Adoption is not the answer

according to the "experts". Even where children are adopted they should have contact with their birth parents according to these experts.
Adoption is a curious process. I have known a number of adoptees in my life time. My godmother and her husband adopted two children. Their son once told me, "I'm so glad they did. They have been brilliant parents." Their daughter was quieter about it but, on the same occasion said, "I've had a much better life than I might have had."
Adoption clearly worked there. It didn't work for someone else I know - or so she claims. She was given every advantage, including expensive private schooling and a university education. She was encouraged to make contact with her birth mother. Her family did everything they should have done according to the textbooks and the research. In the end she met the "wrong" man and made a series of mistakes - all of which she has blamed on being adopted. 
And I know others that have been success stories, real success stories. There are the brother and sister who recently went to their birth country after being adopted and brought out here. Their parents have never made any secret about the circumstances surrounding their adoption and they have encouraged the children to learn about their birth country and the language. They were keen to visit their birth country - and very happy to come back here. 
    "This is home. I'm just so thankful we didn't have to stay there."
There was the girl going on a Rotary student exchange scholarship whose birth mother suddenly decided she wanted to make contact even though the girl had asked no contact be made. Her birth mother had been told of the girl's scholarship and didn't want her to go.
There are two boys I know whose mother is serving a life sentence in prison. They cannot be adopted.  Every month for almost eleven years the boys were taken to see their mother. Sometimes they would get there and she would refuse to see them or see them for just a few minutes. When they were young she would tear up pictures they had drawn for her. She would swear at them and tell them that it was all their fault she was there. They reacted by being difficult, very difficult. They were fostered together and then apart and then together again. Their foster relationship is stable now they are no longer forced to visit their mother but she can still interfere to some extent. Adoption into the right family would have solved many problems for them.
I don't believe adoption has to be a bad thing. It can be the right thing - the right thing for the child. It is a time when the best interests of the child have to take precedence.
I thought of all this yesterday when the middle kitten was trying to understand the concept of adoption. She knows she is not adopted.
    "But don't people want children to have a forever and ever family a really properly forever family?"
It's a good question.