We have decided to have some additional work done on our house–replacing an ugly kitchen floor and a decrepit foyer ceiling. The contractors have been hard at it for several days, and those days have been more disruptive than four months of the attic renovation. The kitchen cabinets are in the dining room, the kitchen table is in the foyer, and my sanity is out the window. I go to pour a cup of juice and I don’t know where to turn, except to retreat into the fantasy world of fiction.

So meanwhile, back in Our Mutual Friend, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin have not been able to adopt their orphan after all because he has inconveniently died while his grandmother was reconsidering her decision. (Oh my God, our social worker was right after all!) He expires according to the Victorian tradition, angelic to the last, bequeathing his favorite toy to another hospital inmate with his dying breath. With her hopes thus dashed, Mrs. Boffin decides she had been selfish to want an infant, a “pretty plaything,” to adopt, and thinks it would be more charitable to take in an older child, who is less likely to be placed and thus in more need of help. She settles upon a teenage “love child,” who works in a laundry and bears the unfortunate appellation of “Sloppy.”

At first I thought it was sweet of Mrs. Boffin to take in an older “special needs” child. Then when I thought about it a bit I was a little bothered by her characterization of her second adoption as a case where she could “do the most good.” Was she creating a family, or patronizing a charity? I was also disturbed by her decription of an infant as a “pretty plaything.” Did she think he wouldn’t grow up, have problems, cause trouble on his own? Are there good motivations for adopting and bad ones?

A week or two ago, Mimi Smartypants linked to a Yahoo group set up to discuss “adoption disruption.” (Bear with me–there is a connection here.) Disruption, for the uninitiated, means “giving them up to other parents.” A number of Smartypants readers (me included) clicked over and read some of the discussions. A subset of those readers (not me) entered the fray and challenged these people on their desire to give up their children. The discussion got ugly, and eventually access was restricted to members only.

I read as much as I could stand with a mixture of horror and interest. Some people told terrible stories of teenage adoptees molesting or assaulting siblings. Others described what seemed to be typical attachment issues. Some wanted to “re-home” children that had been with them for years; others had only been there for months. Some of the kids had been adopted internationally, but most had been adopted domestically. Some people who had formerly “disrupted” an adoption had successfully adopted children afterwards.

Common themes: The adoptive parents had been “lied to” by the placement agency, and weren’t aware of the extent of a child’s issues. The adopted child’s needs were interfering with the lives of the other siblings. The child just wasn’t a good fit. The child had attachment issues and acted out with the first family who tried to give him a home, but once he had gotten that out of his system was fine with the second family. In most cases there was a mixture of adopted and biological children in the home; in a surprising number cases the children were very close in age, or the adopted kids had been adopted out of birth order.

The give-and-take between the Smartypants readers and the message board members got pretty heated, as you can imagine. One of the “re-homing” women made a fair attempt to explain the issues. The thing that resonated most with me was her claim that adoptive parents of infants could not understand the environment of older-child adoption. She said that adoption agencies EXPECT that a certain number of children will be re-homed; that it’s common that a first adoption doesn’t work out, but the next one does. She said that a second placement is sometime necessary for the well-being of all concerned.

I was still not completely convinced. It sounded to me that these people were considering adoption kind of like foster placement–a situation that could be changed if the kids didn’t live up to the rules of the house. Whereas I have always considered adoption to be a permanent state, unless I become such a negligent parent that the state terminates my parental rights. No matter what happens, no matter how sick they are, no matter how rough it gets, I’m stuck with them. I mean, a kid I went to college with killed his mother with a fraternity paddle, and she was still his mother. One hopes for better, of course.

I am acutely aware, though, that it’s easy for me to say, because my kids have been extremely healthy. Also, my kids have been my kids since they were babies; if they later develop awful teenage issues, I’ll have years of bonding to fall back on. I haven’t selflessly volunteered to parent a special needs child. Could I really condemn someone who has stepped up, only to think twice?

Yes, I think I can. With great compassion for their suffering, I condemn them nonetheless. I am being extremely judgmental, but we can’t have this. Adoptive parents cannot renege on their contracts with their adoptive children unless they are physically and mentally incapable of caring for them. And if they are in a state where they have to place their adoptive child for re-adoption, then they should have to place all their other children, biological and adopted, for “re-homing” as well.

I can imagine how hard it must be to care for a disturbed child or even a child with a mild attachment disorder, but it’s up to the parents to judge what they can handle and make their decisions accordingly. If you know that a teenager has witnessed his mother’s murder and has some behavioral issues, you have to think twice before bringing him to live among your four younger children. If you have a one-year-old, you need to think seriously about how wise it is to adopt an eighteen-month-old who has been institutionalized most of his life. I’m not saying that you couldn’t adopt happily in those situations, but you have to go into it being willing to accept that child into your home as your son or daughter, someone you nurture and protect on an equal footing with your other children.

Reading the stories on that board, I questioned the motivations that some people had for adopting. This quote from the author of an “adoption dissolution” guide really solidified my impressions (emphasis mine):

For years, I never mentioned the fact that I had suffered through two disruptions. . . . But over the years, I have learned that I have every reason to feel pride about my personal stats. I have attempted to adopt 11 times, all high risk children with special needs, most of them older children who had spent a lot of time in the system. Some of these were highly questionable matches that the adoption agency should have steered me away from, in favor of a child whose needs I could better meet. But I trusted the agency too much. I expected it to be infallible. From what I have learned about disruption risk and large family dynamics, it is almost miraculous that 9 of these adoptions have been successful and only 2 disrupted. I believe that adoptive parents who try everything before giving up, and who only give up when safety concerns force them to, should have no regrets either. They should hold their heads up high. Supermom, after all, is a mythical being.

She lost two, but she helped nine. Pretty good average, right? Not for the two kids who lost their “forever family” twice in one lifetime, and probably not for each of the nine remaining “high risk special needs” children who have to compete for family resources with eight other high-risk siblings. Why is this woman adopting, anyway–to create a family or a school? I suspect that she, like Mrs. Boffin in the book, thinks of adoption as a mission to save a child.

I don’t believe anyone should adopt as charity. If you want to do good, volunteer as a big brother or sister or write a check. There are millions of ways to help kids, all of them admirable. But don’t adopt a troubled child because it’s admirable. Only adopt if you can be a true mother or father.

Please.