The old saying, “You can choose your friends but not your family” does not ring true for families who choose to adopt a child. In our extended family, including first and second cousins, there were thirteen chosen individuals. Sadly, three have died. We are related by adoption and by marriage. We call each other “cousin” because that’s our relationship to each other. Although we’re not related by blood, we are bound by love. It’s a tie that binds us together as tightly as it holds us to our families.
Most of us arrived as infants, some as toddlers, and one in her teens. Many share the belief that our real parents are the people who raised us, not those who gave us life. This belief is particularly relevant today when the courts have begun returning adopted children to their biological parents, people these children have never known.
Several days ago I watched a heart-wrenching news report about a six-year-old girl returned to her birth family. Her foster family, where she had lived for the past four years, wanted to adopt her, but the court yielded to federal law. Pictures of her foster parents, siblings, and neighbors weeping tore at my heart as this child was removed from the only home she had known since she was a toddler.
Whose welfare do our laws protect? Children are not property. They are human beings with feelings and should not be moved because the courts rule that blood binds more than love. If a child is being raised by loving parents who can care for her and she has become part of a family, it seems like cruel and unusual punishment to remove her just to satisfy a law that does not consider her welfare.
Too often children should not remain with the family of their birth. Their opportunities for a better life lie with another family. As an adoptee, I know this is true and am grateful I was adopted.
Sometimes those we consider family are not the ones who gave us life or raised us, but those who chose to take us in when we were orphaned and alone. These people with big hearts and open minds define family, and I think that laws should be revised to consider the child’s welfare rather than subscribe to the “blood is thicker than water” adage.