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Hi, my husband and I are planning to adopt sometime in the future, and are not sure when exactly that will be. I'd like to adopt first (we've got some money, the time, the space, why not?!) However, we also don't have any biological kids yet, and my husband would like to have one or two biological kids before we adopt. We've been married for 2 and 1/2 years. I am 22 and he is almost 33. Our life is very uncomplicated right now, I just graduated from a university and we both hold jobs where we would be able to take off time to travel for the adoption, so I feel it would be the best time to go through such an arduous process as adoption (we're going to go with international adoption). Another aspect is that we've decided to adopt 2 kids, 4 years or younger. We've also decided to adopt HIV + kids. If we decide to adopt first we'll be getting an intense crash course in parenting! Yet another aspect is how the adopted children will react to any biological children we have in years to come. The adopted children will be the big sisters or brothers. Most families that I see adopting do so after they've had biological children, so the adopted kiddos are the youngest. Has anyone else adopted before having biological children? How did it turn out? How did the adopted children do being the older siblings to younger biological kids?
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The parents of my bson adopted 2 children before they had a biolgical daughter. I don't think the problem was so much that of being "big brother or sister" but their perception that the youngest was treated differently. (That could of course come from being the youngers as well.) I know it irritated my bson a few years ago when his mom took down the picture of his child so she could put up the picture of his sister's dog.
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We adopted first and then had a bio-child. Of course our kids are all so close in age that I don't think my oldest really remembers life before her brothers. I think doing things in that order makes a lot of sense. If you had bio kids first they would have to go through the adoption process with you - and it can be really tough at times. They would also have to go through the transition of having two special needs kids join the family together. Makes perfect sense to me to give yourself the chance to devote all your time and energy to your future adoptive children first. Best of luck! :)
Our adoptions occurred through foster care, so while we technically had a 7 month old bio when our son (13 mos at the time) was placed with us, he is still the older brother, even though he came into our family after our first bio. It hasn't really effected thier relationship with us or each other that I can tell but they are only 8 years old so who knows what will happen in the future. We also had 2 other bios and adopted another after he came along, so currently our youngest and oldest children are adopted and our bios are in the middle, however I am due in January with our 4th bio, which will make our current youngest (adopted) an older brother to a bio. Frankly, bio vs adopted hasn't really been an issue in any of thier relationships with each other or thier birth order position.