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

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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