Questions and Concerns:

• The decision not to parent when accompanied by an adoption plan is not abandonment.
• Adoption is a life transition that can be difficult and emotional.
• The Children’s Home Society is here to provide personal, professional, and sensative attention to your needs. Counseling services are individualized and confedential.

 Birth parents are often concerned about their child’s legal rights

• Adoption is permanent and grants a child full membership in the new family as if he or she were born into it.
• Often unplanned pregnancies appear to have no good solution however, good solutions with positive outcomes occur when birth parents have accurate information that allows them to make fully informed decisions.

Birth parents often deal with the misconception of “giving their baby away” or “rejecting their baby”, when in fact birth parents who choose to make an adoption plan are simply choosing not to parent at this time.  In making an adoption plan the birth parents are keeping the best interest of their child in mind.

Birth parents are concerned about the unknown:

• Who will parent my child?
• Will the adoptive parents love my child?
• Will my child resent me for making an adoption plan?
• Will my child have access to their birth families medical history should they need it in the future?
• Will my child be able to contact me someday?

These are some of the complex and valid concerns that birth parents consider when thinking about the option of adoption.  The following are some areas to consider:

• The birth parents can be part of the selection process of the new adoptive parents.  Birth parents are given non-identifiable profiles of families and can actually choose which family they wish to have parent their child.  Adoptive family profiles provide information regarding a family, which includes educational information, financial information, and medical information, their ideas and opinions on parenting and disciplining techniques as well as extended family information.  Pictures and “Dear Birth Parent” letters are also available.
• Studies show that adoptive families love and nurture children while providing for their needs as well as establishing permanency in their lives.
•  Studies show that an adoptee expresses gratitude and appreciation to their birth parents for loving them enough to put their interest before their own.
• Extensive birth information as well as non-identifying medical information regarding the birth parents and their extended family is provided to the adoptive parents at the time of placement.  It is possible for the birth parents to update their medical information by contacting and providing the information to the adoption agency or liaison that assisted in the adoption and that information will then be shared with the adoptive parents.
• Birth parents have the option of leaving their contact information about themselves should the child request this information when they become adults.  It is important to note that depending upon the type of adoption such as open adoption the child may have access to certain information earlier.