November is National Adoption Month!
I won’t go into the history or anything, since that has already been explained quite well in a previous post. I will say that I didn’t even realize myself that there was such a thing until this week! I arrived home from work on Monday to find a post put out by the Child Welfare Information Gateway about National Adoption Month showing up in my Facebook news feed! Had I known that this was coming up, I would have had a post about it ready by November 1st.
I have now been made aware! So, I will do my part to raise awareness!
There are a few observations I have made regarding adoption awareness that I would like to mention really quick.
First, my experience so far has shown me that most people don’t even think about adoption or the children in foster care much at all. They know what adoption is, of course, and they possess an awareness that the foster care system exists, but other than that vague understanding that there are children that need homes, it just isn’t something most people seem to think about. I could very well be wrong, and I actually hope that I am, but that is the impression I have gotten. So I understand the desire, the need really, to raise awareness.
Another thing I have noticed is that most people, when they hear that someone is planning to adopt, think of infants. They limit their thoughts on adoption to the couple who has trouble conceiving a child of their own and opts to grow their family through private adoption agencies who will match them up with a birth mother trying to find the perfect home for the baby she loves but can’t care for. They imagine the *ideal* adoption situation, in other words.
The initial reaction to our announcement that we are adopting is normally confusion… “But you already have kids, don’t you?” They don’t think of children who have been neglected or abused or whose parents are in jail and as a result have nobody to turn to and nowhere to go. Then there is the inevitable “Why” question, something I will cover in another post. That just makes me sad.
Adoption and the foster care system don’t seem to me to be issues that are at the forefront. It’s not something that is on many people’s minds, and I think that’s a shame. Celebrity adoptions, as criticized as they can be at times, can do a lot for bringing this issue more into the mainstream, but there is still a long way to go. Plus, celebrity adoptions are mostly, if not entirely, focused on children in other countries. What about the children here?
One last thing: A misconception I have come across often, that I wish could be corrected, is that a family has to be perfect in order to adopt. People seem to feel that they have to have all their own stuff together in order to make good adoptive parents. But perfect parents, and perfect families, are not what these kids need and people should realize that just being there for a child, loving them, caring for them, and protecting them, can make a world of difference in the child’s life! And in their own!
The theme this year, in fact, is you don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent. The tips, advice, and strategies being promoted are aimed more at adoption professionals, but anyone can participate in raising awareness, so check out the following links:
I found this wonderful article that has a number of ways you can participate in National Adoption Month, including a calendar of simple things you can do for each day of the month.
The Child Welfare Information Gateway has a ton of information on National Adoption Month, ways to celebrate and participate, posters available that indicate strategies for recruiting new adoptive parents, resources and tools, as well as state and local examples of strategies successfully implemented.
Awareness campaigns have been known to work well… we all know what a pink ribbon is for, right? I think this is an issue that deserves a little attention. Will you do your part? Will you share this post, or one of the pages linked above, on your Facebook page. Or tweet one of them? Email your friends? Follow the suggestions found in the above links for raising awareness? Every little bit helps!