Is it better to adopt children or to create them?

Comments

Great question, though "create" may not be the best term when you might refer to giving birth to a child. It seems that without considerable details, it would be very difficult indeed to answer your question. Still, one can identify some of the values that are in play. In adopting a child, it seems that you are exercising your voluntary will (it would be odd or unusual to adopt a child by accident or be compelled to do so) whereas in some cases getting pregnant may not be a choice or a voluntary one. In adoption you also may be acting to prevent harm (e.g. if the child is not adopted, perhaps she would remain in an orphanage until she comes of age) and bring about good to someone who (in most cases) already exists, whereas the child you have would not exist unless you and your partner had intercourse and the pregnancy came to term. In some respects, I suggest that giving birth to a child is the primary good. Every person, whether they will be adopted or remain with their birth family, has been, is being, or will be born. Adoption is and can be a great good, and for some people it can clearly be better to adopt than give birth to a child (e.g. in conditions when child birth may be a danger to mother or child). But the process of adoption seems to simulate child birth (the adopted parents are usually addressed as mother and father --in homosexual unions, obviously, it is a matter of two fathers or two mothers--and for single parents it is either mother or father) rather than child birth simulating adoption. Still, even in the course of child rearing with biological parents there may be times when the virtues that are in play in adoption are called upon, e.g. your child might turn out very differently than you expected and you may need that openness and generosity that is so evident in healthy adoptions.

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