Trigerred by Brangelina’s third adoption, psychologists have started to show interest on this topic and have their say about the motivating force behind such multiple adoptions. Jolie has again adopted a child. This time it is a 3-year-old boy from Tam Binh orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The celebrity couple already have three children. One is their 1-year-old biological son and the other two, a boy and a girl, are adopted. What makes a woman go for multiple adoptions? Psychologists are of a unanimous opinion that the driving force behind multiple adoptions, especially by fertile couples who can have their own biological child, is a very complex one. Psychologist Hilary Hanafin believes that secondary infertility, in which a woman can have one biological child but not a second, could be behind it. But she admits the reason can vary from person to person. She says, A mother could feel inspired and achieve satisfaction from knowing she provides love to a child who would not have a traditional home. Or she could feel a special connection through her own personal history that makes adoption very appealing. Maybe she was adopted or lived in a foreign country. David Kirschner, the author of ‘Adoption: Unchartered Waters’, views this tendency as an obsession and believes that there is some complex and stronger mental force at play. He says, Certainly there is something obsessive about it. We call these complex human behaviors multidetermined. That is, there are a number of emotional/psychological/personality needs that are all being met by the act of multiple adopting in this case. Multiple adoptions might also be symptomatic of some guilt/redemption psychological dynamic. A fear of pregnancy complications and pain of childbirth may motivate some, competitive needs may motivate others to have the largest, most wonderful, most diverse family in the universe. The motivating force behind Angelina Jolie’s multiple adoptions is related to the complexities of a human mind and hence it cannot be easily secluded. This is no time to draw any conclusions as these are unchartered areas of a human mind.
