What is involved in the adoption of a child?
Adoption is providing a family for a child who can not be brought up by his or her biological parents. Adoption is a legal process that will make the adopted parents fully responsible of the adopted child by law. Legal adoption began in England and Wales in 1962 and in Scotland in 1930, with the first adoption acts. Once an adoption order has been granted, it can not be reversed except in extremely rare circumstances. in the United States, approximately 120,000 children are adopted annually with nearly 50% of the children are adopted by relatives.
Over the past decade, the number of babies available for adoption has declined dramatically. The legal and social requirements are numerous whether the adopted child is within the UK or overseas. Couples seeking adoptions have to come to terms with their infertility and may have a period of grief before seeing adoption as a positive alternative. Although most families seek adoption because of infertility, some seek adoption because they desire more children.
Adoption requires both partners to be heavily involved, committed, and positive. For those women who feel deeply that a part of their life has escaped them as they did not enjoy the months of pregnancy and did not go through the pain of labor and the pleasure of childbirth, for them adoption may not be a good option.
Adopted parents should be prepared to accept emotional reactions as the arrival of the adopted child may reawaken feelings of their grief over their infertility, emotions to which they had worked very hard in the past years to overcome. It may also be a reminder of their failure and inability to bear their own children. The adopted parents may feel guilty about their own emotions, when they are trying to establish a loving relationship with their adopted child. As, that new loving relationship starts to develop and intensify, the grief will gradually disappear.
All children who are adopted should know that they are adopted. Discovery or disclosure of adoption when the child is older can lead to mistrust and anger etc. The process of telling the child that he or she was adopted should take place gradually.
There are many ways to adopt, each adoption experiment is different, parents adopt through public or private agencies that exist for the purpose of finding homes for children in need. Adoption agencies are able to provide counseling, support services and follow up. Private adoption have more liberal polices & shorter waiting lists.