Everyone who considers adopting a child wrestles with the question: What are my motives for adopting?

In her book, Carried Safely Home, Kristin Swick Wong explains that she read books, hoping they would shed some light on the subject:

Some authors cautioned that adoption should not be pursued as a means to care for the poor. They told us not to adopt with the motivation of helping others but rather for ourselves, because we really wanted a child. One author advised, “If you want to do something noble, donate money to a good charity rather than adoption.”

Kristin explains that while she and her husband (who had two daughters by birth) believed the child they adopted would bring them great blessing, they also wanted to deliver a child from a desperate situation. In fact, their first motivation to adopt came from thinking about social injustice after reading Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.

Kristin writes:
Sider fills his book with biblical exhortations to provide justice for the poor, such as Psalm 82:3-4: “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

“To deny that we were seeking to help a child would be to deny the Lord’s prompting in our hearts to provide justice to the poor,” writes Kristin.

The advice to avoid pursuing adoption as a means of rescuing a child didn’t ring true for the Wongs. “We wanted to have a part in freeing a child from poverty. But later in our journey, when we were praised for rescuing a child, it did not seem right, either, because we were so in love with our children that we could not imagine classifying their adoptions as simple acts of altruism.”

Kristin attempted to sort through the possible motivations to adopt. She writes:

The warnings not to adopt a child out of a sense of charity are there in part because those who set out to rescue children may have unrealistic expectations about the long-term commitment that comes after the adoption. And they may harbor a patronizing attitude, seeing themselves as heroic rescuers of women and children. Their gaze may become fixed on their own noble actions.

But neither can it be right to adopt only out of a sense of entitlement and a fixation on the desire for a child. There is a danger that parents who think only about their determination to have a child become oblivious to others’ need and distress, taking advantage of the tragedies of individuals or countries in order to get what they want. Their gaze may become fixed on their own desires.

Other posts in this series:

In a Perfect World, Adoption Wouldn’t Exist


Kristin Wong’s Website with a Biblical Perspective on Adoption

The “Realness” of Adoptive Families