When a couple first learns that they cannot have children of their own, the news can be emotionally devastating. However, there is a future beyond infertility. Adoption is not only a way to make couples’ dreams of having a family come true but also a choice that has long-lasting benefits for everyone involved.
Adoption is Less Costly than Many Fertility Treatments
Some couples choose to have expensive procedures, such as in vitro fertilization, which can cost up to $15,000. Others may opt to hire gestational carriers or use egg donors, methods that can cost in excess of $50,000. These procedures have a number of risks and a low success rate; moreover, they are sometimes more expensive than the entire adoption process from start to finish, which will be approximately $30,000 for a lawyer-assisted or international adoption. Adopting through the public child welfare system costs far less.
Adoption Gives a Second Chance to Birth Mothers
When couples make an arrangement to adopt their child with a woman who is carrying a baby she has elected not to raise herself, they are helping two lives, that of the baby who will have a good home and that of the birth mother, who will receive proper prenatal health care and nutrition while she is pregnant.
Adoption Bestows Family Benefits
Families who adopt enjoy E1 parental benefits just the same as biological parents. There is a current move to extend these to include maternal benefits as well so that adoptive mothers can take time off from work to bond with newly-arrived adoptive children just as biological mothers are allowed leave time to be with their newborns.
Adoption Saves Lives
Children who languish as permanent wards or remain in foreign orphanages have a high risk of attachment disorder, which can lead to substance abuse, mental illness, and criminality later in life. To adopt a child is to save them from a life with few options and give them the means to educate themselves, to develop socially-appropriate behavior, and to receive unconditional love.
Adoption is Emotionally Fulfilling
Mothers and fathers yearn for a child to invest their lives in. Having a small child that needs a parent’s love and attention fills a part of the heart that can’t be filled by anything else. Children become the reason to wake up in the morning and go to bed at night. Couples can find their relationship pulled closer together because they share the same center of their universe. Adopting a child brings that joy into the lives of parents who can’t naturally have their own baby.
Parents who want to begin the process of adoption start with adoption agencies or lawyers to help them through the process. For parents in the Vancouver, Canada area, the lawyers at Valerie M. Little Law Corporation would be a great place to start the adoption journey.
Earnest Parenting: help for parents considering adoption.