For many childless couples adoption is often their only chance for parenthood. Adoption however is not without its own risks and if you are thinking of becoming adopting parents you should know everything there is about the process. There are no guarantees and you shouldn't view the adoptive agency as an ally. If you are serious about adopting here are some issues that you may encounter in your relationship with your adoptive child.

Loss

This is an emotion that directly affects all the participants of the adoption process. The birth mother loses the child, the child loses the experience of growing up with his or her birth parents and the adopting parents may have experienced countless losses before the adoption.

Loss therefore is always a part of the three members lives. It becomes a series of losses in all of the party's lives. While loss is an important part of the human condition how you as the adoptive parent deals with it can change your relationship with your adoptive child.

You should take into consideration both your personal loss in your efforts to have a biological child and your adoptive child's loss. Once you can learn to accept your loss and mourn them you can gain new experience and resiliency.

If you cannot recognize the loss and deal with it then this loss can be a constant theme in your relationship with your adoptive child. It would remain in your active consciousness or in your subconscious and it will reawaken by a later loss.

Rejection

Often accompanied by loss, rejection enhances those feelings of loss. The triad members; the child, the adoptive parents and the biological parents all fear rejection and may do everything to avoid it.

Because of the loss they may feel they avoid any instances where they might be rejected. The children can not view their being put up for adoption as anything less than them being worthless or defective. They may think that they were rejected by their birth parents and put up for adoption.

Consequently the child may feel hurt or angry towards his biological parents. And the child may test the adoptive family by rebelling or acting out to find out the family's commitment. Some adopted persons may reject any deep human contact for fear of rejection or they may become 'people pleasers' to gain acceptance.

On the adoptive parents side they feel rejected by a greater power or by their bodies if they are dealing with infertility. The birth parents may even go into denying they ever had a child because they feel irresponsible or an unworthy parent.

You should address these feelings of rejection in a safe environment. You should also understand that your adopted child may feel rejection in different stages of the developmental process. This is a normal part of adoption.

Guilt and Shame

This is the third core issue in adoption. The triad members feel that they deserve the rejection and feel tremendous amounts of guilt and shame. They believe that there is something wrong with them that caused the losses to occur.

Adoptive parents feel that they are inadequate and the birth parents feel the guilt and shame because they were not able to take care of their child. For the adoptees shame occurs when they sense that there is something wrong with them to cause the adoption. If these feelings of shame are unresolved they can lead to sense of being bad.

Grief

It is difficult to address grief in the adoption process because adoption is often seen as a process that everyone gains. There are no methods of closure that the birth parents, adopted person and adoptive family can make use of. Grief washes over the triad members lives.

You can help by remembering the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The adoptees may not recognize their losses until late in life. This delayed grief may lead to depression or acting out.

For the birth parents they may grieve for their children but the grief will never completely vanish. The adoptive parents grief over not being able to conceive also lasts until the child grows up.