jmochicago

This is a great question.

u/ameliaswansonphd Please stop tossing out fostering and adoption as options to patients who have not thoroughly processed their infertility losses, have accepted them, and are approaching adoption/fostering as a plan unconnected to infertility losses.

Fostering and adoption should never be a "Plan B". Never. It is disrespectful and emotionally toxic to bring a child into a family with this mindset.

I could write about this for hours, but I will not. You can do research if needed in the r/Adopted or r/Adoptees subReddits and ask the many adult adoptees who were fostered or adopted by families who had not fully come to terms with their losses and how it affected the parenting of those adoptees and their lives.

Adoption and fostering should be centered on finding the best equipped and accepting families for children...not centered on building families.

When it comes to couples jumping very quickly from infertility loss to adoption/fostering, I always think of the following aphorism:

"Hurt people hurt people."

Adoption and fostering takes a LOT of work to adequately and enthusiastically support the development of a child that has experienced a relinquishment from a birth family (not just birth parents, but grandparents, aunts/uncles, cousins and, sometimes, siblings).

Adoptees who are made to feel like "Plan B" either purposefully or inadvertently--especially if they do not fulfill the adoptive parents' expectations in some way--feel the effects of this dysfunction for a long time, if not their entire lives.

I'm very glad that you are aware of the issues. And. It takes some very clear and hard conversations with people who are grieving to protect a vulnerable potential adoptee/foster. While I appreciate that your focus is on the couple and their pain, we can't as a society let that overshadow the real needs of potential children who are fostered/adopted. They have to come first. Their needs are historically not considered first.