children, writing their adoption story is a special way to share their unique experiences with their families. As the world becomes more diverse, ensuring children are able to tell their own stories is important. Luckily, TV series and books seem to be slowly catching on and pushing back against the narrative of adoption as tragedy.
One reason that people decide to adopt is to give a child a good home. There are so many children who are in foster care, having experienced traumatic events, or simply needing a permanent family. Adoptive parents can feel moved by these children’s plight and decide to adopt as a way to give them a safe, loving place to grow up in.
Another reason that people adopt is to help their friends or relatives. There are many pregnant women who are not in a position to raise their own children, or have medical conditions that make pregnancy ill-advised. Often these women are unable to conceive on their own and choose to adopt their unborn child or baby, giving them the family they need.
For those who are already parents, their life experience as an adoptee can influence how they approach parenting. Some of the interviewees who were in contact with their birth parents sought to distance themselves from these relationships, especially if they had been unhappy, in order to focus on their own parenting and protect their children (though others found that parenthood allowed them to develop new, more respectful relationships with their birth family). Overall, this research suggests that there is no single “adoption story” and that narratives which paint adoption as either all good or all bad miss the important nuance of the practice.
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