Disruption

Last week, I saw this article about a woman who was on the Today Show, who adopted a child and later terminated the adoption here. The woman and her husband had five biological children and then adopted a baby boy. However, because the mother felt that she couldn’t bond with him like she could her biological child…..after 18 months they disrupted.

The subtitle on this article was “Of human bondage” and there are five pages of editorial comments on both sides of this story.

I have struggled with the idea of disruption for many years. When a child is born into your family, whether the child has “issues” or not, that child is yours. You don’t have an option to hand that child back. I know that this is a very complex subject, however, and with my motto being “Compassion before judgment” I try very hard to understand disruption when it happens in adoption. In our own extended family, there was a disruption of a child that I knew well….so I have seen this with my own eyes.

What are your thoughts on disruption? Is there ever a time that it is acceptable? In the end, was it better to have a family that will truly cherish this child or would it have been better for this family to fully commit to the child and work on bonding?

Karen Maunu

Changing the Lives of Orphans in China