Continuing from the last post, this one will tackle some of what motivates me to pursue adoption from my perspective as a future parent. This is one of those posts that in the future I’ll either look back on with fondness, or I’ll realize I was a complete idiot.
I’m guessing probably a little (or a lot) of both. That’s what I’m hoping for anyway.
Parental reasons why I want to adopt
I mentioned a few months back that I want eight kids. As I said then, this idea popped into my head somewhat on a whim. For some reason, though, the number’s stuck, for years now.
Part of the desire for a large family, I think, goes back to how I grew up. I grew up super close to the two brothers closest to me in age. When I was eleven, my sister was born. And then again when I was almost 17, my parents had another baby, another boy. They celebrated children. That’s rubbed off on me.
My family is the best physical gift I’ve received in my lifetime. As a result, I want to pass on the same gift to my kids.
When I tell people about this idea, the eight kids idea, the two most common objections I get boil down to this:
- You shouldn’t expect a woman to give birth eight times. It’s not healthy.
- You shouldn’t contribute to over-populating the world. It’s not responsible.
Now, I could challenge both of those objections with counter responses of my own – in fact, I have in the past. But in practice, how far does that get anyone? The other path I can take is to just adopt, and put everyone at ease.
Think about it. In response to the first objection, adoption keeps my wife from giving birth to a bunch of kids. Theoretically, we could have eight kids without her giving birth at all. In response to the second objection, adoption negates the over-population effect since adopted children don’t add to the total number of living people. Adoption just rearranges current population.
In other words, no extra pregnancies for my wife and no extra people on earth. Who can complain about that?
Another reason I align well with adoption is because it opens up the possibility of having many children quickly or, thinking of it another way, having children who are super close in age. Maybe there’s a reason kids aren’t usually born too close together. Maybe I’ll discover that reason down the line. For now, though, I like leaving the option open for having all eight of these kids within, say, a decade of one another’s ages.
This plays heavily into why I decided to experiment with fundraising for an adoption. I’m saving for this on my own, yes – don’t get me wrong. If things work out this way, though, where I do end up trying to have many kids in a short amount of time, I’ll need the funds all at once. I won’t necessarily have time to save for multiple children at that point. Of course, this totally might not happen. Still, I want to prepare for it anyway, because it’s something I’m considering. Thus, the adoption fund experiment.
Lastly, just when you thought I couldn’t get any more insane, I like adoption because I want to raise an interracial family. I could write a whole series on this alone, but for now I’ll just say it’s something that appeals to me for a number of reasons, in many ways just like adoption, reasons that all link together.
There’s a huge supply of African American children in the system too, so that will work in my favor as far as being able to adopt goes.
So yeah, this is like wrinkle upon wrinkle upon wrinkle, and this just within my parental reasons for adopting. I want to adopt because it’s a way to build a large family without adding more pregnancy pressure in a direct sense, it’s a way to open the possibility of having many children in a short period of time, and it’s a way to create a cross-cultural family.
Wow.
In the next post, I’ll get into my personal reasons for adoption, the reasons that might only apply to me. Thanks for following along.
