Will I Love My Adopted Child Just As Much?

One of the questions inevitably asked by couples considering adoption, is whether they will love their adopted child just as much as they will love their biological child.

The almost universal testimony of adoptive parents is a resounding “yes.”

The latest issue of Building Your Family which is published by Adoptive Families magazine, includes a number of testimonies from adoptive parents.

Adoptive mother Jana Wolff writes about what she calls the “fantasy” image which friends and family members gave her that she would have beautiful children who looked just like her husband and herself. The fantasy was shattered when they found that they could not have children. She had to get past the perception of what her child should look like. “Look alike families,” she writes, “are assumed to belong together, but families like ours – who don’t match – are seen as curious groupings of individuals.” Wolff and her husband adopted a chld of a different racial background, and she now says that “our lives as a transracial family have grown to feel exactly right.”

While she speaks of the fact that other people inevitably ask questions, because her child does not look like her, Wolff concludes, “I know that you can love a child who doesn’t match and that child will be nothing short of beautiful to you. I also know that you will sometimes forget that you don’t look alike.”

Adoptive mother Judy Raker speaks of the evolution of her feelings. She writes, “it wasn’t that long ago that the thought of adopting a stranger’s infant plunged me deeper into despair.” But shortly after meeting her son, she says, “I was hopelessly smitten and forever changed.” Now, she says, “my attachment is so fierce, it takes my breath away.” She concludes, “I realized it was more important to me to love and nurture a chld than to give birth.”

It is important that couples considering adoption hear these testimonies so that they will not doubt that they will love their adopted child just as much as they would have loved children naturally born to them.