I grew up in one of the most stereotypical suburban American environments you can imagine?? two parents, a younger sister and two dogs all living together in a white two-story house with a red roof and a white fence in the backyard set in a neighborhood where the kids grow up going to school together and the residents throw the occasional block party in the neighborhood park.
On the outside, my background growing up looks pretty standard and predictable, and for the most part it was.
What people never realize before they get to know me, however, is that if it weren?t for my parents adopting me from Shanghai, China, and taking me to their home in north San Diego county, I likely would never have experienced the safe, stable home life I was privileged enough to grow up with.
I hope to one day open up my home and my life to children or teenagers in need of a family who can love and support them unconditionally the way my parents did for my sister and me.
I was adopted in March 1993 when I was only four months old, so I?ve never had any issues viewing my parents as my real parents, something that I?m sure many men, women and couples worry about when deciding whether or not adopting is the right choice for them.
Adopting a child is ultimately saving a child?s life, especially when adopting from a?country like China, where the orphanages are crowded with infants and children, which is largely due to the one-child policy that was implemented in 1979.
According to the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute website, there are about 153 million orphans worldwide who have lost one parent and 17,800,000 orphans who have lost both parents and are living in orphanages around the world?or even worse, on the streets. They are deprived of the care and attention required for healthy development, putting them at high risk for suffering malnutrition, disease and death.
If a child ages out of the orphanage or foster care system without being adopted, their chances of building a successful future for themselves are extremely slim compared to children lucky enough to come from a stable, supportive family and home life.
According to the National Foster Care Month website, about 20,000 young people placed in U.S. foster care age out of the system every year, typically when they're 18 and still in need of support and services.
The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute website?reports that as of July 2012, nearly 25 percent of youth aging out of the foster care system did not earn a high school diploma or GED and only 6 percent earned a two or four-year degree after aging out of foster care.
However, the website reports that 70 percent of all foster care youth have the desire to attend college.
These are extremely upsetting statistics, and it?s a tragic reality that these kids did nothing to deserve the unhealthy, unstable childhood that life dealt them.
In the U.S. alone, more than 250,000 children enter the foster care system every year, according to adoptuskids.org.
The website reports that currently, there are 104,000 children in foster care waiting to be adopted, ranging in age from younger to a year old to 21 years old.
According to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, three years is the average amount of time a foster child waits to be adopted, and about 55 percent of these kids have been placed in three or more different families.
For three years a child is forced to wait for a family to reach out to them and call them their child, an experience that the vast majority of people are lucky enough to be born into.
These are the kinds of facts that motivate me to one day rescue at least one child from a life lacking in proper health care and emotional support and give them the promise of a better future.?
As children become older, it becomes increasingly unlikely that they will find a permanent home and family to call their own since most parents want to adopt a child young enough to still have time to grow up with them and genuinely identify with them as their real parents.
This reality contributes to my hope to one day adopt a preteen or young teenager so I can provide them with the home, family, love and security that they will have probably at that point lost all hope of ever experiencing.
Being raised in an orphanage or bouncing from foster home to foster home can easily deprive children of any real sense of belonging, home, or family ??something that every child deserves to grow up with.
It?s difficult enough to develop into a successful, happy adult with a solid direction in life even when you do have a supportive, loving family there for you and believing in you.
High school and college years are complicated stages in life for any young adult ? trying to figure out who you are and what your place is in this world can be completely overwhelming.
The idea of anyone going through that adolescent experience without the stability of a family or home to come to is devastating to me.
Kids are often put up for adoption because their mothers were unable to raise them, the family they were born into couldn?t afford to care for them, or they were mistreated somehow, according to livestrong.com.
They deserve the chance to have a promising, thriving future as much as anyone else,?but without anyone to turn to or family members to support them, their opportunities are limited.
I want to provide that hope, love and stability for a child or children who may otherwise never get to go through those experiences, experiences that most of us take for granted, and I hope that more individuals, couples and families develop that same desire to open up their lives to a child in need as well.
Source: http://spartandaily.com/101597/adoption-gives-kids-hope-for-the-future
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