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Originally Posted by Leigh131313
But I have to ask.....If it's not because you think the child will be better off with another family (for WHATEVER reason under the sun, ie. Finances, two parents, age etc. etc.)....why would you place a child for adoption?
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Honestly, I'm going to have to go with Belle on this one. Also, there's the fact that some people will help you if you tell them you have XYZ plan, but they aren't going to offer that help up while you're scrambling trying to get a plan together.
And while we may place because we believe our children would be "better off" that belief doesn't necessarily stick around. I mean, hindsight is hindsight, but I now know that speaking in terms of certain financial costs, adoption was more expensive (and more damaging to my credit) than parenting would have been. And I know if was also terribly expensive for my daughter's a-parents.
I think the problem sometimes comes that, if you compare X now to Y now you see Z, but if you compare X past to Y past you see Q so the road from past to now is long and winding and changes, and even throwing little differences (and parenting vs. placement is no little difference) can change things dramatically. (I think this might be getting into chaos theory land...)
Again, a non-adoption example... I crashed my car last month. I can talk about 20 things I could have done differently or whatnot that would have kept me from having the accident that I did (car + utility pole). But by changing that, we open up a whole new realm of possiblities... If I hadn't crashed my car into that pole then, well maybe someone would have rear-ended me two blocks later.
This isn't to say that I don't understand the sliding doors bit that the OP talks about... I'm very guilty of it. I relive conversations from elementary school, if I'd just put that bully in her place then, maybe she wouldn't have made me miserable all the way through to graduation... I relive stuff about my pregnancy and the adoption...
I think that the problem that we're getting close to here is the topic of hindsight and regret. "Better" does not always materialize as we thought it would, so despite thinking that a situation would be "better" it may not turn out to be so. Are we to be held to an original thought/hope that some one could be "better" (or we were told repeatedly that they were "better"), when the truth is not so? Or at least we believe the truth is not so?
Adoption example: If we'd parented, our birthdaughter would have been the eldest child, the only child for a while. When she was adopted, she became the youngest child... and then within 15 months she was a middle child. While it's not my place to dictate the adoptive parents reproductive choices (yes, the older and younger sibs are their biological children so it wasn't an adopt again choice), I feel queasy about the age spacing. The reality that she was placed into has changed.
Also, how about those who place out of mis-placed guilt, that they owe the adoptive parents something for getting their hopes up? (Yup, I felt that.)
I'm not trying to side-track this into a placement reasons thread, I'm just trying to answer your question.
I still feel that if we try to say this is "better" or that is "better" we're putting a possibly subjective measuring stick up there, and somebody's going to come up short.
To again take it out of adoption land - some people feel that different types of formula or diapers or whatever are "better" for different reasons. Any bias a person has are going to color their measurement. What's better to A might be worse to B, and mediocre to C.
And I hate to say that but that even applies in personal situations. Not that I'm trying to measure anyone's personal situation. But while some cases seem cut and dry (abuse, neglect, orphanages...) some aren't so... and some of us come from the not so cut and dry spectrum and we do worry because sometimes people take their personal experiences out and use them to paint with a broad brush.
As I said to the OP before... hearing you say "better" makes me cringe a bit, but I can't stop you from saying it or believing it. I'm not really the most PC person myself, I think PC gets posturing sometimes, but I try to be concious of how my expression might affect those around me. So yes, it's okay for you to look at your situation and think "better," but that doesn't mean that seeing you do that (without more personal insight to compare things) won't make some of us wince.
*I hope that sounded as clear and respectful as I meant it to sound. I still haven't woken up fully yet.*