My personal response is that it seems like raising your own biological offspring, even with all of the lizard-brain this-will-eventually-pass-on-my-genes bonus, is already hard for a lot of people --- look at all of the internet threads asking if people regret having kids --- so subtracting off the biological offspring bonus and adopting seems like it would be very difficult. Add in the trauma already experienced by children in the foster system, and it gets even harder. Then I wonder if I'm the kind of person who can love a difficult child, and I wonder how good it is for a child to grow up with a parent who deep-down sees them as an object of responsibility rather than love. Of course, strong bonds between adopted parents and children are certainly possible, but it is in the end harder, right?

I admire your pragmatic embrace of working on this problem; I also think chalking up the cost of adoption as "an inconvenience to...daily lives" is...underselling it?

loving a difficult child is hard! but there are varying degree's of difficult, violent difficult i can understand that is an immense challenge and i definitely don't recommend people to take that on unless they are prepared and sometimes you don't know, yes this situation really sucks!

I don't know what there is to regret about having kids, yep its difficult but everything worth doing is difficult! Adoption is definitely very difficult, especially the kind I did, international adoption of special needs children. My family didn't understand, many people in the public don't understand, and if they somewhat do they ask why I didn't adopt an american child, to me a child is a child.

I will say any ounce of love you can give these kids is better than what they have, seriously, the things I've seen.. picture your life from age 1 - 16, tied to a crib, malnourished, not educated, treated like a feral animal weighing under 100 lbs now, and all kinds of spine issues because you were not ever allowed to walk! Or if you are lucky enough to be in a place you can develop a bit, but then you are molested and abused but still have the intellect of a feral animal.

Many of these kids don't know what bonds of love are, but they can still form even tiny bits of it, and there will be times you think ..why the hell did i do this, but there are times when you think i am so happy i did this, you push through those hard times, get support from friends etc and the life of that kid will be a million times better than the life they would have had.

I think people don't give themselves enough credit, and somewhere inside i know they could do it, I never thought I could do it. One thing I do know is, if we all sit around questioning what we can't do we never will know what we could do and in the meantime children are suffering. I'm actually internally battling the want to adopt a third child vs being at limit!

Oh also adopting is an expensive venture, i went into debts to do this so i recommend to anyone get familiar with the community of adoptive parents and let them help fund raise.

But yes overall I think it's a huge problem that gets little attention, and once and awhile you will see a super sad advertisement on TV and hear everyone whine about how bad it made them feel and how they shouldn't show those kinds of ads. Big disappointment to me when i hear that, I feel like its more rug sweeping under

ah well

We need reform in the system, though. I know two heterosexual couples in different states with decent jobs, good finances, deep desire to adopt, commitment. (I mention heterosexual only because there has long been stigma against same-sex couples adopting, and this is a stigma these folks don't face.) They've gone through the foster training, the adoption training, the social worker meetings, the enormous legal fees. They've both been working to adopt for over four years. One couple, I think matches have fallen through three times? They were trying to adopt an older kid through the foster system and were willing to take siblings, so you think they'd be home free. But no. Match, courts change their mind; match, courts change their mind, etc. The other has had only one match fall through -- it was a baby and they got the clothes, got the crib ready, and mom changed her mind.

Something is wrong with the system in America when I've got a child who can now write their name and that took less time from beginning to present than getting a single adoption from the foster system accomplished. Those matches that failed? Those kids are still in foster care.

> What we need are more caring people to adopt, and put their words to action, and give these kids good home.

We do need this, but we also need loving, caring people to foster. We've been fostering for over 6 years and every one of our kids have gone home to family. That should be the goal. People like to think, "oh I'd be able to provide for this kid much better than their family." Maybe that's true financially. But family is family and if there's ANY way to reunite the family, that should be the way forward.

Sure if they can get back to family that is fine, but that is a small fraction of the issue, most of my work is in international adoption with special needs kids that rot tied to a crib with the occasional porridge in a bottle shoved down their throat.. honestly leaving them like this is for sure a human atrocity, I have to ask myself quite often if most are better off dying than sitting for years slowly dying. Those are the types of kids I'm advocating for that people pick up the ball and do what you can, obviously i support any sort of adoption or fostering! The reality is, any ounce of love anyone can give is better than what they get, bring them home, feed them 3 times a day clean them! that's like heaven for these kids