i agree with a lot of the things that astar wrote.
i am adopted myself.
there are many pros and cons of adoption, just as there are pros and cons of giving birth to a blood related child.
people adopt children for good reasons and bad reasons.
i am very open to adoption.
i most likely will adopt children when i am financially and emotionally ready.
i would adopt regardless if i was able to give birth to children or not.
in my opinion, adopting a child should be the same as decided whether or not you want to give birth to a child. i think it is absolutely ridiculous people would rule adoption out unless they were physically unable to have their own children.
i just want to point out that babies are not the only people that need to be adopted or that can be adopted. some people lose their families when they are in a child or teenager.
there are many children that are in and will spend their entire childhood and teenage years in foster care because some people only want to adopt babies.

i understand that it is common desire of many people to give birth to and raise their own children.
i can also understand how some people may fear that by adopting a child they could one day be abandoned by them.
just remember you can raise your own children and have them completely disown you even though you are blood related, and vice-versa.
it would be natural for a person who is adopted to want to learn more about their background or culture of the place where they were born, and even to meet or find their birth parents.

when i was adopted by my (adoptive) parents, i was just a baby. i can say that i am most likely better off having been adopted because i was raised by a loving family that could also raise me safely and healthily. the area that i was born in was poverty stricken, and had i grown up there life probably would not have been easy. as far as i know from reading my adoption papers, my birth mother would not have been able to take are of me financially. she either gave me up for adoption for my well-being, her own well-being, or both of our well-beings. perhaps, one day i will find out the reason why.

i dont think that many people will understand the situations you are put in and the emotions you feel when you are adopted. i think this is especially true when you are completely different from your adoptive parents and the people in place where you grow up. growing up, i was never treated any differently from my immediate or extended family. i never felt as if i was an outsider. however, as i grew older i obviously noticed the physical differences. classmates i went to school with sometimes could not understand, or would ask me questions they were curious about. there was the occasional rude remark or teasing and that that is imprinted in my mind. some people say hurtful things when they do not understand adoption either purposely, or jokingly.

my mother told me stories about how it was to live in the place where i was adopted from. i never really asked her any questions or delved too deeply into anything because i was pretty much content with the way things were and possibly out of fear. however, as i am older there is some regret because i wish i could have learned more, or that there was more about my background about my birth family. i place no blame on my parents for not teaching me more about the culture or language of my place of birth because it would have been literally impossible to because of where we lived. however, if i had wanted to learn, or there were opportunities for me to learn more i am sure my parents would have made them available to me.
i appreciate that my mother and father did share with me whatever they could about my background and culture that they could. as a child and a teenager, i did not have many encounters with asian or asian american children or people that were adopted. in elementary school to highschool i went to school with only 3 other asian american children.
now, i live in a city where the situation is reversed. asian culture, cuisine, and language are a part of every day life. i am around more asian and asian american people than i have been in my whole life. i must say that it is quite a different experience from when i was a child.

recently, i have begun wondering about my background because i do not have any health records or knowledge of my birth family's health/medical records or history. also, i am lucky to live in an area that is culturally diverse and that has made me curious about my birthplace and culture. however, at no point in time have i had the thought of abandoning my family in search of my birth parents. if i did ever meet them, i would never abandon the family that has raised me and loved me most of my life.