mdesi:
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I know that you will think I am pretending when I say that I have that same mother bear instinct for my niece and nephew and step son, and even for my DH as you have for your biological children. (Just ask the guy at the park who found fault with my darling niece, and you will know that is true, or the fact that I once dove into icy water w/o even thinking to save her from drowning when everyone else just stood there.)
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Please understand that I mean this with all due respect, but I think only a parent with biological children of their own could understand what I'm questioning. I do understand being fiercely protective of family and friends. I've run into harm's way to protect my brother and I've flown off the handle defending my best friend's child (who I helped deliver), but having birthed children, I know from experience that the core of that protective emotion is different than the protection I feel for my kids. I'm not trying to invalidate your feelings. I'm just trying to find information from someone who would understand the circumstance I'm coming from. Someone who has biological children and had grown their family through adoption. I recognize that there's a chemical reaction in the maternal brain that often occurs at birth which causes the bond I'm failing to describe. I need to know if that chemical response happens in adoption.
So, to clarify, what you believe is that it would be better for a child to age out of the system without ever being adopted and given a permanent family than for that child to be adopted by someone who questions her chemical ability to love that child with the exact same intensity of her biological children?
And the irony is, I
may be able to love an adopted child the same. But because there's no way to
really know until I try...
The basis for this search is a genuine desire to grow my family and give a child love and support, the same as I give the two kids I already have. I'd be happiest adopting, because I believe children need a family and I'd love to be that family for a child who needs one. But if there's a chance I can't love that kid with the same intensity as my bios and it would be better for them to not have a family at all, then, so be it. I can always bear another child.
It seems like most of the posters feel it's better to leave a child in the system than take a chance.
LunaSea