Is Adoption Right For You? A Social Psychology and Clinical Psychology Podcast Episode.

Adoption is a brilliant topic that I've always wanted to cover on The Psychology World Podcast. It can be seen as an opportunity to give a child a new life, a new home and a great childhood that they might not have had otherwise. Yet similar to deciding whether or not to have a biological child, there are a lot of questions to think about. Ultimately, you need to decide is adopting right for you. Also, aspiring and qualified psychologists and other mental health professionals need to be aware of adoption because adoption concerns, fear or possibilities might be a maintaining factor for our clients regardless of their mental health conditions. I'll discuss this more in today's podcast episode. Lastly, as a gay person, adoption is the most likely choice for me to have a child. I would love to have a kid because I would care for them, give them the best life possible and I would love them like my own. Yet I am also aware that adoption isn't right for everyone. Therefore, in this social psychology podcast episode, you'll learn why is adoption important for psychologists to be aware of, what are the questions people should answer before they adopt and much more. If you enjoy learning about development psychology, relationship psychology and more, then this will be a great episode for you. 

Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Developmental Psychology: A Guide To Developmental and Child Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Is Adoption Right For You?

People tend to have a few fixed ideas about adoption that doesn't reflect the reality of the process. Since a lot of people believe that adoption is you "saving" the child from a horrible lifetime of being unwanted. Personally, I used to believe in this viewpoint because whenever you see adoption come up in entertainment media (and as much as we don't like to admit it, this is where a lot of knowledge comes from), adoption is always phrased as you saving the child from being unwanted. I have seen or heard the phrase "Don't worry. There are so many unwanted children in the world. We'll adopt" way more times than I want to admit. 

However, in reality, adoption is way more complex than this, because whilst it's beyond the scope of this podcast episode. There's a wide range of reasons why people adopt and place their children into adoption. Some people argue that the entire process of adoption is a lifelong journey for searching for belonging as well as identity. Regardless of whether you're the birth parents, the adoptee or adopting parents. 

As a result, whilst adoption is traditionally framed as an act of love, adopting is also a lifelong commitment that demands humility, self-awareness and emotional readiness. This is why as brilliant as adoption is, prospective parents should take the time they need to truly understand what adoption requires from the heart. As much as the child needs love, they also need other prospective things from parents. Most of which we'll cover in the rest of this podcast episode. 

Additionally, I wanted to mention that the reason why I am mentioning this on a psychology podcast is not only because as an aspiring or qualified psychologist, you might consider adoption in the future. If that is the case then this will be a valuable podcast episode to help you understand whether adoption is right for you or not. Yet this is important for all psychologists and mental health professionals to be aware of, because we never know what a client is going to tell us in a therapy session. You might be supporting a person with intense anxiety, they are doing really well and then in the next session, the client reveals they’ve been really anxious this week because their partner mentions they really want to adopt a child. Then if this happens, the difficulties the client has around adoption might be a new focus or goal for the therapy.

Furthermore, you might wonder if you would ever see this come in your mental health setting, because you might be working in a depression service and adoption difficulties or concerns might never cross your mind. Nonetheless, when I went for my anorexia counselling in early 2025, the brilliant counsellor was an eating disorder specialist, so she never intended to understand sexual violence, much less male sexual violence. Yet because there was a connection between my rape and my anorexia, it was something we needed to explore and I needed to educate her during the process.

My point is that in clinical psychology and mental health work, it is flat out critical that we never ever dismiss learning about something because “we’ll never need it”. If my own mental health journey has taught me anything it is that you will never know what you need and what you won’t need until the moment comes. And when you need a critical piece of understanding, whilst you don’t need to be an expert on the topic, it is always good to have at least a brief understanding of the topic. It will make your client feel a lot more comfortable, relaxed and willing to have a difficult conversation with you.

Ultimately, whether you're considering adoption or not, there are some questions grounded in lived experience and research that will help you to reflect on whether you're ready to not only “rescue” a child from the social care system but to raise a child regardless of their past.

Are You Adopting A Child To Help Them Heal Or Yourself?

A lot of prospective parents unfortunately experience their own history of trauma, infertility and loss before they consider adoption. As well as research shows that unresolved grief can complicate adoption outcomes by influencing the emotional attunement and expectations that prospective parents have.

As a result, it might be a good idea for you to sit down with yourself or your partner and just talk about the real reasons why you want to adopt. I learnt a little trick from Miranda Hart’s book I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You. She recommends you keep asking yourself why until you literally can’t answer it anymore. This helps you understand the deeper reasons why you want to adopt instead of simply saying “you want kids”, and then this creates a safe open space for you and your partner to discuss whether you want to help a child heal or you want to heal yourself.

A conversation might go something like this:

Why do you want to adopt?

Because I want kids.

Why do you want kids?

Because they’re fun, lovely and they’ll add something exciting to my life.

Why do you feel the need to add something exciting to your life?

Because me and my partner have been trying for about a decade, I’ve miscarried three times and I feel like a failure.

I could easily go on with that line of questioning, but hopefully you can see how asking yourself why over and over can help you dig down into the roots and under the surface of why you really want to adopt.

Building upon this for an aspiring or qualified psychologist, this might be something you need to explore in psychological therapy. If your client is really anxious, the idea of adopting is making them depressed or they are overly enthusiastic about it, then you might need to work with the client to understand why, and whether this is actually the best time for them to adopt. And whether the client is using this as a distraction from their maintaining factors of their mental health difficulties or whether adopting a child will actually improve their life and mental health for the long term.

On the whole, true readiness to adopt means you can separate your needs from the needs of your adopted child and you are ready to commit to emotional growth alongside your adopted child’s. True readiness is not using your adopted child to fulfil a void because that will unconsciously make your child responsible for your healing. That isn’t fair on them.

Can You Deal with Trauma?

Traditionally, whenever we think about adoption in the media, in books and other forms of entertainment, there is always the idea that adopted children come with a blank slate. There is a common belief in society that adopted children aren’t influenced by their past, their birth parents or even being put up for adoption. However, the truth is every single adoption begins with loss because the adopted child will experience separation trauma. They are being ripped away from their biological family and this is an event that has a massive, massive impact on their nervous system as well as their worldview. Also, research shows that children adopted at birth or from the foster care system are significantly more likely to access mental health services than non-adopted children.

This is why it is flat out critical that you acknowledge that children are not blank slates, at some point in your parenting journey you will have to find ways to deal with, address and support your adopted child as they come to terms with this trauma.

Moreover, for aspiring or qualified psychologists, this is an important area to be aware of because you might be supporting a client with depression, trauma or another mental health difficulty, and one session they come in and want to spend the session focusing on their adopted child’s trauma. Of course, we cannot support the child if they are not in the room and if we are not trauma-informed ourselves, but in this session, you might need to calm down the client, help them regulate and come up with a plan to help them manage this very difficult home situation.

Equally, you might be working in a children and young people mental health service and an adopted child comes into your therapy room and wants to talk about this. They might want to talk about the separation trauma itself, they might want to talk about the negative impact the trauma is having on their adoptive parents and how none of them know how to deal with it. You never know what you might face in clinical psychology and that is something I love about the profession.

On the whole, being ready for adoption means that you accept that the child isn’t going to “start over”. By adopting them, you are joining the adopted child’s story that began long before you entered their lives. This story will include pain but a lot of potential for happiness too.

Can You Embrace A Child’s Story Instead Of Erasing It?

Building upon this in more depth, when you join an adopted child’s story, it’s important that you embrace it instead of wanting to erase their past because the identity of your adopted child will include their birth culture, family and their past. If you minimise or ignore it, by saying things like “you’re our child now, your birth family doesn’t matter,”. Then this can cause shame, identity struggles and a lot of confusion.

Personally, whilst I am not adopted, I have had a lot of identity struggles over the years because of my intensely homophobic upbringing and the various traumas that have happened to me. I understand how trauma and not knowing who you are can really negatively impact your mental health. It makes you feel lost, isolated and like you don’t belong anywhere. It can lead to anxiety, depression and a whole host of other mental health difficulties that I do not wish on anyone. This is why I was so happy, grateful and thrilled to discover my core values, and I focused on who I was.

Anyway, as aspiring or qualified psychologists, this is definitely a topic we need to be aware of. I actually have a book coming out at some point called “Your Unshakable Self” and it details out a lot of research, personal experiences and my healing journey towards understanding who I actually was. This realisation led to a massive improvement in my mental health. Therefore, it’s important that we’re aware of the challenges, the difficulties and the trauma that can pop up for adopted children and the importance of finding small, and sometimes large, ways to embrace their story so they don’t feel confused, shamed or struggle with their identity.

This might include discussing with an adoptive parent about why they might struggle to embrace their child’s story. Is it related to fear of losing their child? Are they concerned their child will want to go back to their birth parents instead of them? And more fears that are probably more based on the client’s own past than the realities of their adopted child.

Overall, being ready for adoption means that you are willing to honour an adopted child’s full story instead of erasing it. Your role as an adoptive parent is to integrate their past with a future with you with compassion.

Can You Keep the Adoption Conversation Open?

As someone who watches a lot of crime dramas, whenever adoption becomes a focus of an episode, it is nearly always revealed that the adoptive parents kept the fact that their child was adopted from them. Then somehow the adopted child finds out they were adopted and it makes them lash out and they start committing the crimes. Of course, this is fiction and it is utter rubbish to suggest that adopted children are any more violent than anyone else. Yet these dramatizations do reveal the immense pain, betrayal and trauma that adoption can cause a child, so it is important to keep the adoption conversation open.

Since research shows that having an open, ongoing dialogue about adoption does support a healthier identity development as well as self-esteem for the adoptee. Also, this means that adoptive parents need to be open to working with an adoption competent therapist or attending adoption support groups.

Obviously, as someone who’s had three different forms of counselling in their life because of different mental health struggles, I highly recommend that you always seek out a mental health professional trained and specialising in your mental health difficulty. Yet there will be times when there is crossover. For example, I went to see a counsellor for anorexia and we ended up exploring some more of my sexual violence and my insecure attachment styles at the time. This is no different for adopted people. An adopted child or an adoptive parent might go to a mental health professional for one reason then they realise they need to have the adoption conversation and they struggle with it and want some advice.

It will always be difficult for mental health professionals to give advice in something they have no experience in. Sometimes it is always better for mental health professionals to simply say something along the lines of “I understand having the adoption conversation is causing you a lot of anxiety, fear and uncertainty. Yet I am not too familiar with this topic and I don’t want to say the wrong thing because of my lack of experience and make it worse,”

Just a thought.

On the whole, being ready for adoption means that you understand that adoption isn’t a one-time talk. It is a lifelong conversation because children need reassurance, permission to keep asking questions regardless of their age and they need honesty. As well as adopted children revisit their grief, sense of loss and questions at each new developmental stage. Not because they want to repeat the past but they want to understand it better.

Are You Ready For Lifelong Learning?

As someone who flat out loves learning and in fact, I am often happiest when I’m learning, I would say I am definitely ready for the lifelong learning that comes with adoption. Yet some prospective parents are not and that’s okay, it might just mean that you aren’t ready for adoption yet. Since adoption doesn’t end when all the paperwork is signed and everything is finalised. Since according to the American Psychological Association, families continue to need support as the child’s needs evolve throughout adolescence and into adulthood.

This is another aspect where mental health professionals and aspiring or qualified psychologists might be useful because an adoptive parent might be really prepared and ready to adopt a child. Yet when the adopted child reaches adolescence or they become an adult, the adoptive parent might not know what to do, how to be a good parent and their mental health might struggle. Or the adoptive parents might start having relationship difficulties because they prepare for a child, they idealised the wonderful idea of having a child and they weren’t prepared for a teenager or an adult in the slightest.

These potential relationship difficulties might be even more severe or pop up if the prospective parents’ main motivator for adoption was to fulfil a void, add new excitement to their relationship or have a kid so they could stay together.

Just some ideas.

On the whole, being ready for adoption means that you need to see adoption as a lifelong learning process and it is a journey full of empathy and resilience that hopefully deepens over time.

Are You Ready to Partner with Birth Family When Possible?

I will fully admit that this is something I might struggle with at this moment in time if I adopted a child. Thankfully, I have no adoption plans for a good few years and I don’t intend to adopt a child as a single parent, but if you want to, go for it and more power to you. Yet I am nervous about the ability to engage, share and interact with the birth family because whilst I understand that there are a wide range of reasons why birth families place their child into adoption. A small insecure part of me might be scared the adopted child, the child I had raised, cried over and supported for years, might prefer the birth family over me.

This is something I’ll discuss in the next section.

However, if it is appropriate, being open and having ongoing contact with the adopted child’s birth family has been linked to better emotional outcomes for the adopted child. And as prospective parents, our child being safe, loved and protecting their emotional wellbeing is the most important thing. As well as these are all concerns that a mental health professional can help us address.

For instance, my mind goes towards the therapy technique of scaling and I’ll share an extract from a previous podcast episode below to explain it:

“Scaling questions were introduced in the 1980s by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg for clients who want to measure change or progress. These scaling questions take about 5-15 minutes to do and they involve asking a client to rate their progress or feelings on a scale to assess change. For instance, a therapist might ask a client, On a Scale of 1 to 10, how confident do you feel about managing your depression?

The benefit of scaling questions is that it gives clients a way to assess their progress within therapy, and this could help motivate them and see that the therapy is working. However, it could oversimplify their complex emotions.

Furthermore, there is another scaling technique within counselling psychology that my counsellor did a lot with me in August 2023. This technique involved scaling the possible outcomes of an event from likely to most unlikely. Personally, I found this second technique very useful, insightful and it helped me to understand that a lot of my worries and concerns about a given situation weren’t likely to happen.

Yet both types of scaling can be important therapeutic tools to use with clients.”

This can be a useful therapy technique to do with adoptive parents because it can help them to understand the rationality and likelihood of their concerns and fears becoming true.

Overall, being ready for adoption means you are willing to share space in your child’s heart as well as understanding that love isn’t decreased by connecting with the birth family. In fact, their love might expand because of inclusion. As well as on a personal note, my first ever relationship was with a polyamorous person, in addition to dating me, they had a boyfriend and a girlfriend, and I know their love for their two partners didn’t decrease because of me, and their liking, want to date and want to spend time with me didn’t decrease because of them. People can love more than one person so that’s another way to phrase it.

Can You Manage Your Expectations Around Gratitude and Rejection?

Especially, if you have an attitude that by adopting a child you are somehow saving them, some adoptive parents will report a lot of unexpected emotional strain after adopting their child. Since as I mentioned earlier, an adopted child has undergone a lot of separation trauma and there might be other trauma factors at play here that we do not know about straight away. For example, a child might be in the adoption system because they were physically, emotionally or sexually abused by their birth family and this all means that adopted children are likely to feel unsafe. This results in them wanting to test your love for them so they can determine whether this is a safe environment or whether or not you are likely to separate from them like their birth family has. This rejection can hurt the adoptive parents and impact them in ways they didn’t expect at the start of the adoption process.

In addition, I’ve seen a lot of conversations or portrayals of adoption as a heroic and immensely brave act that saves a child from the evil clutches of the social care system and the birth family that didn’t want them in the slightest. This is not true in the slightest. Not because a lot of birth families never ever wanted to place their children into the adoption system, but also because there are a wide range of factors behind adoptions. A parent might not have had the finances to bring up a child, the child could have been the result of sexual violence, the single parent might not have felt like they could bring up a child and so on. Sometimes it has absolutely nothing to do with the birth family being “bad” people (whatever that subjective term means).

As a result, adoption isn’t about saving a child and wanting to build a relationship with them. Instead of expecting your adopted child to be grateful for adopting them because this can create shame or obligation in a relationship and that never works out well. Try to focus on building a relationship with them based on safety, respect and connection. Also, research shows that unrealistic expectations are a key risk factor for family breakdown.

Personally, I think when I come to adopt a child, this might be something I do not struggle with, because I might be able to manage my expectations well enough. And I would acknowledge that I need to build a relationship with this child because they don’t owe me anything, and if I want us all to be a happy family that love, support and are open and honest with each other. Then I need my child to realise that I will always be there for them and they can trust me. They are under no obligation to show me anything.

In a way, trust, love and respect are all earned. It applies to all social relationships, and adoptive relationships too.

Linking this to the main audience of The Psychology World Podcast, being aware of this aspect of adoption can be very useful to aspiring or qualified psychologists. Since we might be supporting a client throughout this adoption journey or for another mental health difficulty and one day, our client reveals they’re struggling with their “ungrateful” adopted child. Of course, we would need to be empathetic, compassionate and validating towards our client but we would need to understand where these feelings of obligation are coming from, how they’re impacting the client’s relationships at the moment and how could the client overcome these negative feelings.

To use a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy perspective on this situation, you want to see how the client’s early experiences are impacting their feelings of obligation. For example, a client’s parents might have made them feel obligated to thank their parents for every little act of kindness, so the client believes this is what is needed in parental relationships. Then you might investigate the client’s core beliefs about themselves. For instance, “I am saving my adopted child. I am hardworking. I am a kind person.” Afterwards you can see what the client’s “Rules to Live By” are. Such as, if the client believes “I must work hard so others can approve of me. As long as I am selfless to others, they will appreciate and love me. If I show kindness to others, I must be thanked. Otherwise they don’t love me,” Then you could explore the client’s thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and other aspects of Beck’s Cognitive Model of Depression.

I just wanted to include the above so you could see how you might explore this in a therapy session. It’s a loose example but it was only for illustrative purposes anyway.

Overall, when you experience rejection in your adoption relationship, it’s important to remember that this isn’t about you. It is about the child wanting to prove to themselves that you can love them and whether this is temporary love or something that can last for a long, long time. As well as the goal of adopting a child isn’t to be thanked or hailed as some kind of saviour. You are wanting to create a sense of consistency, safety and connection to the child and gratitude grows out of trust, not obligation.

Social Psychology Conclusion

At the end of this fascinating psychology podcast episode, I am really happy that we’ve explored adoption. I think it is a brilliant topic, it’s really interesting and it does get me thinking about the future. At the time of writing, I’m 24 years old, my boyfriend recently broke up with me, even though he said I was wonderfully kind, patient and thoughtful and I deserved to be loved and cherished. Therefore, at some point, I will start looking for another partner, another date and I look forward to what those future relationships might bring. Children are definitely one possibility, so thinking and learning about adoption is always a good thing.

Ultimately, adoption isn’t about saving a child so much as joining a child’s story with love, curiosity and humility. Since if you and/ or your partner can answer the questions we’ve looked at in this episode compassionately and honestly, then you might be ready to begin your adoption journey where you can become a safe, healing presence in the life of a child who’s already experienced more loss, separation trauma and love than any child should ever experience. You could help be the healing presence as they continue the lifelong process of discovering the wonderful person they really are.

I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology podcast episode.

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Social Psychology References and Further Reading

Brodzinsky, D. M. (2011). Children's understanding of adoption: Developmental and clinical implications. Professional psychology: research and practice, 42(2), 200.

Harris-Waller, J., Granger, C., & Hussain, M. (2018). Psychological interventions for adoptive parents: A systematic review. Adoption & Fostering, 42(1), 6-21.

Hartinger-Saunders, R. M., Jones, A. S., & Rittner, B. (2019). Improving access to trauma-informed adoption services: Applying a developmental trauma framework. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 12(1), 119-130.

Hornfeck, F., Bovenschen, I., Heene, S., Zimmermann, J., Zwönitzer, A., & Kindler, H. (2019). Emotional and behavior problems in adopted children–The role of early adversities and adoptive parents’ regulation and behavior. Child Abuse & Neglect, 98, 104221.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-inner-life-of-foster-care/202511/is-adoption-for-you

Kohn, C., Pike, A., & de Visser, R. O. (2024). Parenting in the “extreme”: An exploration into the psychological well‐being of long‐term adoptive mothers. Family Relations, 73(3), 1989-2013.

Levitt, H. M., Schuyler, S. W., Chickerella, R., Elber, A., White, L., Troeger, R. L., ... & Collins, K. M. (2020). How discrimination in adoptive, foster, and medical systems harms LGBTQ+ families: Research on the experiences of prospective parents. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, 32(3), 261-282.

Ní Chobhthaigh, S., & Duffy, F. (2019). The effectiveness of psychological interventions with adoptive parents on adopted children and adolescents’ outcomes: A systematic review. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 24(1), 69-94.

Palacios, J., Adroher, S., Brodzinsky, D. M., Grotevant, H. D., Johnson, D. E., Juffer, F., ... & Tarren-Sweeney, M. (2019). Adoption in the service of child protection: An international interdisciplinary perspective. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 25(2), 57.

Selwyn, J., Wijedasa, D. N., & Meakings, S. J. (2014). Beyond the Adoption Order: challenges, interventions and disruptions.

Smith, S. L., Howard, J. A., & Monroe, A. D. (2000). Issues underlying behavior problems in at-risk adopted children. Children and youth services review, 22(7), 539-562.

Von Korff, L., Grotevant, H. D., & McRoy, R. G. (2006). Openness arrangements and psychological adjustment in adolescent adoptees. Journal of Family Psychology, 20(3), 531.

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