When you are considering whether to adopt a child, one factor to consider is how much support you will receive from family and friends. The adoption process is grueling, and you will need to lean on your family and friends as you work your way through the process. Also, when you adopt a child, you need your family and friends to embrace the child as your family. Is this going to be an issue for you?

I put together a Lack of Support in Adoption Series to discuss the issues you might encounter if you have friends or family who are not supportive of your decision to adopt. Unfortunately, this happens more often than you might expect.

I assumed that everyone in my life would be 100% supportive of our decision to adopt. While most of my circle of family and friends were supportive, I ran into some struggles with my grandparents. You can read about those struggles in my post Family Members Who Resist Adoption.

If you have family or friends who will not be supportive, you need to decide whether you will be able to stand up to their criticism. If you are a person who feels you must have your family’s approval for all decisions, then you might not want to move forward with an adoption without their support. I say this because it is your responsibility as an adoptive parent to stand up for your child. If you do not have that in you, then you could cause harm to your child by allowing your unsupportive family to mistreat him. See my post Failure to Stand Up to Unsupportive People for more on this topic.

Not everyone feels the strong need to please the people around him. If you feel comfortable standing up for your child, then I would not worry about how much support you have. I, personally, did not care what people had to say about my choice to adopt. Yes, it was nice when people were excited for me, but I never once considered not moving forward just because my grandparents had reservations. I decided to introduce them to my son as a baby. If they did not embrace him as my son, then I would stop visiting with them. Period. As is turned out, they fell in love with him at once, and he is now one of their favorite great-grandchildren.

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