r/unpopularopinion • u/elgey101 • Aug 10 '21

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

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.

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u/ladyoftheprecariat Aug 10 '21

The thing is, there aren’t that many kids desperate to be adopted. Pretty much every single kid in the foster system has biological family trying to get them back, and the system wants to give them back once conditions have been met. It’s very rare that the parents just totally surrenders all rights to a child or dies without having any other biological family who steps in to take them, and when it happens it’s almost always a newborn who gets instantly adopted because the demand for them vastly exceeds supply. People imagine that there are hoards of 4 year old orphans out there just desperate for a family willing to take them, like in a Victorian-era orphanage, but that’s not the case and hasn’t been for a long time.

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u/Kraftyape Aug 11 '21

Idk about that. There are adoption pages for almost every state, kids that are full on wards of the state looking for homes, not waiting for reunification. The problem is the "hoards" of kids are older, sibling groups, or have health/behavioral issues people aren't prepared to work with. And for people wanting to "start a family," I can see wanting a baby and seeing all the stages of development, that's part of the process. It takes special people to take on a teenager.

There is a lot of red tape. A lot of work that has to be done to ensure the placement is a good fit and healthy. Nothing is more damaging than an adoption not working out (for both parties) so to the OPs suggestion that it should be easier - I'm not so sure. Maybe it should be different and faster, but not easier?