A Guide To Adoption

I've always known I wanted to adopt. It was just something I've always "felt". As a child, I was no stranger to adoption. My parents adopted my brother when he was five and one of my closest friends was adopted.

My husband & I decided we wanted more than one child and had thought we would adopt a few children over the course of several years. Hearing this, our caseworker suggested siblings and we thought it was a great idea. :-)

We ended up adopting a multiracial sibling group of three children that had been in foster care for a number of years. At the time we finalized, they were 5, 8 & 11.

Adopting more than one child at the same time - children that have struggled through stressful times, has not always been easy. I've been known to say that it's not for the faint of heart. But I've never regretted my choice and I can't imagine my life without them. Going through their struggles with them, side by side, has helped strengthened our bond as a family.

Link to Study

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the American Educational Research Association.

Adoptive parents invest more time and financial resources in their children than biological parents, according to a new national study challenging arguments that have been used to oppose same-sex marriage and gay adoption.

The study, published in the new issue of the American Sociological Review, found that couples who adopt spend more money on their children and invest more time on such activities as reading to them, eating together and talking with them about their problems.

"One of the reasons adoptive parents invest more is that they really want children, and they go to extraordinary means to have them," Indiana University sociologist Brian Powell, one of the study's three co-authors, said in a telephone interview Monday.

"Adoptive parents face a culture where, to many other people, adoption is not real parenthood," Powell said. "What they're trying to do is compensate. ... They recognize the barriers they face, and it sets the stage for them to be better parents."

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