One confounding factor here is that the children that you might potentially adopt are pretty different from the children you might have biologically. Most adoptees have gone through some form of trauma, they are rarely newborns, they often had worse prenatal environments, their biological parents probably wouldn’t enjoy the forum, etc.
I think if somehow one of my children had been swapped at birth with a child from similar parents it probably wouldn’t have much of an impact on what raising them would be like, but that’s not really what we’re talking about?
(I do also think it’s cute the various more specific ways our kids resemble us, but I agree this is not a major contribution to the experience of parenting.)
I think this is slightly overstating things—I’m not sure of the numbers as the statistics I’ve found online seem inconsistant, but it looks like the majority of private adoptions, and >10% of all adoptions, are newborns.
One confounding factor here is that the children that you might potentially adopt are pretty different from the children you might have biologically. Most adoptees have gone through some form of trauma, they are rarely newborns, they often had worse prenatal environments, their biological parents probably wouldn’t enjoy the forum, etc.
I think if somehow one of my children had been swapped at birth with a child from similar parents it probably wouldn’t have much of an impact on what raising them would be like, but that’s not really what we’re talking about?
(I do also think it’s cute the various more specific ways our kids resemble us, but I agree this is not a major contribution to the experience of parenting.)
I think this is slightly overstating things—I’m not sure of the numbers as the statistics I’ve found online seem inconsistant, but it looks like the majority of private adoptions, and >10% of all adoptions, are newborns.