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Dr. Ray Guarendi answers common questions about adoption

“We adopted from various places, various agencies, private, public, Catholic Charities. So I learned by navigating. And I wanted to share it with people who are intimidated by the whole process of adoption.”

(Image: Jude Beck/Unsplash.com)

The prospect of adoption is daunting, even frightening, to most people. There are so many unknowns and so many questions: Can we love a child like your own who isn’t your own flesh-and-blood? This child has struggled so much already, how can we handle him? If I adopt, shouldn’t I stick to kids of our own race and culture, for the kid’s sake? Isn’t it expensive to adopt kids? I have biological children of my own; won’t they resent the whole situation?

Catholic clinical psychologist, radio show host, and author Dr. Ray Guarendi addresses questions like these (and many more) in his recent book Adoption: Should You, Could You, and Then What? Straight Answers from a Psychologist and Adoptive Father of Ten (EWTN Publishing, 2021). In fact, the book is a revised edition of his 2009 book, titled Adoption: Choosing It, Living It, Loving It. Timelier than ever, the book is full of advice from an experienced psychologist and adoptive father who has, with his wife Randi, spent decades raising ten adopted children.

Dr. Ray recently spoke recently with Catholic World Report about his latest book, and the importance of being open to adoption.

Catholic World Report: Why did you write the book?

Dr. Ray Guarendi: I had a lot of personal experience over the years rather quickly with adoptions. We adopted from various places, various agencies, private, public, Catholic Charities. So I learned by navigating. And I wanted to share it with people who are intimidated by the whole process of adoption.

CWR: Do you get a lot of questions from people about adoption, whether on your show or contacting you in other ways? Did that help prompt the book, too, or was it just that you saw a need for a resource like this?

Guarendi: The main reason I wrote the book was because people who wish to adopt have a lot of fears, a lot of anxieties. Question marks, emotional reverberations. And I wanted to get them over those obstacles so that they would not only have a family for themselves, but give a child a home. That was my main purpose was that was basically to open up more people to taking in a child.

CWR: Does adoption have to be altruistic and selfless, or is there still value in discerning and even pursuing an adoption, if the motivation is a personal desire to be a parent?

Guarendi: That is the main motive. That’s why most people adopt. They find themselves unable to conceive, which, by the way, conception rates are now at their lowest since we’ve been keeping track. So they find themselves unable to conceive and they say, what now? They’d like to have children. And the avenue open to them is adoption. I would say that’s the main motive for people to adopt. I think a second motive is those folks who have already raised their children or who are most of the way through child rearing and decide they’ve got more parenting left in them and would like to open up their homes to a child that would benefit from a family.

CWR: If you’re in a fit state to adopt, do you have a moral obligation to do so? Or is it more something that would be good?

Guarendi: Our Lord was pretty clear. “Whoever welcomes a child in my name welcomes me” (cf. Mark 9:37, Matthew 18:5). St. James states, “This is faith that is pure and undefined before the Lord that we take care of the widows and the orphans” (James 1:27).

So, in that sense, you’re not morally obligated, but I think it would be a virtuous reach to do that. People will say to me, “Well, I don’t know if I’m called to adopt.” And I answer them, saying, “God wrote it down. So if you’re wondering if you’re called, you are called. The question is, what do you want to do about that?”

Part of the fear here is that many of the children awaiting adoption are what you would call at-risk children. Sure, they’ve had neglectful upbringings. They’re older. They have had drug exposure in the womb and shortly thereafter. So these may not be the easiest kids to raise. But when my wife and I adopted some children in those circumstances, we knew that our our goal was to give them a loving family. We didn’t have any expectations or guarantees about how it would all turn out.

CWR: As you know, many women tragically choose (or are even pressured to choose) abortion rather than adoption. Why do you think it is that adoption is often not considered a viable option or not presented that way and the mother opts for abortion? Why is it that adoption isn’t given more encouragement?

Guarendi: There’s been a radical shift in the mindset culture wide toward adoption. One reason is that somehow, especially among younger mothers, this is seen as an incredibly irresponsible thing to do, to “give your baby away”. They think to themselves, “Will they be loved like I would love them?” So no matter what their circumstances, no matter how fragile their circumstances, they view it as, it would be better that I keep this child than to give this child a mother and a father who are committed in marriage. That’s the mindset that has taken over the young people.

Social media is a huge factor. Lots of young mothers get tremendous attention because they have a baby and they plaster themselves and that baby all over social media and it becomes a status symbol, if you will.

A third reason is that somehow it’s a closure thing. If I choose abortion, then I no longer ever have to think about this child, where this child is, the well-being. I no longer have to wrestle with any of that stuff. … I’ve also noticed grandparents that have stopped a young mother who wants to place the baby. The grandparents say, “No, no, no, you can’t. This is our child. We will raise this child. We will help you raise this child.” So they’ve stopped young mothers from doing this. In some cases, adoption is now not viewed as the loving alternative that it once was. It is now viewed as a down-the-line option.

There has been a movement relatively recently, as some court decisions have made abortion a little more difficult, saying adoption is traumatic for a child. I’ve just recently seen that mindset; it’s gaining momentum, and I believe a large part of that is because they, interestingly enough, implicitly are saying it would be better to kill the child than to have them go through the “psychological trauma” of being adopted.

CWR: As Catholics, we often hear about that we are adopted sons and daughters of God. How can our relationship with God inform how adoptive parents and children relate to each other?

Guarendi: I have told my children on many occasions, I can’t imagine loving you more than I do. I told my son when he asked the question, “Would you love me more if I was born to you?” I said, “Andrew, who do I love more than anyone in the world?” He said, “Mom.” I say, “Am I related to mom?” He said, “No.” I said, “There’s your answer, son.”

So in that sense, there’s this idea that somehow an adopted child has econd-class loving status because they didn’t come from our biology. I will tell you as an adoptive parent, I can’t imagine loving my children more than I do now. Someone might say, “But you would.” Well, that remains to be seen—but love is predicated on the relationship, not on the biology.

CWR: What advice do you have for people who want to prayerfully discern the possibility of of adoption? What kind of advice would you give?

Guarendi: Sometimes you don’t wait until you’re convinced. You jump into the pool. My wife and I listed ourselves with certain agencies and we weren’t sure that we wanted to adopt again. We more or less said, if the option arises, we’ll consider it then. But we weren’t going to essentially say, “We have to be 92 percent sure before we make a move.” No, I would tell them, you’re 50-50. Make the move. See what happens.

CWR: Would your book would be helpful to non-Catholics and even non-Christians looking into adoption? Or is it more particularly geared towards toward Catholics who are thinking about it?

Guarendi: The book is wide open in its appeal to everyone. It isn’t something that says you have to be a Christian, motivated by Christian principles. It is simply a book that says here are the main questions and anxieties that anyone has regarding adoption. And I’ll do my best to allay them. No matter what your religious or moral perspective is.

CWR: What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

Guarendi: A kid! That is my hope. I knew that an adoption book is not going to be a big seller. Why would it be? It appeals to a small percentage of parents. But that reminds me of a story. A kid was walking along a fish-littered beach, at random throwing some of them back in the ocean. Supposedly, an adult said to him, “You can’t make any difference. There’s thousands of them.” And the kid said, “Yeah, but to the one I threw back, it makes all the difference in the world.”

And that, I guess, is the goal of the book: to the kids you adopt, it makes all the difference in the world.


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About Paul Senz 135 Articles
Paul Senz has an undergraduate degree from the University of Portland in music and theology and earned a Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry from the same university. He has contributed to Catholic World Report, Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly, The Priest Magazine, National Catholic Register, Catholic Herald, and other outlets. Paul lives in Elk City, OK, with his wife and their four children.

4 Comments

  1. I love my “adopted” son so much that I hate even using the word “adopted”,that when I was younger, I could almost swear I remember him thrashing around in my womb. I loved him so much, my milk arrived the day after we met him and brought him home. I was fortunate in that I had borne 2 prior biological children, so I was able to have these moments, even if only for a while. God was so good to me, answering my prayer to love my son as I did my others. My biggest fear was that I would not love him like I love my others. Obviously, all of us love each of our kids differently from our other kids, as each one is unique, but with the same intensity is all I prayed for, and got it!

  2. This is an excellent interview. Dr Guarendi touches on a misconception that adoption is a “cure” for childlessness. Primarily, it is a remedy for a child lacking a parent.

    “Why is it that adoption isn’t given more encouragement?”

    Partly because many people who are already parents see it as a cure for childlessness, and they don’t consider that “wondering,” as Dr Guarendi describes it. It is indeed a virtuous reach, but many ordinary people fail to see themselves in the orbit of virtue and fail to see within themselves the ability to make that reach.

  3. This is an interesting interview. I am the adoptive mother of two sons. My husband and I could not have children in spite of many years of prayers and medical intervention. Our first son was born here, the second we adopted from overseas years later. I have no basis of comparison but I cant imagine loving a birth child more than I do my two sons, who are now both adults. They were both a great gift from God and I love them dearly. I have a few observations. One, I have NEVER understood women who choose to abort a child rather than place it for adoption because they would be “worried” about the child’s fate: if it was well, and loved sufficiently, etc. So, they think it is better they MURDER their child instead??? How disgustingly shallow. Its hard to imagine more stupid and self-absorbed reasoning. I also dont agree with Guarendi’s thoughts that adoption is “virtuous”. I dont think virtue signaling is a sound reason to adopt. I have in mind some Hollywood folks who get big media coverage when they adopt a child from a poor nation. Also, children coming out of psychologically traumatic backgrounds, who had physical or drug abusing birth parents, or are much older children, require knowledgeable adoptive folks to parent them. Such situations require a more informed than average parent to help these children. The last thing they need is another set of parents who cannot handle them. I think placements like that should not be entered into lightly, thinking love can cure all. Sadly, it cannot. These are living children , not a temporary psychology experiment. It is enough for many people to handle the general adolescent issues of an average kid, let alone kids with special needs. I am not saying dont adopt such children. I am saying make sure you are adequately prepared and understand what you are committing to if that is what you choose to do. I would urge pregnant women who dont want an abortion to strongly consider adoption for their child. There are many loving couples in the US who wish to be parents and would do a fabulous job. Chose a catholic agency if you wish.Parents must be thoroughly screened with an adoptive home study by a social worker , fingerprints, etc, before being qualified to adopt. Most of the time you also have to prove a certain income so that you are prepared to adequately support the child. People dont have to go through those clearances when they have their own biological children! We also chose to join an adoptive parents support group at the time, so we could be informed of how to handle any potential issues which might come our way. I love my sons. Thats all I can say.

  4. Also, just read a review of a new film by Kirk Cameron called “Lifemark” which is based on a true adoption story. Positive reiew.

2 Trackbacks / Pingbacks

  1. Dr. Ray Guarendi answers common questions about adoption – Via Nova Media
  2. Dr. Ray Guarendi answers common questions about adoption – Catholic World Report – My Blog

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