It's a complicated issue. Ideally, everyone everywhere would have the means to raise children who are wanted and avoid having children who are not. However, in reality, children exist who need homes, and I don't think foreigners who want to adopt them are bad people.
After a lot of thought, we decided to adopt from S. Korea; our son came home last summer. Although it's getting a lot better, adoption there is still fairly stigmatized. I certainly don't feel that we "saved" my son -- he definitely experienced a loss by being removed from his birth country -- but I don't think societies should stigmatize foreign adoptive parents unless they are also promoting domestic adoption (Korea is), providing safe and easy access to birth control/abortion, not shaming single mothers, etc.
The program you describe sounds great. Our agency required a certain number of education, and we mostly chose to do classes on raising multi-cultural children. I don't think parents who aren't interested in maintaining links to their child's birth country should pursue international adoption. That said, I also know international adoptees who aren't at all interested in their birth culture. Parents should be open-minded, and let their children lead the way in terms of language classes, culture camps, homeland tours, etc.
If you have other questions, please feel free to ask. Otherwise, I would recommend talking to an adult adoptee. :)
Thanks so much for that. I never thought about pushing a culture on the child, has given me something else to think about. You are right about letting the child have a choice what they want out of the situation and how involved they want to be.
Congrats on your adoption, I like how you said that you did not "save" your son so many people I talk to state how I would be "saving" a child and I don't like to think about it in that terms.
After a lot of thought, we decided to adopt from S. Korea; our son came home last summer. Although it's getting a lot better, adoption there is still fairly stigmatized. I certainly don't feel that we "saved" my son -- he definitely experienced a loss by being removed from his birth country -- but I don't think societies should stigmatize foreign adoptive parents unless they are also promoting domestic adoption (Korea is), providing safe and easy access to birth control/abortion, not shaming single mothers, etc.
The program you describe sounds great. Our agency required a certain number of education, and we mostly chose to do classes on raising multi-cultural children. I don't think parents who aren't interested in maintaining links to their child's birth country should pursue international adoption. That said, I also know international adoptees who aren't at all interested in their birth culture. Parents should be open-minded, and let their children lead the way in terms of language classes, culture camps, homeland tours, etc.
If you have other questions, please feel free to ask. Otherwise, I would recommend talking to an adult adoptee. :)
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Congrats on your adoption, I like how you said that you did not "save" your son so many people I talk to state how I would be "saving" a child and I don't like to think about it in that terms.
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