The Miracle of Adoption

There’s a very good reason that one of each gender is required to reproduce: having an adult male in a child’s life is critical to their physical and emotional development. Not a grandpa, or an uncle, a father who is there every single day. Every study I've ever seen confirms this: children of single-parent households are more likely to quit school, use drugs, get pregnant, commit crimes. Why do so many women have the idea that one parent is as good as two? Could anything be more insulting, more demeaning to an entire gender than to dismiss them as optional in the rearing and nurturing of a child?

Children deserve to grow up with the benefit of a couple, committed to each other and their children. They deserve to experience first-hand the role of a husband and father, and to luxuriate in the security of a two-parent household.

Thankfully, there are still a few women on the planet who appreciate that a father’s role is a vital element of a healthy childhood. Even though these women may suffer other disadvantages, they decide to give their children a life they would never have otherwise, and unselfishly find the best home for their child through adoption.

I’m friends with a woman who was born to be a great mother; in fact, she is a preschool teacher. She’s married to a lively, passionate, caring guy who was destined to be a great father. But they each have physical problems that, when combined, make it unlikely they will have their own biological children.

Friends watched and worried when they started the adoption process, knowing there was at least a chance for heartbreak, financial stress, emotional turmoil. But somehow, the planets lined up...and a young woman who’d made some bad decisions saw the chance to make a good one. She set in motion a win-win-win scenario:

• A wonderful couple who happen to be “reproductively challenged” still get the chance to become a family and parent a beautiful, healthy baby. The ecstasy ripples out to grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins.
  
• A beautiful, healthy baby gets to enjoy every advantage of a loving, committed family that includes a devoted father.
• And a birth mother can get on with her life, knowing she has given her child the very best possible future.

Isn’t that the very definition of good parenting - putting your child’s needs ahead of your own? Hooray for birth mothers who put their child first and choose adoption.