Call or conversion

I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I’ve felt some angst about Ellen Painter Dollar’s post “Why Don’t You Just Adopt?” over on Thin Places. Dollar writes about the difficulty of offering this pat answer to couples experiencing infertility or facing other decisions that may restrict biological children (both parents being cystic fibrosis carriers comes to mind). As I read through her list of reasons adoption isn’t always the answer I agreed with everything she said. Adoption is difficult and complicated. For one, it takes a lot more effort to enter into adoption than when you just happen to get pregnant. Adoptions also involve children who have experienced tremendous loss and the repercussions of this loss can be traumatic for everyone involved.

So what’s my deal? While I think it is very important to be aware of the full gamut of issues involved in adoption, and that there is ridiculous naivety about adoption, I worry when I get the sense that adoption is so difficult it has to be a “call” on a particular couples’ life.