Adopting a child takes guts and a whole lot of heart, says Peter Sherwood. Invest the love and you’ll get it back in spades
I am a bit of an authority on adoption and one thing’s for certain, like my awe-inspiring investment strategies, it can leave you in the red. Stony broke but rich in something far more important. If you’re looking for a reason to adopt, the answer really is that simple: love.
Driven by passion, obsession, love and a hint of madness (“A man needs a little madness” – Zorba the Greek), the impossibility of my adopting children was achieved with extraordinary luck, naivety and help from a couple of complete strangers; an accomplishment in seemingly hopeless circumstances that would be unattainable today. But Hong Kong in the 1980s was a very different place. As Goethe wrote, “Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
It was so intensely a made-for-movies experience, I have trouble believing it myself. I get weird looks relating the story, the curious not quite believing I was the first single man in Hong Kong to adopt a boy, and probably the only one allowed to adopt a girl. Removing a child from a life of pover ty is as good as it gets, and I can’t understand why everyone doesn’t do it.
Having natural children, must be wonderful, and it’s the most selfish thing we can do. No criticism implied, but simply the way nature works. ‘Wanting’ a child is, by definition, in the modern era, a selfish act. The only ones rescued are the parents, and possibly a marriage. (Just kidding, folks! I’m grateful: no selfishness, no human race, more importantly, no Sherwood).
Adoption was a shot of heroin straight into my brain’s pleasure centre; the mesocorticolimbic circuit (to be precise). The same system that reacts with a good feeling any time we give. Unlike hard narcotics, it’s a one-hit stimulant. And yet… the craving continues. With a few friends, I’m fortunate to have been caring for families in Nepal since 2008; a powerful connection I view as a privilege. Giving is a selfish pleasure that works both ways, and were we zapped with a bolt of lightning for every selfless act, only masochists would do it. Adoption is a wild challenge, but as Helen Keller wrote, “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all.”
My advice? If you feel passionate, do it. If you don’t, no amount of intellectualising will get you there: you need to get out of your head and into your heart. If you’re looking for certainties with adoption, forget it, there aren’t any, and none with natural children either, just a giant leap of faith.
I’ve spoken to parents with both natural and adopted kids and they all say the love and depth of caring is no different. For myself, I don’t understand those who say they are ‘thinking about’ adoption if all else fails, as if a child in desperate need is second best. But then I’ve never seen much point in reproducing myself, when I hear on a regular basis that one of me is more than enough.