Sometimes, Kentucky residents don’t have much choice when it comes to expanding their families. Even so, a pregnancy may not have been planned, but after the initial shock wears off, everyone gets on board with welcoming the new addition into the home.
This is not the situation when you decide to adopt a child. These decisions often come after a lot of soul searching and discussion regarding adding another person to the family, especially when the child is not an infant and probably comes from a broken home or has lost his or her parents to a tragedy. Regardless of why you decided to open your heart and home to another person’s child, your motivation is probably the same as many others before you.
Getting to the heart of why people adopt
Despite any other reason, most people who adopt do so for a few common reasons. Perhaps yours is included in the list below:
- Perhaps you and your family already know of a child who needs a good and loving home. The child’s need could arise out of any number of situations such as an incarcerated or deceased parent.
- You may simply want to give a child a good home and a family. You want to share your life with a child in need.
- When the subject came up in your family, everyone agreed with the idea, including any children you currently have.
- You want to help a child who suffered abuse, neglect or some other travesty in his or her life to move forward. You know you can provide him or her with a loving home with lots of support.
- You have the emotional, financial and physical ability to help a child who has no one else.
More than likely, you fall into at least one of these categories. However, the desire to add another child to your family is not the only requirement you must meet in order to adopt. You will need to go through a process in order to become that child’s legal parent. The process involves numerous steps that will put your life under a microscope.
At times, it may feel intrusive, but you probably recognize that it is a necessary evil in order to make sure that the child will end up in a better situation than he or she left. You may be able to make the process go more smoothly by relying on the legal resources available to you here in Erlanger.