
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 16, 1994                   TAG: 9411180063
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JANET SCHEID
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DISPELLING THE MYTHS OF ADOPTION

AS THE holidays approach, we prepare to celebrate the season with family and friends who provide us with love and sustenance. More than ever, during this time I am aware of how special my adopted child is to me.

Had I been told four years ago about the wide range of misconceptions that exist regarding adoption, I simply would not have believed it. These attitudes contribute to what is a troublesome problem: the compelling but highly irrational myths associated with adoption.

Myth No. 1: Adoptive parents are not the "real" or "natural" parents.

We are our children's parents. We are not artificial, imaginary or unnatural. We are families with shared experiences that bind us together with love. The expansion of this myth is that our children are not "our own." Nothing could be farther from the truth. The child my husband and I care for and love daily, the child we nurse back to health and comfort when he is sick, the child we pick up when he falls down, hug when he is sad and laugh with when he is happy, is most assuredly our own.

Myth No. 2: All adopted children search for their biological parents.

The myth that reconciliation with the biological mother and father is always on the mind of an adopted child is the most difficult to address. There are no national statistics on how many adoptees search for their biological parents, but experts agree that only a small minority actually do. The point is not whether adoptees search or not. The implication of the myth is that the adopted child never really belongs to his adoptive family - that only biology can make a family.

To wonder and to seek more information is normal. To deny the child's emotional, loving and permanent ties to the mother and father who care for him every day is not. Adoptive parents do not deny the relationship of the biological parents. We are eternally grateful for the difficult, painful and loving decision that those parents made.

Myth No. 3: Adopted children have problems and are different.

So ... if an adopted child turns out well, it must be luck. Any parent who has a successful, stable and well-adjusted child knows that luck has little to do with it. Adoptive parents, just like any other parents, are successful as the result of hard work, hard choices and long hours.

The image of adopted children as troublemakers is so pervasive in the media that when a person who was adopted commits a crime, the media often focus on that irrelevant fact. Have you ever noticed how when a celebrity couple that happened to have adopted a child splits up, that fact is often pointed out in the news article ("the couple's adopted son ... ")? This was the case in both the Mia Farrow/Woody Allen and the Burt Reynolds/ Loni Anderson cases. Adopted children are not "different" and their status in the family should not be characterized as a condition.

Myth No. 4: Adopted children are bought and are expensive.

This is one of the most troublesome myths because it implies two erroneous things: that people can buy other people and that only the rich can adopt. Yes, in many cases there are fees for adoption services that must be paid by the prospective parents - legal fees, medical fees and fees for home studies. There is a lot of paperwork involved, most of it necessary to ensure that the adoption process is stringently managed and rigorously policed.

Many children can be adopted with very little, if any, expense to the adoptive parent. There are 450,000 children waiting in foster care in the United States today. The average wait for children who seek to be adopted is 5.5 years. Many of these are minority children, some are physically challenged and some are older children. All children deserve "forever families," so please do not be put off by the popular belief that adoption is expensive.

The time has come to foster a more positive awareness of the adoption experience. In particular, we should all begin to understand that adopted children and adoptive families come in all shapes, sizes and colors, just like other children and other families in today's society.

Janet Scheid of Vinton is president of the Blue Ridge Adoption Group.

by CNB