What about birth order?
This content was originally published by Creating a Family, the national adoption & infertility education nonprofit. You can find the original posting
here.
Birth order is important and the decision to disrupt birth order through adoption should not be taken lightly. Families that already have children that are interested in adopting older kids and siblings groups are often faced with the decision of whether to disrupt the order of children in their family.Many adoption professionals in the past and now routinely advised against this practice, but that may be changing.
As renowned adoption expert Dr. David Brodzinsky said in an interview on a Creating a Family show on disrupting birth order in adoption, “When talking about adopting out of birth order, it is best to throw ‘always’ and ‘never’ out the window, and replace them with ‘sometimes’.” Adopting out of birth order is neither always a good idea or never a good idea; it is sometimes a good idea.
Adopting out of birth order can sometimes result in children being very close in age, in essence creating “artificial twins”.
Issues of creating artificial twins are discussed on other resource pages on this site.
Creating a Family has many resources for those considering adopting out of birth order or living the experience. A few we think you will find particularly helpful are:
Adopting Out of Birth Order (1 hr radio interview with Dr. David Brodzinski)
Disrupting Birth Order Through Adoption (7 minutes video)
Are you curious about birth order and how it may affect your biological children? Come this Saturday from 9:30-11:30 to Latta Park for a Park Playdate and connect with other families. These are perfect opportunities to chat about how adoption as touched your family- You just might find someone to share how this exact topic affected their own family!
