<p>jonri and all, it is much, much harder to adopt internationally than it used to be. China, which for most of the past 15 years has been the country with the largest number of international adoptions, now places many fewer children, and most of them are older and/or with pretty significant special needs. This is a big change from when I adopted.</p>
<p>Other countries open and close, often with serious accusations of child-selling and there are countries where the U.S. no longer allows parents to adopt where children were created expressly for adoption, with facilitators paying the mothers go get pregnant and relinquish. In 2013, there were 7,092 international adoptions to the U.S. In 2004, the peak year, there were 22,991 adoptions.
<a href=“Adoption Statistics”>http://travel.state.gov/content/adoptionsabroad/en/about-us/statistics.html</a></p>
<p>I know many families who have adopted. It is a fallacy that children from other countries, including China, are a blank slate. As I said before, I am eternally grateful that I was permitted to adopt my daughter, but I got her in 1998, before the era of ultrasound machines that size of a deck of cards so that parents with a female pregnancy can terminate it easily in China. Plus, the preference from girls is much less than it used to be, plus, as in virtually all first-world countries, most parents no longer want more than one or two children. There isn’t a country in Europe that is producing enough babies to keep the population from shrinking, and it would be shrinking here if it weren’t for immigration.</p>
<p>I am certainly not anti-adoption but it’s important for prospective adoptive parents to consider it with their eyes wide open.</p>
<p>i have a relative who adopted a young boy from Taiwan. He was nearly 7 when they adopted him and they dote on him. They were happy NOT to wake and have toilet training and nocturnal feedings and those issues but have different ones, since he was used to things a certain way during his life in the orphanage. He is an engaging, outgoing boy, but life has its challenges. He has been in the US nearly 2-3 years now.</p>
<p>Our kids definitely want kids. Both of our boys are very good with kids and both mention wanting children. Our daughter is only 16 and is way off in the distance. Only one of our kids has had a semi long term relationship though, and he is actually the only one of the kids in the entire side of the family to do so. Both me and H were somewhat late bloomers so this is expected. Our kids have dated and had “girlfriends/bfs” but nothing really lasting minus the one for our son. All 3 went to dances with dates in HS and went on a few dates with their GF/BFs. </p>
<p>However, i really do figure how it is how you are raised. Our niece and nephew are slightly older than our kids and neither of them have dated or anything because of career pressure from their mother. Our boys say their cousin doesn’t want anything with kids and just wants to live a life that was repressed by his growing up.</p>
<p>I had very serious baby lust and would have loved more children than we ended up with, and had planned on pursuing adoption instead of empty nesting. My kids still needed quite a bit of emotional support in the early college years so we never got around to adoption and with menopause the baby lust finally disappeared. hooray!!</p>
<p>I have absolutely no grandbaby lust. My mother had it big time, so this is a surprise to me. In our family everyone talks about whether they want kids and when and how. My daughter-in-law told me early in our relationship she thought twins would be excellent family planning or maybe triplets. Since she’s a scientist I was a little floored and thought she was seriously planning multiples till my son told me she was teasing. I asked him about it because I just wanted to be sure she understood how high risk triplet pregnancies can be.</p>
<p>I’ll be delighted when the grandbabies arrive but in no rush whatsoever. I only want my children to have children of their own if that makes them happy. I am still most focused on them. When grandchildren arrive, that focus necessarily shifts, at least for me.</p>