People get mad at me for thinking it’s morally better to adopt than to jump through hoops to concieve your own child. There are actual children already alive who need a home. It’s wasteful to bring new people into the world when there are already children in need. If you can’t love someone else’s child as much as your own, you shouldn’t be a parent. I’m not saying nobody should have their own children ever. If you get pregnant and you want children, by all means, keep it. I just object to going to great lengths to conceive your own child when you could give a home to someone in need.
I say this as someone who thinks adoption is a wonderful thing to do and is fine with the idea of raising children that are not biologically mine:
At least in my country, children that are up for adoption often have severe birth/cognitive defects and/or trauma (carrying a healthy child to term and giving it up for adoption is pretty much unheard of). While that’s a risk you face with biological children too, I don’t blame anyone for wanting to minimize that risk by not taking in a child that could require specialized care for the rest of its life with no guarantee of success (this applies to couples who choose to terminate a pregnancy upon discovering the risk of severe defects).
Adopted children are also more likely to struggle with integrating with their new family compared to a child that you raised from birth.
Finally, the process for adoption can be very lengthy and expensive, while fertility treatments are sometimes subsidized by governments or employers.
So, while I personally would never insist on having biological children, I don’t think it’s inherently immoral for others to want them or to not want the challenges that come with adoption.
I guess it boils down to biology. There is very much a built-in system to our bodies hardwired to make us care about our own offspring; and it does its job well. Trying to enforce “objective, logical benefit” onto how people behave as parents is unfortunately an uphill task. It’d be similar if you were to try to oppose an open park in a city because “Logically, it serves no functional purpose since people can take their walks on the sidewalk.”
If we’re boiling things down to biology, if two people are finding it impossible to conceive/carry to term, that’s biology telling them they shouldn’t be combining their genes.
People get mad at me for thinking it’s morally better to adopt than to jump through hoops to concieve your own child. There are actual children already alive who need a home. It’s wasteful to bring new people into the world when there are already children in need. If you can’t love someone else’s child as much as your own, you shouldn’t be a parent. I’m not saying nobody should have their own children ever. If you get pregnant and you want children, by all means, keep it. I just object to going to great lengths to conceive your own child when you could give a home to someone in need.
I say this as someone who thinks adoption is a wonderful thing to do and is fine with the idea of raising children that are not biologically mine:
At least in my country, children that are up for adoption often have severe birth/cognitive defects and/or trauma (carrying a healthy child to term and giving it up for adoption is pretty much unheard of). While that’s a risk you face with biological children too, I don’t blame anyone for wanting to minimize that risk by not taking in a child that could require specialized care for the rest of its life with no guarantee of success (this applies to couples who choose to terminate a pregnancy upon discovering the risk of severe defects).
Adopted children are also more likely to struggle with integrating with their new family compared to a child that you raised from birth.
Finally, the process for adoption can be very lengthy and expensive, while fertility treatments are sometimes subsidized by governments or employers.
So, while I personally would never insist on having biological children, I don’t think it’s inherently immoral for others to want them or to not want the challenges that come with adoption.
I guess it boils down to biology. There is very much a built-in system to our bodies hardwired to make us care about our own offspring; and it does its job well. Trying to enforce “objective, logical benefit” onto how people behave as parents is unfortunately an uphill task. It’d be similar if you were to try to oppose an open park in a city because “Logically, it serves no functional purpose since people can take their walks on the sidewalk.”
If we’re boiling things down to biology, if two people are finding it impossible to conceive/carry to term, that’s biology telling them they shouldn’t be combining their genes.
Adopt, don’t shop, even when it comes to humans.