absolutely
best in a different way. We know a number of people who have adopted after
having children of their own, several after re-marrying and wanting to start a
family in their new life. They tell us that they love and cherish their adopted
children just as much as they love and cherish the children born to them. We’re
betting that you will feel the same way.
As we mentioned, we see a lot of
people who are marrying again and wishing to start a new family. (No statistics
out there on this subject.)
Adoption can be a great alternative for you,
particularly international adoption, because you are likely to be a bit older
and many other countries actually prefer parents who have some life experience
under their belts. In fact, China
only recently lowered the minimum eligible age for adopting
from 35 years to 30 years! So, as you enter the adoption discussion, you will
find many people in similar situations to learn from.
And of course, you may be one of
those terrific people who have had children and now would prefer to add to your
family by helping a child who may otherwise have no family.
About 50% of domestic adoptions
occur within families, such as adopting a spouse’s child, grandparents adopting
grandchildren and even older siblings adopting younger siblings. We have chosen
not to focus on adoption within families because the issues and the methods are
so different from the types of situations we have already discussed that the
subject deserves its own book.
Forgive us if we have forgotten anybody. The point of this
chapter is to acknowledge that everyone comes to adoption differently but most
people share many of the same concerns about loving an adopted child, sadness
or anger about their situation, and many other issues such as financial
worries, “am I worthy”, etc. that we’ll discuss more in coming chapters.
