If you are considering adoption for your baby, it is normal to wonder how your child will eventually feel about your decision. You probably wonder what it’s like being adopted and growing up as an adopted child.
For adoptees like Cole, the answer is simple: Growing up adopted means growing up like any other kid, with a family who loves you “to pieces.”
American Adoptions has over 30 years of experience as one of the nation’s largest domestic infant adoption agencies. We have helped thousands of birth mothers successfully place their children through our agency. Although it is very common to have concerns and questions about the impact adoption will have on your child and what they will think, we are here to help provide you answers and ease your mind.
In addition to our co-founder, we have several adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive family members on our staff, so we know firsthand what it feels like to be adopted and what it takes to raise a happily adopted child. We work with only the very best adoptive families to ensure every child placed through our agency gets a life of love and opportunity, just like Scott did.
How Do Children Feel About Being Adopted?
Women who are considering placing a baby for adoption often wonder: what emotions do kids give up for adoption feel? They ask themselves, “If I give my child up for adoption, will he have a good life?”
According to countless adoptees, the answer is yes — when you make an adoption plan for your baby and choose the perfect adoptive parents to raise him or her, chances are your child will have the wonderful life you want them to have.
Findings also included statistics regarding the openness of adoption, showing that children who are adopted can especially benefit from healthy relationships and continued communication with their birth parents throughout their lives. Furthermore, the study found that nearly all — 97 percent — of children who are adopted ages 5 and older knew they were adopted.
Adoption Is Growing and Changing (for the Better!)
Although only a few decades ago, the norm for adoptions was to have a closed relationship, a study from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute titled “Openness in Adoption” reports that only 5 percent of today’s adoptions are closed, and the remaining 95 percent are open. The study also cites benefits for children who are adopted who have continued contact with and access to their birth parents after they are adopted.
American Adoptions supports and encourages this shift toward increased openness in adoptions given the research that has shown benefits for everyone involved, especially adoptees.
Contact with birth families allows children who are adopted to maintain access to medical, genealogical, and family histories. Youth in open adoptions also have a better understanding of the meaning of adoption and more active communication about adoption with their adoptive parents.