The Advantages to Adopting as a Single Parent

Single parenting has become mainstream in our society today. Adding to this social phenomenon are the increased number of single individuals who are choosing to adopt children. With many single men and women failing to find their soul mate by middle age, and choosing not to settle into married life with the first potential mate, the option to adopt a child provides for the creation of a unique family unit as not seen in decades passed.

In fact, single parent adopting is becoming more socially acceptable and is commonly something considered by single adults as they approach their 30s and even 40s. With child psychology continuing to focus on ill-adaptive behaviors in children, and making a connection to maladaptive behavior to the association of stress and disaccord at home, many child psychologists, today, agree the adopted child, raised in a single parent home, may prove just as successful as those in two parent homes. Child psychology, in fact, is finding, in many cases, the children of single family homes are often involved in less stress and family discord and, as a result, tend to perform and behavior better academically, socially and personally. The key focus, in other words, is not in the number of parents but in the type of parenting provided.

To the advantage of single parents who adopt, research has shown that single parents, often more so than two-parent families who adopt, tend to be more emotionally and financially stable thus providing a better environment for the adopted child to grow and develop. Because adoption, for a single parent, involves a greater commitment of time, stability and emotional and financial resources, many adoption agencies are reporting an equally, if not better, success rate in the adoption of children by single parent homes.