When all of your objectives and alternatives are laid out before you, it’s time to assess the risks. If you’ve ever read any of my posts, you know that I spend 90% of my time talking about the risks involved in adoption. The reason I give so much time and attention to this area is because very few adoption professionals are completely open and honest about the pitfalls of surrendering. If I harp on the risks, it’s because there continue to be women who were never told about them. They made their "decision" based on bad information, and were held to it with bad laws, so that it was never really their decision at all.

Of course, there are plenty of risks in parenting and abortion, too. No avenue is risk-free. The reason that adoption is a little bit different is that with this choice, you cede all of your control. A risk in parenting (such as your children being teased because they don’t have a father around, or you running out of money to pay for emergency expenses) is still something you can attempt to deal with yourself, while a risk in adoption involves other people controlling your destiny (adoptive parents shutting off contact with your child).

Assessing risks involves identifying adverse consequences of your decision. What could go wrong, short and long-term? What are the disadvantages associated with every alternative? Where might you have biased or incorrect information, and what are the implications of that?

I won’t go through the possibilities for risk in adoption, because I have covered this at length. Again, I focus on what could go wrong so that people are fully informed at this critical decision-making stage.

Here are some examples of things that could potentially go wrong with parenting:
1. Your child is troubled because he/she grows up without a strong male role model
2. You struggle for money and can’t meet basic needs
3. You’re working so hard to make ends meet you can’t give your child enough time
4. You aren’t able to continue your education or progress in your career

As you list the risks of parenting, don't let adoption agencies be the ones to tell you what could go wrong. Talk to actual single parents about the risks they have experienced and how they have dealt with them.

And before you leave this stage, be aware of another way to use the risk assessment tool - in picking adoptive parents. Say couple A lives on the opposite coast, while couple B lives around the block. Couple C really believes in open adoption, while you can tell that Couple D is just giving it lip service in order to find a baby. What are the risks that these traits present? Weigh those risks, too.

In the next and final post, I’ll talk about the actual making of the decision.