This is (kinda) what I came here to say. The reason pet advocates are so hell-bent for adoption is that there is a HUGE glut of dogs in shelters right now. About three million dogs are killed every year in the US alone because there is no one who will adopt them. Ergo, it seems rather irresponsible to pay someone to breed another animal for you when you could be saving one from an early grave.
I may be wrong on this, but it’s my understanding that most American couples who want to adopt have a very rough time doing so–the demand for children (or young children, at least) far outstrips the number of kids looking for homes. Ergo, there’s not an ethical problem from the most basic arithmatic perspective in having your own kids. Doing so isn’t perpetuating a huge demographic problem, at least not in the US alone.
If the US had overcrowded orphanages and hundreds of thousands of babies who had no prospects for a home, one may have an ethical problem by the time they got to having their fifth or sixth kid. That’s not the case AFAIK, so I can’t see any real hypocrisy.
To be serious, not buying from puppy mills should reduce the number of puppies produced through sheer economics. Thus, getting a dog from a shelter should reduce the oversupply.
The supply of children up for adoption is not going to change whether or not someone adopts.
There is also the fact that we have been programmed to want to broadcast our genes. Not at issue with dogs.
A dog from a shelter can usually be returned if enough of a problem. In any case, the problem is short term. Not true for adopted kids. I know lots of parents who have adopted, and the track record is terrible - and they are all pretty much excellent parents, in some cases with a biological kids without problems.
[Mod Note]It would be misguided to think that if you continued down this line you wouldn’t get an official warning for inappropriate posting in IMHO.[/Mod Note]
Not to mention using the pejorative “rail against.”
People with children are VERY touchy about any comment that doesn’t equate children with the highest possible value. Pet people are pretty touchy about the disrespect their loved ones endure. Your OP was couched in a way that insulted both sides, bringing them together in a unity rare on this board.
And yet, for an infertile couple they can put tens of thousands into creating a biological child that could, instead, be used to adopt a child from a country where children DO languish in orphanages.
I’m not sure that the comparison is that off.
I have an adopted son, a rescue dog, a bio daughter, a humane society cat, and a hamster from a pet store and I think people should be able to buy their pets from whomever they choose - even a (gasp!) pet store and have (or not have) their children via whatever means pleases them (following process) and it isn’t anyone else’s business where your cat comes from, how much you paid for your “designer” puggle, how much you spent to adopt your Chinese daughter, or what position your biological twins were conceived in.
I’m not sure a comparison between pets and people is valid.
Unless there’s a place where they select men and women for their physical traits, then put them together in a small room until they mate, and produce children, and then sell the children for as much profit as possible, and then make them do it again, and again, and again. In a tiny room where they have to piss and shit and eat off the floor.
Or you could take the forced mating cruelty out of it, and just continually artificially inseminate women until they’ve produced so many children their uterus falls out, and then when they’re no longer useful, you take them out back and shoot them.
While there could be an argument that in parts of the world there may be something resembling the above happening, it’s considered criminal regardless. Humans who have children can say, I think, their children are not the product of forced mating and selling of the babies. People make their own choices. Children can be a result of either their choice to make them or their non-choice to prevent them. Breeder dogs, especially those in puppy mills, don’t have a choice, and they are kept in deplorable conditions.
I’m having a hard time making sense with my own argument because the OP question is so out there ignorant it doesn’t even make sense, and the longer I go on, the less sense I’m making to myself! I’m posting this anyway, in hopes it rings a bell for anyone else who has a similar kind of question, though I’m hoping the OP is unique.
"And yet, for an infertile couple they can put tens of thousands into creating a biological child that could, instead, be used to adopt a child from a country where children DO languish in orphanages.
I’m not sure that the comparison is that off."
Which makes the assumption that the best solution to children in overseas orphanages is to adopt them out to other countries.
So Im not sure it is a very good comparison myself.
I’m more talking about things like for the same amount of funds as a child going overseas the money might be better spent on the orphanage in the country itself, the problems with child slavery markets being created, things like that. Overseas adoption isn’t a simple issue.
And yet the grand majority of people aren’t infertile and don’t put tens of thousands of dollars into getting pregnant. So, yes, the comparison is off. Because it’s a normal biological function for a heterosexual human couple of fertile age to produce a child. It is not a normal biological function to have puppies.
Trying to muddy the basic issue of “human beings are capable of making other human beings” by bringing up infertile couples does not prove the comparison is apt. Human beings are also bipedal. Should we consider ourselves comparable to snakes because *some *people are born without legs?
People make babies. They don’t make puppies. There are ethical concerns with overseas adoption that don’t exist when it comes to adopting a dog from a shelter. There are also ethical concerns about allowing dogs to breed that don’t exist when it comes to “letting” people fuck. Humans are not pets. It’s an insult to both to try to treat the issues as analogous, because that’s ignoring all of the important distinctions between the situations.
If someone is offering kids for adoption to anyone who can come up with the requisite adoption fees, with no background checks for prospective adoptive parents, then I’m against that. If someone is deliberately breeding kids for this kind of thing, I’m even more against that.
If someone is offering kids for adoption with no resources to help adoptive parents who run into a rough patch, then I’m against that.
Yeah, this is my reason for encouraging people to choose adoption. In many parts of the country, a lot of perfectly good dogs (yes, even purebreds and even cute small dogs) are killed every year because of overpopulation.
Truthfully, having biological kids is kind of selfish too. But since nobody is killing human beings due to overpopulation yet, for now it doesn’t seem so bad.
I seriously don’t understand how anyone who understands what conditions pet store puppies are raised in could think that it doesn’t matter if people are supporting it or not. Do you just not think that animals are capable of suffering?
Believe me, this is more common than you think. In public adoption (what we are doing) the social worker who is supposed to be helping us is also the one who can decide to take the kids back before it is finalized. When we told him the problems we were having (minor ones, at that) he delayed the finalization of the adoption (while providing little help to actually solve the problems).
As to the OP, I think more couples should look to adoption before they look to infertility treatment. There are a lot of children (even younger ones) who would get better parents possibly faster if more people considered going this route. What a lot of couples we did training sessions with found out is that while you are doing those treatments you are basically aging out of adopting the younger children (since they want younger parents for younger children). Some of them are still young enough to do international adoption but you can even age out of that for most countries.
However, given that I found my children through adoption I am probably a little biased.
I would say they’re hypocritical if they’re Octomom types. Otherwise, no; the ones I know personally don’t insist on “any dog you get must be from the pound” but on “don’t buy from a force breeder, get a dog from the pound or from a hunter who takes good care of the dogs”. The hunters I know who’ve occasionally offered puppies do take them to the vet and offer to have them neutered before delivery.
