In my last post, Adoption: Does Reluctant Spouse = Reluctant Husband?, I talked about how most spouses who are reluctant to adopt tend to be husbands. However, I also pointed out that many reluctant wives never agree to adopt in the first place, which skews the ranks of the reluctant spouses, making it appear that men are more likely to be reluctant about adopting than women.

Why are some women reluctant to adopt? Some have not yet grieved the loss of experiencing pregnancy. Others have a dream of a baby with Daddy's eyes and Mommy's nose and are not yet ready to give up on that dream. Still others might feel very strongly about their bloodlines and not want to "parent a stranger's child." Some might worry about being able to afford to adopt a child. Many of these reasons sound similar to those offered by men.

Jill Smolowe's article, The Reluctant Spouse, makes this observation about reluctant spouses:

Marriage counselors, adoption specialists, and social workers agree that when a couple is not in lockstep, it's usually the wife who wants to proceed, and the husband who doesn't. (Anecdotal evidence suggests that reluctant men are often ambivalent about adoption, but resistant women tend to be inflexible.)

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Why are reluctant men more likely to be ambivalent while reluctant women are more likely to be inflexible? My guess is that it is because, in most families, the women take on the bulk of the parenting responsibilities, so they need to be gung ho about adopting. A father might have the luxury of warming up slowly, but a mother must hit the ground running when she adopts a child. It is a mother's arms that most children reach for in the beginning, and those arms need to be ready, willing, and able to embrace that child from the get-go. I think most women intuitively know this, so if they are not ready to offer this to a child, they balk at starting down this path.

Regardless of why a woman is reluctant to adopt, I think she is wise to wait until she truly wants to adopt a child. Every child deserves to be loved wholeheartedly, and rejection by a mother is particularly devastating to a child, even more so than rejection by a father. That being said, every child deserves to be fully loved and embraced by both, especially a child who has already experienced the loss of birthparents.

I welcome any insights by those of you who were once reluctant women or are married to reluctant women.

Related Topics:

Reluctant Spouse category

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt