So here is the view from my hubby.. be nice!
My wife actually summarizes my point of view brilliantly with lines starting with "the newest thing...". I was thinking about it today and I'm more open to any ethnicity now, but I would really like to adopt either an only child or the only two brothers or sisters. It just does not seem fair for one child to grow up in a higher socioeconomic status, in a better neighborhood with better schools and more opportunities compared to another sibling. I can see it creating animosity and jealousy and leading to stealing and begging. We are not in a position to be able to fix a whole large family. I know we can not at this point, and probably not for a long time or ever, adopt more than two children. We can't know of course, if the birthmother would have additional children later, but that seems more distant and less likely to cause problems than the divide of brothers or sisters around the same age.
In my view, there are two types of foster couples, and I would think the majority would fall into the first type. The first type has had biological child(ren) already, and once they are at least somewhat grown up, the couple decides to open their hearts and homes to one or more additional children. This helps with two aspects, first of all, they've been through parenting before; they have the experience, and they probably have the furniture, clothes, toys, etc as well. Second, they are older and in a better financial position to be able to support many foster children. The other type of foster couple is the first-time-parent couple. Not only do we have all the worries of never being parents before, we have the additional foster-specific worries. I worry about problems with the birthmother relationship, I worry about the adoption falling apart, I worry about unknown emotional or behavioral issues coming up. Can we deal with them, probably so, but we have to think more long-term than foster-only parents. We are, after all, looking for the next generation of our family.
You'll do fine either way Kevin. The most important thing you can give a kid is the independence and confidence to do things on their own. That way they can tackle the world and hold their own.
ReplyDeleteIf you're worried about sibling issues with other families you could perhaps take them as additional people on some vacations? Or even do a joint vacation with the other family if they're interested. I've heard of people doing family vacations where the parents are divorced so it can't be much more awkward than that :).
It's a stressful time right now but it will settle down. I hope you know that you can ask us if you need help with things.