If it were up to men, would most couples adopt?

Most men I have known have NO interest in raising other people's children.





I read most PAPs say that ';my husband and I are desperate for a baby'; here and elsewhere.





But aren't most men going through the motions because they want to please/satisfy their ';desperate'; wives?





Do you think most husbands would be happier to let the whole infertility/no baby thing drop and get on with life child-free?





Isn't adoption driven by women?If it were up to men, would most couples adopt?
Honestly I agree with you. I think many men if they can't have a child biologically rather not have one at all. I personally have always wanted to adopt and my wife and I talked about it while dating long before trying and even knew if we were fertile or not. We actually did have a bio child then became foster parents and adopted the first child placed with us. I am however the exception to the rule I have noticed.


I work with mostly women and when we adopted and people found out I heard basically the same story over and over. They wanted to adopt even though they had a biological children and their husbands shot it down end of discussion.If it were up to men, would most couples adopt?
For some, perhaps. Also, there are many men who are a little bit iffy about the whole fatherhood thing these days. I mean, most are taught that fatherhood means a complete loss of their freedom. Just go on the pregnancy board for a day and you'll see how many MARRIED women find that after they fall pregnant the father, their husband, freaks out and has a hard time being happy about it.





That wasn't the case with my adoptive father. He's very family/provider oriented and was just as happy about adopting me as my mom was. Granted he's not the overtly emotional type, but one of the few times I've seen him cry was when he told me how happy he was that I was his daughter.





There are, I'm sure, some men out there who would have a hard time raising a child that wasn't their flesh and blood. This would be due to cultural reasons or perhaps because they weren't excited about being a father to begin with. Personally, I think it's driven by a societal trend that encourages people, especially men, to remain care-free young adults until their late thirties-early forties. Not to draw on a pop-culture reference, but look at John of John and Kate Plus Eight. Yeah, Kat's a hard a**, but John's living like he's 19 when he has 8 children he should be worried about. Welcome to 2009, the year of the man-child.
I think the perception is different from the reality. Does that mean that all men want children the same as their wives? I wouldn't say that but at the same time they both must go through the process and since it's a life long commitment I don't think they take it lightly.





I don't see it much different then the belief that men don't want custody of their own children and that most of them are content not to know that their girlfriends are pregnant and gave the baby up for adoption without telling them. While it may not be articulated here (in this type of forum) there are many more men that want custody of their children then people would believe.
I do think that a lot of adoption choices are made by women, although I think a lot of family planning choices in general are made by women. I think that the 80/20 preference for girls when adopting is due to women being in the driver's seat of the adoption. I definitely don't think a couple should adopt if one partner has to be convinced or dragged along. I don't think the fact that women are often in the driver's seat, however, always means that the men do not want to be on the ride. It can be problematic though, and causes issues like the preference for girls, etc. like I mentioned. In our own situation, my husband always wanted to adopt, but I would definitely say I was more active in the process. Now that we are parents, he is the most active, devoted father I know.
I can speak with certainty only for my own family: If it had been solely up to my father, they would have adopted several children. My mother wasn't sure she wanted to, so they never did.





I'm really not sure of the general trends, but among people I actually know in real life, it seems about equal.





Women do seem more likely to talk about adoption on the internet-- but they also seem more likely to talk about pets, parenting, and Harry Potter on the internet. It seems like women are at least the more verbal ones about it online, but I don't know that it means men are indifferent, any more than the fact that women are more likely to be verbal about wanting biological children means that men secretly don't.





I'd be surprised if there was a huge slant based on gender-- though there may be somewhat of one. Lots of men truly do want to be fathers, cultural stereotypes of irresponsible males aside.
Yes, but also consider that having children in general tends to be more driven by women. So, it isn't an adoption thing specifically, more just a common difference in priority between the sexes.





In our own case, it is true that our initial adoption was driven by my wife and without her efforts, I wouldn't have pursued and adoption. However, I am the primary care giver to our adopted sons and certainly loved them every bit as I do my biological children.
It is driven by women for the most part. We still teach women that children are a necessary part of their identity, and that women who don't have/raise children are somehow incomplete. Nobody ever thinks this about men.





But in the interests of full disclosure, I've got to put in that in my case it was my a'dad's idea all along. He really wanted children, but he had to wait for my a'mom to come around.
I can't answer for most couples, as I don't know them. All I can say is that my partner wanted children way before I did. We made the decision to foster and adopt together, instead of having biological children. My partner seems as uninterested as I am in having a biological child, we're both more concerned with being good parents to our kids and making happy lives for them.





But then we also don't see it as raising other people's children. We're just raising children, who need us, and trying our best to do a good job with it.
Well i don't know. I've known some men to say they really want to be fathers, just like many women say they want children. So it would e unfair to say men just ';go along for the ride.';








In my case, my dad was on board almost from the beginning. He originally hesitated because of my a moms recent hospital stay(almost lost her foot and was very ill). Other then that, he was all for it.
We would have. My husband is a very devoted dad...He was absolutely on board.





We chose to do foster adoption for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which was that he had worked in group homes and with high needs children. We never pursued any type of fertility treatments, nor did we explore any other form of adoption. We wanted to foster, and foster we did.
I think that is a very broad generalization. My husband wanted children just as much as I did. Otherwise why would he have gone through the pain of TTC for over a year with our first and over two years with our second. Yes, some men will do it to make their wives happy, but I can't imagine they have a close or happy marriage if they are having kids just because their spouse wants to. Some guys are happy having kid free lives and others want their own biological children desperately. I think it just depends on the man.
Yes, I think so.





Back when I was ';in the fog'; I told my fiance I wanted to adopt. He said no, having children of his own was important to him.





I think most men would rather have their own children to continue their name, bloodline, or whatever. I honestly think it's women and crazy hormones that make them desperate.
Our adoption was driven by my husband, who can't have children. He really wanted to be a father and I wasn't interested in carrying another man's baby. My husband did most of the paperwork for our adoption, but I did a lot of research on it. That's my experience, I don't know about %26gt;most%26lt; men.
We have a combined family....my husband has a son, I have a son and we have a son together. I babysit and he does his best to avoid those children at all costs. He loves his kids but has little to no interest in any other children and would definitely never go for adoption.
I don't know about most couples, but in our case adoption was discussed as part of the ';having children'; discussion when we got married.
My husband suggested adoption, I flatly refused.





Having said that, I believe I'm the exception and not the rule.





He has never broached the subject with me again.
My husband was just as open to raising our son as I was. We weren't ';Desperate';, ';Child-free';, ';Infertile'; ';Going through the motions';.





Why do I get the feeling that you really ARE.... ';SLY'; ?
Generalize much? Have any statistics to back up your statement? Yeah, didn't think so.
Well, you don't see too many men on here begging for someone elses baby





Just sayin'
Yes. I am the one who suggested to my wife that we should adopt.








Proud adoptive parent of a 6 month old boy.
I'm Chris's wife and we had 8 children of our own. Then his brother and sister in law were in a horrible accident and they had 9 young children as well. I told Chris we can't let them go to foster homes and we need to adopt them now. He got right up from his chair and said lets go get them now. And we did so we had 17 kids in this house all under the age of 9....our lives were never the same from that day forward!





Now their all adults and my sister's daughter has a 4 year old girl. Well my sister is dying of cancer and her daughter is stupid. She did illegal drugs while pregnant for her daughter and this little girl is all messed up medically speaking. So my niece is in jail my sister is unable to care for this child and once again at 49 years old Chris and I adopted this 4 year old girl. We had to spend over 20k in a bedroom for this girl due to her illnesses. She has a special bed so if she stops breathing, or has seizures and alarm will go off and strobe lights will flash as well. We have special wheel chair for her too, she's unable to walk, talk, eat or do anything on her own. She has seizures at least 7 times a day this is not including the nights. She's on a ventilator 24/7 see's blind in one eye, deaf in one ear and she drools all the time.


Well I was concern about Chris with this situation because she is very demanding to say the least. But Chris has stepped up and he is the most wonderful father to this little girl. If he got shopping he takes her with him too. He'll take her just about anywhere he goes, we have special equipment so we can take her out. But Chris has been great and I love him dearly for it! My sister just lost her battle with cancer yesterday she was 45 years old.





So some men do not mind raising other children but I do think that their far and few in between.
If it was the case social services who are very strict over her with applicants for adoption would have picked up on it and not approved us for adoption. They wrote a novels worth of on us and our reasons and it went before a board of five people at the end for approval after 18 months. They scrutinize EVERYTHING. You see they don't need you, there are plenty of people applying to adopt, but they have only limited places in the adoption pool at any one time. They select the people who might fit the critiera of children coming into temp fostercare who potentially will need a home through adoption. Mixed race couples have a better chance these days than just Angelo.





As for husbands, mine wanted to adopt. Our close friends husbands who are adoptive parents didn't Just go through the motions, they were are as dedicated as their wives and made great dads.





What he hated was fertility treatments and I had to make him do IVF at least once to satisfy his family. (Understand, it was for his family, wasn't really what we wanted to do. I didn't like taking drugs either for it. ) He begged me not to do any more to please others, not for any religious reasons just that he wasn't desperate for biological children. He was just happy to be a dad one day, DNA didn't come into it for him.





In the end, he was the one who asked when were going to apply for adoption. Not me.





Our families love our kids enormously.
Here is an even funnier joke. We kill 4,000 babies a day here then go and adopt babies from China and Indonesia. We Americans, what jokers we are.