The “Loving Option” is a Lie
How the industry obscures the true nature of adoption
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As someone who never wanted children, I was always more open to the idea of taking in an existing child than I was to motherhood. Having my own baby and raising it felt like an unreasonable burden; caring for a child who had no one else, who desperately needed a family, seemed like a kindness. Adoption, as I saw it, was a simple win-win: there are adults who want kids, and kids who need parents — and adoption addresses both concerns.
I believed that without question until I came across an exchange on X that challenged my surface-level understanding of the complex world of adoption. One user, in response to an adoptive parent who’d asked whether adopted children would be better off dead than adopted, wrote, Those kids would not be dead if you hadn’t adopted them. The next vultures in line behind you would have bought them.
I was already familiar with the dead vs. adopted rhetoric by that time, but “vultures” and “bought” were new terms to someone like me, who’d thought adoption was a loving act that saved children from languishing in orphanages or foster care. I’d soon learn — from adoptees and others in the adoption world — that there was a reason for my uncomplicated opinion of the…
