Lately I’ve realized how much tv endorses all the stupid misconceptions and attitudes about adoption.
Brothers and sisters is one of my favorite tv shows, but its just as guilty of this. In the first season, one of the brothers finds out he’s sterile and when he is presented with the option of adoption, he immediately shoots it down stating that he wants their child to be apart of them and to be a Walker (their family name). For any one out there who has ever adopted, you understand that as soon as you receive your referrel pictures, that child instantly becomes apart of your family and of you…just as much so as when the pregnancy test turns up positive. To solve the problem, the brother uses sperm donors from his brothers. How desperate are we to make genetic clones of ourself??
I certainly don’t have a problem with people having biological children, I hope to have some of my own one day as well. But when nature and our biology doesn’t allow us to do so, I just don’t understand the need to go to extreme measures to bring genetically similar children into a world filled with millions of family-less orphans. Are we that narcissistic?
Last month I saw that new John Cusack movie, Martian Child, which is about a widowed father who adopts a little boy who was abandoned and I think John Cusack’s character says it best:
“I get the argument about not bringing another child into this world, but how can you argue against loving one that’s already here?”
