Adoption is another way to parent and create a family, but it should not be seen as the same thing or an alternative route that is equal to the other. It is an additional way that can bring some women a lot of satisfaction – mostly women who have been told that having a child biologically is in impossibility or life-threatening – so they choose that route as there is no other one available.

And it has nothing to do with the amount of love you give or feel for a child. It has to do with passing on one’s soul through their DNA. It’s a part of you that will live on. It’s a part of you that you dreamed about meeting all your life to impart on them all the history and ancestry and stories that have gone before them and that you desire to live on afterward. Can you pass on these things to adopted children. Yes. It is it the exact same experience doing so? No. But the love is.

Also, as an adoptee, I have to say that I think a lot of adoptees have a romantic notion of what life would have been like with their birth parents. The fact remains that the birth parents chose to give a child up for adoption because, for whatever reason, raising a child was not an option at the time. Not all adoptive parents are perfect, I’m not saying they are. Not all adoptive parents are wonderful parents just because they adopted. Neither are all bio parents. The thing about adoption is that someone’s desire to parent overrides the biological inclination. Unassisted, natural pregnancy is 100% free, there are no legal issues, and any child that results has a biological connection – so that is the natural starting point for starting a family. I would not say that adopted children should always feel like “Plan B” because the natural desire that the majority of adoptive parents have is to parent – and just like you can’t “choose” a perfectly healthy biological child, you don’t “choose” exactly how an adopted child comes your way. You get that call, you prepare, you get excited to become a parent, just as you would with a positive pregnancy test. That is why I refer to adoption and pregnancy as family building methods, because they are two completely different paths.

I have also found that the majority of “just adopt” comments come from perfectly fertile people who have never considered adoption or the fact that a lot of people do not have the financial means to go through the adoption process (many fail, and the agency and attorneys still get paid). “Just adopt” is a statement of ignorance more than insensitivity, I think.