Adoption: Happily Never After Argumentative Essays Examples

One of the happiest days in the lives of many couples is the day they receive the baby or child they have chosen for adoption. Adoption agencies around the world work hard to place children who have been mistreated, abandoned, or surrendered for adoption in hopes of finding them loving homes and brighter futures. Moreover, adoption agencies attempt to convince families once the adoption is complete, their family will also be complete, and life will be like that of any other typical family. The child will adjust normally, as will the parents, and all with be right with their world. However, the agencies often neglect to share many things with adopting families about the potential negative issues they may face when adopting children. For example, children and parents may have problems bonding. This lack of bonding can cause disciplinary issues later in life, triggering a chain of events that affects the child’s actions negatively. Furthermore, especially in cases when foreign parents adopt children or when older children are adopted, many adjustment issues can arise that lead to unrest in the home. Essentially, the adoption process is sometimes the easiest part of building a family for some couples, while helping the children adjust is the most difficult.
According to Janette Logan and Carole Smith’s, “After Adoption: Direct Contact and Relationships,” bonding after adoption is possible for children at any age . From infancy to a child’s adolescence and teen years, they have the capacity to bond with their new parents and potential siblings, creating a typical family atmosphere. However, the authors not this happens with little effort on the part of parents and existing family members an estimated 20% of the time . Infants bond the easiest with new parents and siblings because they are the least familiar with their surroundings and have had less time to become restricted by the routine of social institutions. Older children, however, may find it easier to bond with new parents for a variety of reasons. They may have been placed in several foster homes, finding it difficult to trust their new parents. If they have been abandoned or abused throughout their lives, allowing themselves to trust new parents enough to bond can be a task that requires up to several years of patience on behalf of the family and the child . In some cases, it is never achieved, preventing the family from achieving the ideal typically promised by adoption agencies. Parents often feel as though they have failed their adoptive children, or as if they have not provided a safe and loving environment for them. In some cases, this can cause parents to guard themselves psychologically as much as the child, protecting themselves from more rejection from the child . In these situations, families have a difficult time achieving maximum unity.
Unfortunately, the lack of bonding does not only affect the psychological wellbeing of adoptive children and parents. The absence of a bond in their new environment can often lead to many disciplinary issues in children as they grow, according to Ashlea M. Klahr and associates . In a longitudinal study published in Journal of Abnormal Psychology, researchers found adoptive children who lacked a substantial bond with adoptive parents not only had more disciplinary issues than adoptive children who were able to establish bonds with their adoptive families, but that they instigated conflict with adoptive parents more often . It was hypothesized in many of these case the children who felt a lack of connection between their adoptive parents or siblings instigated situations that would illicit disciplinary action in an effort to gain attention. The majority of these situations were confirmed to involved parents who had also begun guarding themselves psychologically, having previously attempted to connect with the child immediately after adoption and failed . Adoption agencies, unfortunately, always recommend bonding as the best way to acclimate a child to their new family, but rarely give families adequate education or training on how to form a relationship with their adoptive child. Especially when the child is reaching the ages of prepubescence, forming a connection becomes more difficult but because older children are often left in institutions in lieu of couples adopting infants, this information is sometimes not shared with couples for fear of potential adoptive parents backing out of the adoption. The continued disciplinary issues, or cries for attention, are essentially the child’s subconscious need for connection. However, older adopted children have few tools to connect with others and, therefore, do not understand how to do so. A cycle is created, making the adopting process far less than what most adoption agencies promise.
Perhaps one of the most difficult adoptions a family can undertake is a foreign adoption. As stated in, “The International Adoption Experience: Do They Live Happily Ever After?” many issues can arise from adopting needy children around the world, and the adoption agencies conveniently do not discuss many of them with potential parents. For example, unless the child is an infant, it is likely the adopted individual will speak a different language than their parents. This can not only cause issues with bonding, but also prevent it entirely, regardless of if the child is susceptible to it or not. Being adopted into another family is also a very difficult shock for any child to absorb. Normally families think it is every child’s dream come true, and sometimes they are right. However, trying to fit into a new family, while also navigating culture shock as a child is something that can be very traumatic for a child . Without somebody to explain what is happening around them in a language they can understand, the child is essentially left untethered in a new world, despite how loving their new parents may seem. Another characteristic many foreign adopted children share is not wanting to leave their home country. Adoption agencies almost never make potential parents aware of this possibility, sometimes believing the child will adjust or change their mind; other times they do not make the parents aware of this possibility because they simply do not care. The unfortunate fact about foreign adoption companies is many do not have the child’s best interests at heart but, instead, only want money from desperate foreign parents . In any case, many children adopted from foreign countries actively resist attempts to bond or assimilate into new countries, wanting to hold on to their heritage, as well as any sense of what they know to be themselves. It does not help that an estimated 40% of American parents adopting older foreign children change the name of the child to sound more “American .” They do this sometimes in hopes of allowing the child to fit in better in their new country, but also in hopes of erasing the child’s former home. This lack of regard for where the child came from often alienates the child, fundamentally turning the parent into an enemy and creating a hostile environment that is difficult to raise children. Adoption agencies rarely make note of how important cultural heritage can be to the children who are leaving their services; parents sometimes make these changes out of ignorance, ruining their chances for having a happy family before it begins.
In sum, while many people are able to have the ideal family when they adopt, some are not. For fear of parents pulling out of potential adoptions, many of the more negative sides of adoption are withheld during the process. Bonding, for example, can be very difficult in some families, both for children and parents. This can create an environment of unrest within the household that may eventually lead to the child acting out. The constant need for disciplining sometimes alienates parents, further dividing the atypical family from the typical family. Parents adopting foreign children also face several issues that can cause difficulties. Language barriers, as well as the child’s severe reluctance to leave their home country can often lead to a lack of communication, as well as connection. These are also serious issues that adoption agencies do not share; however, they effectively ruin the idealistic family adoption agencies implant into the eyes of perspective parents. While adoption can be a wonderful thing for many families, adoption agencies often do not share the whole story in hopes of finding homes for each needy child. While their reasons are relatively justified, they are still unfair to parents who will face a lifetime of struggle due to being unprepared.

Works Cited

Klahr, Ashlea M., et al. "The association between parent–child conflict and adolescent conduct problems over time: Results from a longitudinal adoption study." Journal of Abnormal Psychology (2011): 46-56. Article.
Logan, Janette and Carole Smith. After Adoption: Direct Contact and Relationships. London: Routledge, 2013. Book.
Younes, Maha A. and Stephanie A. Klein. "The International Adoption Experience: Do They Live Happily Ever After?" Adoption Quarterly (2014): 65-83. Article.