Adopting out of birth order?

Question

With our last adoption, the domestic agency, foster care, and IA agency all said no adopting out of birth order.

I didn't think to ask at the time why. What are the reasons against adopting out of birth order?

Why do i hear people on yahoo adopting out of birth order?

Thank you

Answer 1

Hi Freckle Face,

This is an interesting question and two things came to mind (for me).  

First, in my adoptive family, we each came to be adopted (or born, in the case of my one older sister) into our family as infants.  Therefore, we were "added" to the family as the newest/youngest.  However, in our natural families, we were each the firstborn to our mothers.  I grew up as a middle child, but find that I'm much more comfortable (and have many more typical characteristics of) being the eldest of 4 in my natural family.  My natural siblings even tease me about it and my sister (who grew up as the eldest) told me that since she was about 3 she always "fantasized" and then later actually "felt" that she had an older sister (ME!).  She learned about me when she was 10.  (Our brothers did too, at about that time, and they were 7 and 3.)

The other situation -- more similar to the Q -- is that of my best friend as a small child.  She was adopted, at age 5, into a family that had 2 children at the time.  The siblings were 6 and 3, so she came into the family as a middle child.  This was never a problem for them.  They adjusted seamlessly (at least by outside observation).  I am still really close to her entire family and I've spoken with her and her two siblings that were already there (eventually, there were 7 children) at the time throughout our lives.  They've never expressed any concerns, regrets, memories of problems, etc.  I can imagine there could be problems, but it didn't happen in their case.  Also, this was a domestic foster care adoption, so there weren't the same types of cultural issues (traditional roles, etc.) present that might come up in an IA case.

It strikes me that adopting out of birth order (or changing the age-order of a family by adoption) would not be too much different than if two people who each already had children got married and 'blended' their families into one.  The children in that scenario would also have their 'birth-order' altered.  This would have greater effect, of course, if most/all of the children are still young enough to be living at home with the parents.

Answer 2

My parents adopted out of birth order & It did mix us up a bit at first.  Part of the issue was that even tho- my brother was adopted 1st he was 18 months younger than I but since I had to learn English I stopped 'developing' at his age rather than continue to develop past his age.

To this day I feel that he was the favorite 'first born' golden child & I was somewhat the 'middle' child who did their own thing.  I will say that among my siblings I definitely follow the 'normal' birth order now...I have now most definitely found my position in being bossy older sister who liked to torment my youngest brother but whom my brothers respected.

I do believe that it can disrupt a natural flow of a family's structure but I don't think it's the end of the world if it happens.

Answer 3

The reason we were told is that it's disruptive to the children already in the home, and so disruptive to everyone. If a child is used to being the oldest and then has not only new siblings, but a new position in the family, it can cause added stress and make the adjustment more difficult for everyone.

As to why people do it anyway - I suppose because general rules can never apply to every specific situation.  I adopted a sibling group from Ethiopia. While I was there I met a wonderful brother & sister who were 10 & 12 years old.  They had been in the orphanage for a year because although lots of families fell in love with them and wanted to adopt them, only people who had no younger children would've been allowed to.  

Finally a family came along who had adopted lots of older children already. They had four children through foster care and two from Ethiopia (who were very good friends with the waiting children).  All these kids came from situations where they changed their birth order just by being adopted - going from oldest to youngest, or middle to oldest.  So the family successfully argued that in their case, being adopted into the middle of the family's age range would be ok.  The agency let them adopt out of birth order, but did make them wait six months first while they monitored the adjustment of the first pair of children from Ethiopia.

Answer 4

Our IA agency didn't have a "policy" on adopting out of birth order and I know many families that did that through our agency and had no difficulties.  It could be that in this particular orphanage setting, there were many ages of children all together.  Older children customarily (and culturally) care for younger children, etc.  So it is much less of an adjustment for older children to suddenly have younger ones around.

Remember though, there is another way to look at birth order.  My daughter was the oldest in her first family, then became the middle child in our family. So, birth order was changed for her.  

I really think it depends on the children and the family.