Speaking With Your Teenager About Pregnancy and Adoption

By Charlotte Harrod


When I told my children that I would be working for an adoption agency, almost promptly the questions came like rapid fire. My younger kids asked concerns like "Exactly where do the babies come from?" "Do you get to pick them out?" and "Mom, are we going to adopt a child?" Then my older kids asked a lot more involved concerns like "How does adoption perform?" "Why would a household pick out to adopt?" and "Why would someone ever take into consideration putting their kid for adoption in the initial location?"

The most startling question came from my 16-year-old daughter, "Mom, what would you do if I ever became pregnant?" Well, right after telling her that she wasn't going to turn out to be pregnant till she finished college, had a profession and was happily married, the reality set in.

I have noticed young women, my daughter's age walk bravely by way of the doors of the agency 8 months pregnant. In order to answer her question, I had the intention of taking my mom hat off and placing my social worker hat on, but I found myself wearing each. We talked about what it was like to have a youngster and the responsibilities that came along with that. Yes, we did speak about how cute babies are and the overwhelming adore a mother feels for her child, but we also talked about the restless nights and the occasions when almost everything in my life had to bet set aside for the sake of my children.

We talked about how it was good for me to be able to remain at property when she and her siblings had been small and how unexpected adjustments in my life led me to return to school and take on the challenges of a operating single-mom

I asked my daughter what her dreams were. If she saw herself graduating from college, getting a career, and most importantly to her, getting the capacity to come and go as she pleases and obtain her own clothes and make-up?! I asked her to believe about how these dreams may perhaps be altered if she had been responsible for a kid 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week.




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