When I was pregnant with my birth daughter, I had a few people approach me saying that either they or a family they knew was looking to adopt. This was before I had even considered adoption for my baby, and often I didn't know these people well. For me I needed to reach out to a couple, not to have them reach out to me.
What are your thoughts on this? Is it appropriate to send your profile to an expectant mother unsolicited?
I think that part of the reason for that kind of behavior is that there are no “Ethics of Adoption” class that is required for most states when private adoption is used. Maybe there should be. There is also a feeling when an infertile woman, especially one who has conceived and miscarried to have people saying things like “Well maybe something was wrong with it,” or “Maybe God needed him/her in Heaven more,” or “Well everything happens for a reason, maybe you can adopt.” Add to this that an unwed mother may legally abort her child and you have potential Moms ON A Mission to Find the child she is supposed to SAVE from abortion and an unwed mother she must SAVE from “throwing away her future and her child’s by having to struggle to raise the child alone” This whole mentality is what Then leads to the adoptive parent’s having a “You should be grateful we adopted you attitude”, which has been mentioned in other posts. I actually came closer than I knew to adopting, because a neighbor had become pregnant and knew me and seen my care of children, and animals and felt that she wanted to ask me if I would be willing to adopt her baby. Of course I would have said yes. I was not told this until after it was too late, and while I was able to be there for her and offer compassion and support, I am glad I had not know beforehand (because she had moved elsewhere so was not in our neighborhood as frequently again until after). I don’t know if I could have handled it if I had gotten all excited about being a mother to this beautiful baby boy when he was born at only 26 weeks gestation and didn’t make it through the day.
In my opinion, a woman knows her options, and if she knows people she trusts enough to ask if they would consider it that is one thing. If she does not, in my opinion she may be better off going through an agency where certain ethical requirements must be met. Approaching a pregnant woman and asking for her baby, is very personal and invasive, and rather rude, especially if you don’t even know the status of what plans she and the father and her own family may have because that means you are not a person who is close enough for most people to feel comfortable just talking with someone about. When you hear every once in awhile of mentally ill infertile women abducting babies and things like that I tend to think, if somebody showed too much interest or a selfish type of interest in one’s pregnancy, I would want to avoid them like the plague! There is also the fact that if they are pushy to start with, that does not bode well for a good experience overall for the birth mother, as they are seeing her as an incubator not a person.
