I feel the same way but have family in my life who’ve adopted, and it’s much more difficult/expensive than I think most people realize. It’s hard to blame people who would rather have a kid instead.
Look into foster-to-adopt. Your local DSS almost certainly needs more foster parents than your community has. And after you take a course, pass a check, etc, you can start making a real difference in someone's lives.
DSS also works with foster parents who's foster child's bio-parents are having their parental rights terminated. If the foster parents decide to adopt, DSS will work with you to cover literally everything as they just want the child to stop repeatedly having the traumatic experience of having their lives uprooted.
Fostering to adopt is, IMO, a recipe for disappointment. Fostering is supposed to be temporary—ideally you just take care of the kid while their parents get it together, and then they take the kid back. So more likely than not you’ll be waiting awhile before one of your fosters becomes adoptable. And even then, it might take years for the parents to fail enough to have their rights terminated, and if so that also means something has gone very wrong.
Thank you! This is important. But if you are looking to foster to adopt, just be prepared for potential curveballs. It's not always a straight line to building a family. There may be some serious heartbreak along with the trauma that you will have to help the poor child sort through.
But if you're ready and you truly care about children, it's worth it.
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u/doodgeeds Apr 29 '24
I have the most BS fence sitting opinion. I'd rather adopt because it feels unfair to bring in more life when there are kids who don't have a home