Susan KuligowskiAdoption blogs are a great resource for adoptive families and they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes—offering inspiration and an opportunity to share advice with members of a community that oftentimes feels underrepresented or misunderstood.
Whether you are a prospective adoptive parent, an adoptee, a professional, or a family member or friend just hoping to gain better insight on adoption, there is a blog for you. And because no two adoption journeys are alike, there is always room for more if you so choose to share your own experience with adoption.
While there are hundreds of great adoption blogs available, below, we’ll highlight just a sampling of blogs that offer different perspectives and insight that we hope will help you to pursue your dream of adoption, assist you with adoptive parenting, provide you with links to support adoptees and their needs, and inspire you to live adoption out loud in order to continue to break down the myths and stereotypes that continue to exist while promoting a better represented and informed understanding of what adoption truly is.
What Is a Blog, Anyway?
According to Lexico, a blog is “a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.” Plus, a blogger is someone who adds new material to or regularly updates a blog.
Blogging has become a great platform for people who are willing to open up about a particular situation or experience in order to share with and promote ideas and in doing so offer opportunities to others to also open up and share their thoughts, ideas, and experiences in the hopes everyone involved learns (or at least considers) a new thing or two. While blogs are typically written in a less formal and less clinical manner than are traditional articles, authors are usually subject matter experts whose very real and personal stories often resonate more strongly than well-meaning, but sometimes, third-party words that may have less impact or feel less authentic.
Blogs with Traction
When you go to Google and plug in your search directive, it’s very likely you’re going to hit upon a few major blogging heavy hitters who have been around the block a time or 10 since blogging first entered the scene in the ’90s and gained popularity as more and more people turned to the internet and social media as a means of seeking information and learning about new things outside the traditional walls.
One of the most influential adoption blogs going may be Adoption.com, which was founded in 1997 by Nathan Gwilliam. The site provides more than 1 million pages of content and 500,000 visits per month. What makes this platform a unique one is that it offers posts, links, and information by and for all members of the adoption triad. You can quickly find information that ranges from how to adopt to how to help an adult adoptee searching for birth family. Adoption.com writers are from all walks of life and represent the full scope of adoption with pros and cons in an agenda-free environment.
With its vision of “a world in which all children everywhere have nurturing, permanent families,” The National Council for Adoption’s blog offers adoption information, legal news, foster care statistics, personal stories, international updates, and ways readers can get involved.
With its reputation for helping orphaned, abandoned, and vulnerable children to thrive by finding families to love them, “in the form of trained caretakers who assume the awesome task of nurturing children awaiting adoption,” Holt International really dives into the lives of adoptive families and adoptees who are dealing with the realities of adoption and the real-time needs of waiting children around the world.
Working to Make Positive Strides in Adoption
Blogs have proven to be a means to making positive change and many members of the adoption community—both personal and commercial—understand the power of blogging and how it can help to make a real difference and promote real change on behalf of government representatives, facilitators, foster and adoptive parents, adoptees, and birth family members who find their lives impacted by adoption.
Incorporated in 1975, the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition blog provides readers with information on services to support parents and youth by educating the public, legislators, and government leaders about the needs and realities of foster, kinship, and adoptive families. They collaborate with child welfare agencies and other groups to ensure that families are best able to support and parent the children in their homes and represent the families’ viewpoints as a way to work together to improve and expand the services available to adoptive and foster families.
The Adoption Law Firm blog is another platform designed by founder Sam McLure to share with adoptive families his and his wife’s experiences with the adoption process as a result of their own adoption journey. The site now serves as an advocate for orphaned children to be adopted into loving homes and offers professional legal advice and education on a variety of adoption issues.
Blogs for Birth Families
America Adopts offers a space for birth mothers to share their stories or their blogs on its site—everything from loss to acceptance. This blog allows birth mothers to share their true feelings on adoption and how it has impacted their lives after placement in their own voices.
Angel Adoptions also offers “9 Adoption Blogs For Birthmothers” offering adoption information, advice, and personal accounts written by and for women who are considering adoption and the best situation for their child.
Adoption Blogs Offering New Perspectives
While the adoption blog landscape may seem full, there is always room for new voices willing to promote and share fresh advice, opinions, and solutions based on lessons learned and geared toward members of the community who are open to different perspectives and may just be getting started on their own adoption journeys—or may find themselves dealing with issues they hadn’t thought about early on.
Although Adoption Perspectives is new to the blogging scene, its founders are not. Presented by adoptive mom of two, Patricia Jones, who is a psychotherapy private practitioner, as well as Marcella Moslow, an adoptee and trauma therapist, the platform features blogs, a newsletter, and promises to share a podcast in the near future. The pair, who blend the adopter and adoptee experience in an open, educated, and new way, express a desire to share their personal and professional understanding of adoption education, training, resources, and consulting to all members of the adoption and foster care community in order to “change the adoption and foster care narratives to inspire compassion and connection.”
Fostering Change
Often described as “broken,” the foster care system never runs short on critiques pushing for positive change. In truth, the foster care system is complex due to the unpredictable nature of how and why children arrive in the system to begin with.
The very well-known Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption offers a blog geared toward sharing stories of impact within the foster care system as well as how the foundation continues to work with community members around the country to promote foster care adoption as a means of lifting children from an overcrowded system.
Fosterthefamilyblog.com is an open and honest blog for foster families with heart-on-your-sleeve titles like “A Love Letter to Single Foster + Adoptive Moms,” “This Sucks,” “Grieving Adoption,” and “I Just Don’t Want To Hand Him Over Today,” readers will laugh, cry, and find words that speak to them about the very real ups and downs that is foster care.
The Foster2Forever blog hop offers an extensive list of nearly 90 blogs related to all things foster care and geared toward families considering foster care as well as those currently living foster care.
Adoptee Blogs and Podcasts
What better resource to turn to about adoption than adoptees themselves? Oftentimes, “lost” in the mix of adoption experience resources, thanks to the internet of things, adoptees are finding the opportunity to get their stories out through their words to help and educate families and professionals alike in how to shift thoughts and ideas that are long-held common beliefs and concepts of the adoption experience.
Described as the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience, Adoptees On, brings together the voices of adoptees willing to share their stories about the good, the bad, and the ugly impact that adoption has had on their lives.
Angela Tucker, founder of The Adopted Life, serves as a launchpad for the adoptee voice, offering great insight into transracial adoption and pushing for more openness and transparency in all adoptions through her blog.
Special Needs Family Blogs
While most adoptions are understood to be special needs by the very nature of what adoption represents with early trauma and the lifelong adaptation involved in adoption to the physical, mental, and emotional issues from birth or as a result of having lived under abusive or negligent circumstances—families who choose to open their homes to special needs adoption are every bit as special as the beautiful and driven children wishing to love and be loved like any other child.
Confessions Of An Adoptive Parent, led by Mike and Kristin Berry, is a blog on a mission to encourage moms and dads open to foster and special needs adoption by sharing honest stories, support, and information with others in order to interact and dialogue with people from all over the world to better understand the adoption journey.
International Adoption Blogs
With a name like Rage Against The Minivan, you can bet that blog founder and mom of four Kristen Howerton has a thing to say about adoption, parenting, and life in general from the viewpoint of a single mom and someone who walks the walk as much as she talks the talk.
The author of Fullplatemom.com offers readers an insider’s look into the world of adoption through her story of adopting 12 children, both domestically as well as from Ghana, China, and Colombia. She touches on international aspects as well as special needs and transracial issues and everything else you can imagine an adoptive family of this size and scope might experience.
Want to Know More About Adoption Blogs?
The examples listed above are just a very small sampling of the oodles of adoption blogs in circulation and really, are not intended to be perceived as the best or better than any others, but good options for well-written information intended to help all members of the adoption community on behalf of adoption as a means of providing waiting children with forever families and hopeful adoptive parents with helpful, ethical, and inspirational stories that breakthrough so many “what ifs” that revolve around adoption no matter what type of adoption, gender, age, or special needs situation.
In addition to offering blogs of its own, Adoption.com offers several articles with links to other great blogs for adoptive families, including:
- “7 Best Blogs About Foster Care and Adoption“
- “The 6 Best Blogs On Older Child Adoption“
- “Adoption Influencers: Blogs“
- “The 6 International Adoption Blogs You Need To Follow“
These are among many, many others. No matter what subject matter you’re interested in or what topic, you can always Google and search for adoption blogs relevant to your situation and that speak to you—not all blogs are created equally nor claim to have the answers you’re looking for.
Interested In Starting A Blog Of Your Own?
While it’s true that there are already a lot of adoption blogs out there, there are never too many blogs to speak to newcomers of adoption, adoption advocates, adoptees looking for their identify and voice, birth parents in search of guidance and understanding, and anyone looking to better comprehend the system of foster care and how we can work together to better serve the hundreds of thousands of children it currently represents as well as the millions of orphans and children worldwide who rely on the voices of others to speak in their name to ensure and protect their right to a safe and loving home.
While I’m not going to plug a particular site or book or guide to get you started on your own blogging journal, I urge you to consider what unique insight you may bring to the table and encourage you to do your research and homework in finding the best path and direction to reach an audience that will benefit from what you have to share.
Happy blogging!
Christina Gochnauer
