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On my last post, Are Portrayals of Adoptive Parents on Television Realistic?, Coley, our Crisis Pregnancy and Open Adoption blogger, asked the following in the comments:
Is there any kind of statistic as to how often that really happens? Adoptive parents adopt then get pregnant?? General society talks like it happens often but from the adoptive parents I know it happens very little…
Just curious!
~ Coley from Are Portrayals of Adoptive Parents on Television Realistic?
When I was waiting to adopt, people would tell me on a regular basis that I would probably get pregnant after I adopted. This got on my nerves so badly that I did some research to find out whether this was true. I suspected that it was not, but I wanted to be armed with the facts.
I cannot remember where I found these statistics, but back in the late 1990’s, I found a statistic that only 1 in 8 infertile couples became pregnant after ending fertility treatments, and that number was the same whether the couple adopted or not. I found that number fascinating and shared it with many people. You cannot argue with facts, so that stopped people from repeating that myth to me.
I did an Internet search to find out what the current statistics were, and I found this quote in the Encyclopedia of Adoption:
Although the majority of adoptive parents do not have a biological child subsequent to an adoption, virtually every new adoptive parent has heard about a person with this experience. It is unknown how many adoptive mothers become pregnant after adopting but probably well less than 10% have biological children after they adopt a child. In many cases, the pregnancy is unplanned because the mother presumed she was infertile. – Pregnancy after Adoption
The article goes on to talk about a study by Michael Bohman, who determined that 8% of adoptive parents eventually have a biological child. According to Mr. Bohman, other studies have found the rate to be between 3% and 10%.
Those numbers are a far cry from the myth that every adoptive couple will have a biological child if they adopt. Even assuming the highest numbers, 90% of adoptive couples do not conceive a biological child after adopting. So, why do people continue to perpetuate this myth?
What bothers me even more is that, when people say “you will get pregnant after you adopt,” it implies that adopting a child is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. I did not adopt my son as a fertility object: I adopted him because I wanted to parent him and love him as if he was born into my family. How he joined my family is irrelevant to the love that I feel for him. I would not want anyone assuming that he was my “fill in” child until the “real” one showed up.
Now that we are all armed with the facts, perhaps we can do our parts to dispel the myth!
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
My bson’s adoptive parents had four biological children after adopting him. The amom believed she was infertile, which was why they applied to adopt in the first place. The aparents were loving, but the fact that my bson is short and slight and the aparents and asibs are tall, heavy and big boned, has created psychological problems for my bson.
I can see where that would be hard on your birth son.
- Faith
I don’t know, but it happened to my son’s parents. He was four when his adoptive sister was born.
Thank you for answering that Faith! I figured it was a very small percentage.
~ Coley
When people made those comments to me I felt like it invalidated my boys and our parenthood. Couln’t stand it either. At the time I just ignored it, now I would not.
I don’t know of any adoptive couples that had biological kids after adopting without infertility treatments.
One couple I know who had a diagnosis of no known reason for infertility ended up getting pregnant right at the start of the adoption process (initial meetings with agency, no homestudies). That is kind of interesting to me because at the time I recall that causes for infertility broke down to:
40% of the time it had to do with the woman
40% of the time it had to do with the male
10% of the time it had to do with the combination of them together
10% of the time there was no known cause.
Good points Faith. It is so demeaning to the adopted child(ren)as well as very annoying and insensitive to the adopting parents when people tell them that “NOW” they will get pregnant.
Lisa S.
As someone who is CHOOSING to adopt (we already have a young bio son and no fertility issues), it drives me crazy when people say things like, “Watch, when you bring your kids home from Ethiopia you’ll end up having another one of your own!” The assumptions people make are astounding. It’s sad that so many people see adoption as some sort of desperate second choice.
“It’s sad that so many people see adoption as some sort of desperate second choice.”
Very well said.
- Faith