For Married people...

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I have not adopted a child (soon will have 5 biologically - was about to say “of my own” but that makes it sound like adopted children don’t actually belong to their parents… 😉 ) but I would love it if someone would leave a baby on my doorstep w/ a note attached - please care for my child. And although I picked that I have volunteered at an animal shelter, actually I just buy food when it’s on sale & drop it off. Technically I don’t think that qualifies. But I am married - does that count??
 
I have not adopted a child, nor have a volunteered at an animal shelter, BUT I have adopted 2 dogs from an animal shelter. Does that count? 🙂

In Christ,
Nancy 🙂
 
What is your theory and what is this all about? Are we fitting your theory?
 
I am raising the children God gave me.

As for animal shelters, I am allergic to all animals with fur or feathers.
 
Well I am adopted so this is a bit of a turn around for me. With the issues my wife and I have with fertility Adoption may be out only hope of children. I think though that me being adopted myself helps a lot because I’ll have an insight that my pairents never had.
 
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nobody:
Please humour me with this poll, inspired by another thread, to test a theory.

Married people only, please.
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Well, I considered my stepkids mine though I never formally afopted them, then after sevral miscarriages I got a vasectomy (please don’t yell – I wasn’t a practicing Catholic then, just reverted recently).

Anyway we wound up adopting my stepdaughter’s son because she was/is mentally & emotionally unable to care for him. My wife didn’t sleep for hisfirst year because he had apnea. He is sixteen now.

My wife is an animal lover (I’m not), neither of us volunteers at a shelter. We met working at a people shelter if that helps 🙂
 
Island Oak:
You’ve got to be kidding me. Those things nothing more than overgrown rats…and dangerous ones–not domestic animals. I’d seriously reconsider that bit of wildlife compassion…
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No. Rats are rodents, possums are marsupials. Nor are they overgrown; they are the proper size for their kind. Nor are they particularly dangerous, agressive, destructive, or even much of a nuisance as long as you leave them alone and keep your garbage cans tightly closed. Possums are fairly good neighbors for wildlife.
 
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Lillith:
Well…this is how it happened. It was on my hillside…newborn…and believe it or not…cute. But hey…I left it there, crying for it’s Mama overnight, hoping she’d return, knowing that if she didn’t my cats or something else would get it. This was in early March, and the nights were still cold. 48 hrs. later, I went on my deck and heard the poor thing…still crying…
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Well, if the animal you found was newborn it wasn’t a possum, and if it was a possum it wasn’t newborn. Newborn possums look a lot like pinky rats: blind, hairless, and they fit about 2 or 3 to a teaspoon. They are incapable of living 48 hours outside their mother’s pouch in any weather and probably are incapable of sound except possibly very faint squeaks.
 
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Celeste88:
I don’t understand the correlation here between adopting a child and volunteering at an animal shelter…
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Nor do I. What about volunteering at a shelter for people, such as a hospital, nursing home, soup kitchen, homeless shelter, emergency warming/cooling center, halfway house for former convicts or drug addicts, shelter for abused women or children, group home for physically or mentally handicapped persons, etc.?
 
Joseph Bilodeau:
No. Rats are rodents, possums are marsupials. Nor are they overgrown; they are the proper size for their kind. Nor are they particularly dangerous, agressive, destructive, or even much of a nuisance as long as you leave them alone and keep your garbage cans tightly closed. Possums are fairly good neighbors for wildlife.
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You must never have had them as “neighbors” of your own. I am well aware they are marsupials, but with the long, skinny rat-like tail and rodent-like face, they’re overgrown rats as far as I’m concerned. They are aggressive foragers in urban areas (read: attracted, like rodents, to human refuse) and will invade your home, garage, etc. no matter how tight the lid is on… Another delightful trait is their abilty to reproduce in exponential numbers. Have you ever tried to remove a dead one (or 12 in the case of a mother w/ babies) from your yard after its encounter with a cat, dog or the like? Trust me, it’s no fun–they can get up to over 20 lbs! They ARE wild animals and my main message to Lillith in regard to picking up a stray was that they are about as likely to be domesticated as raccoons.
 
Thank you to all who participated.

The attitude has been expressed many times on this forum (i.e., see post by Joseph 2 above) that if you are against animal abuse, or have sympathy for animals, then you must not have any sympathy for people. This poll was (hopefully) to counter that claim.

I picked 2 concrete, hard-core actions to “correlate”.

Very limited and unscientific, I admit, but of the 12 people who responded that they have volunteered at an animal shelter, 3 have adopted a child: That’s 25%. In the last decade, the average number of adoptions per year in the US was around 120,000. The 2000 US census reported 56,500,000 married couples in the US. You do the math (I tried, and can’t figure out how to accurately represent this), but it looks like there is less that 25% of the married couples in this country adopting children.

So, if someone makes a comment that is sympathetic to animals, please do not assume that they do not care about humans. The two are not mutually exclusive.
 
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nobody:
Thank you to all who participated.

The attitude has been expressed many times on this forum (i.e., see post by Joseph 2 above) that if you are against animal abuse, or have sympathy for animals, then you must not have any sympathy for people. This poll was (hopefully) to counter that claim.

I picked 2 concrete, hard-core actions to “correlate”.

Very limited and unscientific, I admit, but of the 12 people who responded that they have volunteered at an animal shelter, 3 have adopted a child: That’s 25%. In the last decade, the average number of adoptions per year in the US was around 120,000. The 2000 US census reported 56,500,000 married couples in the US. You do the math (I tried, and can’t figure out how to accurately represent this), but it looks like there is less that 25% of the married couples in this country adopting children.

So, if someone makes a comment that is sympathetic to animals, please do not assume that they do not care about humans. The two are not mutually exclusive.
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A person who treats animals badly would be more likely to treat children badly… but I’m not sure if a person who treats animals well would necessarily treat children with the same patience, though I wouldn’t assume they wouldn’t treat children with love and kindness.

My grandmother was a mother of 6 and treated all children like the most precious commodity on Earth. She was also an animal lover. She fed wild ally cats, adopted homeless animals, gushed over every child and animal she came across.

At her funeral we took donations for two organizations:

#1. The Humane society
#2. The local Catholic elementary/ middle school

My beloved grandmother taught me to pray the rosary, to love animals and children. Her mother died when she was only six years old, yet she was the kindest “mother” to every child she met. She has been, and still is, the greatest influence on my life. I named my first born child after her and I miss her every day! Tending to God’s living creation with love. She didn’t go out seeking people or animals to care for, God brought them to her, and she never held back an ounce of love and care. I know she is in heaven with my grandpa rocking babies. 🙂

PS I have no doubt she would have rescued a baby opossum! She once tried to save a baby squirrel who looked like he was drowning in the rain, She put him in a box with a blanket on her front porch, but when it dried off it was ready to fight!
 
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Peace-bwu:
…My beloved grandmother taught me to pray the rosary, to love animals and children…
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God Bless the soul of your Grandmother!
 
Never adopted but raised/raising 18 foster kids and 3 of my own and a step…never volunteered at animal shelter but put in about 75 hours a year at kids schools volunteering. I guess they are sort of similar. I have taken in stray kids (parents didn’t want kid) and stray animals…I think it is something to do with wanting kids and animals to have a better life than I did growing up.
 
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nobody:
Please humour me with this poll, inspired by another thread, to test a theory.

Married people only, please.
Click to expand...
Nobody,

We have not adopted any children but my wife and I did foster two children for a couple of years. We also intervened directly on more than one occasion to rescue several dozen children from rebel attacks in the Liberian civil war.
  • Liberian
 
Island Oak:
You must never have had them as “neighbors” of your own…
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Why would you assume this? We’ve had dozens that I know of living near our house over the years, probably hundreds more that I never saw.
Island Oak:
…Have you ever tried to remove a dead one (or 12 in the case of a mother w/ babies) from your yard after its encounter with a cat, dog or the like? Trust me, it’s no fun–they can get up to over 20 lbs!..
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Again, yes, except that usually I have had to remove dead possums from the road after an encounter with a car rather than from the yard after an encounter with a dog. Adult possums are usually able to hold their own against cats, Given that feral or free-roaming pet cats tend to be greater nuisances than possums (at least around here), anything possums can do to discourage these is a valuable service.

You are correct that removing dead possums (or dead coons, skunks, squirrels, cats, dogs, etc.) is not fun, but neither is it particularly difficult. Put a plastic liner in a garbage can, pick up the possum with a shovel and rake, dump it in the garbage can and tie the bag tight. Job done.
Island Oak:
…They ARE wild animals and my main message to Lillith in regard to picking up a stray was that they are about as likely to be domesticated as raccoons.
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This is correct.
 
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nobody:
Thank you to all who participated.

The attitude has been expressed many times on this forum (i.e., see post by Joseph 2 above) that if you are against animal abuse, or have sympathy for animals, then you must not have any sympathy for people. This poll was (hopefully) to counter that claim…
Click to expand...
I beg Your pardon! :mad:

I said no such thing, I hold no such attitude, and I have not claimed any such view!

What I said was that I did not understand the correlation between adopting a child and volunteering at an animal shelter. (By all means, please do see my prior post and read what I actually wrote!) While I did suggest some volunteer opportunities with shelters for people that I think might be more relevant indicators of one’s attitudes toward adopting children, I did not say or suggest **anything **even remotely close to “if you are against animal abuse, or have sympathy for animals, then you must not have any sympathy for people”, and I strongly object to being characterized as such!
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nobody:
…So, if someone makes a comment that is sympathetic to animals, please do not assume that they do not care about humans. The two are not mutually exclusive.
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And I would ask you, if someone makes a comment that is sympathetic to people, but does not mention animals, please do not assume that they do not care about animals. As you say, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Thank you very much!
 
I have not adopted a child. I tried to volunteer at the animal shelter, but it breaks my heart. As “orphanages” in the US are extremely rare, I am not qualified to say whether or not I could volunteer there, but having friends who adopted internationally, it was very painful for them to have to make a “choice” of babies.
 
Joseph Bilodeau:
I beg Your pardon! :mad:

I said no such thing, I hold no such attitude, and I have not claimed any such view!
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Dear Mr. Bilodeau,

I am sorry that I interpreted your post incorrectly. Please accept my apology.

Sincerely.
 
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nobody:
Please humour me with this poll, inspired by another thread, to test a theory.

Married people only, please.
Click to expand...
OK I JUST SPRAYED DIET COKE all over the computer screen when i saw this! LOL! thanks for this my friend. oh i have NOT adopted a child but have volunteered at an animal shelter…OOOOO i am evil!
 
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