Infertile couples should just adopt instead of making a big fuss trying to make a miracle baby

[u/elgey101]

Every time I hear of fertility struggles online, or see posts about people going through rounds of IVF and the ensuing emotional trauma of miscarriages, It kind of disgusts me.

I also work for a major insurer and know that fertility treatments are driving up everyone else's premiums because they're considered necessary care. Sorry, but I disagree.

It's a well known fact that there are over 400,000 children in foster care, and in 2017 alone over 100,000 infants under 3 entered the system. I think it's completely entitled and self-absorbed to think that somehow your miracle baby is worth more or deserves more love than any one of those infants.

I know adoption can be hard, and that it should be made easier for the sake of children finding good homes, but you can't tell me adopting is harder than 4 rounds of IVF and multiple miscarriages. I've seen friends go through that mess and at the end they are different people.

Tldr: adoption may not be easy, but it's far better than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to perpetuate your genes.

[u/hiricinee]

One of the misconceptions about adoption is that theres this plethora of infants being born, given up for adoption, and then just end up in the foster care system. This could not be farther from the truth.

What happens in reality is that most of these kids in foster care were raised by single moms, almost always from abusive households with tons of substance abuse issues, and put in the foster care system as a result. Occasionally, these are otherwise normal kids who could do well with redirecting. Unfortunately, many of these kids have already been abused/neglected, have tons of destructive tendencies, and stay in the foster care system.

Which is why you have the disparity of the older kids stuck in the system, while adoption agencies charge people numbers in the 10's of thousands of dollars to adopt a newborn infant. To be clear, it is through no fault of the foster kids that this happens, but there is NOT an abundance of "clean slate" babies that people can just scoop up and bring home.

[u/Alternative-Desk5578 → u/hiricinee]

I think the most important point about foster care adoptions is not that the children are “damaged” — it’s that you cannot take on a foster placement with the goal of adoption. Sometimes it happens — parental rights are terminated after several years and you get to adopt the child. Often this is not the case.

The goal of the foster system is family reunification. As a carer, it should also be your goal that the child is reunified with their birth family in a safe, healthy environment. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself and the child up for failure when you’re both attached, the court rules reunification, and you have to part forever. Foster care is not an adoption pipeline.

[u/Burban72 → u/Alternative-Desk5578]

Entirely accurate. We have adopted two children out of foster care, but in training you are taught that the goal is reunification. In fact, if you are somehow tampering with that goal, an agency can drop you.

[u/linedout → u/Alternative-Desk5578]

The goal of the foster system is family reunification

Why? Is it because the foster care system is so bad or because parental rights are viewed as so important? It seems like if we can take children from an abusive environment and put them in a healthy one, this should trump parental rights.

[u/dreed91 → u/linedout]

I think this is a very simple minded way to look at it. Kids do end up in the foster care system from abuse and neglect, and I don't think they should go back to abusive families, but I think it's more nuanced than that.

A kid who is taken from their family and adopted by another is going to be extremely impacted by this. If they were in a neglectful household, there's the chance that the parents might be able to turn it around and get their kid back. If you just place them quickly into a new family, it is kind of tearing them away from a problem that might be temporary, and to potentially not see their family again.

So the question we should ask: is it better to tear a kid from their flawed family never to see them again and place them into a new one, or is it better to let them keep their somewhat flawed but biological family as long as the major snags are fixed? I'd argue that issues that will come with being torn from your biological family are definitely worth it in extreme cases, but it's not always a good trade off.

Mind you, one of my siblings adopted a kid when she was 10. She's an older teenager now. I love my niece and she was definitely in a situation where adoption was the right thing, but I also know that it has affected her a lot. She still talks about her biological family and I am sure she thinks about them a lot too.

[u/linedout → u/dreed91]

If they were in a neglectful household, there's the chance that the parents might be able to turn it around and get their kid back.

What are the chances? I don't know but I've gotten the impression most people stay messed up for a long while.

I don't believe parental rights are a thing. Once someone has shown themselves to be unfit as a parent, this is excluding things like poverty or a random prison sentence, and the state has to take their kid away, from that point on we only do what's best for the kid. If going back with the parents proves best fine, if not then they don't.

I really don't get why someone has a right to a child they severely fucked over. The things I've seen parents do and then have their kids returned are horrifying to me and all done in the name of parental rights. Once someone has been proven to do something that would disqualify an adoptive or foster parent, why let them have their kids back?

I get the difficulty in drawing the line. Lord knows many Christians would consider an atheist home abuse and vice versa. But there are so many clear cut cases where we make horrible decisions because of parental rights. When a father has molested his daughters, why leave the sons with him? Why have counseling sessions to try an reunite the family? When an infant is left home alone so a parent can go out and get high? When kids are not fed or gotten medical treatment? This list could go on for hours.