and now, a poll

[kindkit]

Following on from my previous post, because now I'm beginning to wonder if what I think is my culture's view of adoption and birth mothers is not actually the case. The poll is as anonymous as I can make it, and anonymous comments are allowed.

Poll #18972

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 27

When a woman places her child up for adoption rather than raising the child herself, how is that predominantly viewed in your culture (not necessarily by you)?

Good! This is an excellent thing to do if she felt unable to raise the child herself.
11 (40.7%)

Neutral, neither good nor bad.
6 (22.2%)

Bad. She should have raised the child.
3 (11.1%)

Adoption is extremely rare or nonexistent in my culture.
2 (7.4%)

Other, which I may choose to elaborate on in the comments.
5 (18.5%)

Comments

[mecurtin]

I was born in the mid-1950s. Adoption has become more favorably viewed in the US over the course of my lifetime, though it's always been fairly acceptable, and very acceptable since WWII. I'm not at all sure how much is due to the anti-abortion movement: certainly the demand for healthy white infants to adopt has exceeded the supply for my entire life, and the large number of international adoptions are because the demand for adoptable children is so high.

It turns out US adoptions peaked in 1970, before the start of the anti-abortion movement.

[kindkit]

the demand for healthy white infants to adopt has exceeded the supply for my entire life

And now I'm wondering if the cultural encouragement to young white mothers to have their babies adopted rather than abort OR keep the baby is related to this. Not in a conspiracy-theory kind of way, but there is a general awareness of the "shortage" of adoptable healthy white babies, I think. A sense of "why would you choose abortion when someone else would love to have that baby?" and "why keep the baby when someone else who could raise it with more advantages wants it?"

[mecurtin]

I think this has got to be included in women's calculations, going back well before Roe v Wade. I don't know how common adoption ever was in other Anglophone countries, but in the US about 2% of children are adopted.

Notably in the US, some VERY prominent people were adopted as children: Steve Jobs, for example, also Larry Ellison (of Oracle; adopted by relatives). Both Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton were adopted by their stepfathers.

So, pretty much every US adult (and most children) will know someone who was adopted.