The adoption process can be so heartbreaking!

C

CalvertNewbie

Guest
Both will be toddlers. We are both a little older and we're simply not able to care for an infant. We will be going to Ethiopia first and then to China.

International adoption is hard to describe, and I suspect most people think it's pretty much a matter of putting up the bucks and the host nation motivated by dollars and need. It's not. Even nations with situations as dire as Ethiopia or Haiti are not motivated by an urgent wish to unload their children.

Try to understand it by flipping the situation around - how would you feel if thousands of children from the U.S. were being adopted by, say, Arab nations? Or by China?

A lot of factors come into play. In a lot of nations, there's a strong undercurrent of resistance to international adoption even if it means a poor future for the children involved. For example, a substantial portion of the Russian population objects to their children adopted abroad, but at the same time, they won't adopt them, themselves. Culturally, it's still considered strange to adopt "someone else's child" (the first question we were asked in court - why do you want to raise someone else's child?). Same goes for Ethiopia, and there's a lot of misinformation, as well. (One book we read, many people thought their children would be raised to be household servants or maids). Some of it is national pride - why should our children be raised by foreigners? Thus, in some nations, the rules heavily favor adoption by persons whose ancestry traces to the host nation, and sometimes rules are established to encourage this (e.g. some nations require several months of in-country stay, which is more likely if the adoptive parents have relatives in country).

A few nations, their referrals are almost entirely children with serious birth defects. Others, their government is not a Hague treaty member and they are trying to crack down on what amounts to baby-selling by unscrupulous lawyers.

Some have extremely stringent requirements, which played a part in our selection - for example, some nations will not allow adoptive parents who are above a certain age. China presents an enigma - they are mostly the most efficient program, their people are highly supportive of adoption by foreigners, they are reasonably inexpensive and are the largest program - but as the years roll on, they have added more and more stringent requirements - regarding divorce, number of children in family, amount of total assets, length of time married, length of time youngest sibling in family, medical history, *weight* (BMI), age, ANY history of cancer, ANY history of mental illness - it's long. But once the conditions are met, they probably have the easiest dossier to assemble.

I know people like to think - oh they have so many children without homes, they must be very willing to "unload" them. Almost no nation for whose program we've seen takes such a cavalier attitude about children. They all want their children to have very good homes.

Thanks for all the info! And yes, I do believe every nation should be very selective on who they adopt their children out to. They should make sure that the adoptive parents-to-be aren't mental head cases, are relatively healthy and can afford to support these kids. I can understand age to a certain extent as well. It just amazes me how long it takes while many of these kids live in such horrible conditions.

As for the fostering, we've thought about that for the future too. What stops me is that I used to work with emotionally disturbed kids, ages 5-12. I dealt with the lowlifes that they unfortunately had to call "parents". I dealt with child protective services on a regular basis, testified at hearings, etc. And what was the common outcome? They almost always sent these poor kids back to their abusive crackhead "mothers" who's only care in the world was collecting that welfare check and getting high/drunk. Rarely a father in the picture, no love, no nothing except abuse and neglect. No follow up by case workers to see if the child was ok because they simply didn't have the manpower. But all CPS cared about was reuniting biological families, which was clearly not in the child's best interest 99% of the time.
 
We are foster parents, and hope to adopt out of the foster care system someday. The kicker - social workers want experienced parents (ie, people who have kids) with plenty of energy to keep up with the kids (ie, younger), but have families where the child(ren) can be the only/youngest child(ren) in the home (even for teens!) (ie, people who either don't have kids, or whose kids are older and/or have moved out). So, you have to be young, with parenting experience, but not have kids. Tell me...how does that work???

We have applied to adopt hundreds of kids at this point...and have always gotten the same response back (child/ren needs to be the youngest in the home). We are looking at sibling groups (hard to place), all races (often hard to place), older children (5 and up - hard to place), and yet it would apparently be better for these children to remain in foster care (often, with other or younger kids in the foster family!), with no permanency, than to be adopted by a loving, stable family with kids who would be younger.

C'est la vie - my hope is that someday we will find our child/ren. The funny thing is - from my adoption forums, I have found that people who haven't had children prior to adopting "troubled" children out of the system have the highest rate of disruption, b/c they truly don't know what is normal and what is out of whack and how to fix it. On the other hand, people who already have kids - whether they are younger or not - are better prepared to handle what a foster child can throw at them. But they are not the preferred family type :(
 

KandJ

New Member
The adoption agency we used would only release the baby to the adoptive family after the rights of the biological parents had been legally terminated. This saves a lot of heartbreak and tears. We were told the birthmother could change her mind until this point, and that nothing was for sure until that hearing. They had their own foster parents who would take care of the babies if the time to the hearing took longer than expected, like finding the birth father to sign the papers etc. While one of our daughters was in their foster care, they sent tons of pictures and called us with updates.

Anyway, from my experience, domestic adoptions through good licensed agencies are 'safe'.
 

JLS

Member
Can I ask which adoption agency u used? Or PM me with it.. Sounds like I need to go there.. Thanks.

The adoption agency we used would only release the baby to the adoptive family after the rights of the biological parents had been legally terminated. This saves a lot of heartbreak and tears. We were told the birthmother could change her mind until this point, and that nothing was for sure until that hearing. They had their own foster parents who would take care of the babies if the time to the hearing took longer than expected, like finding the birth father to sign the papers etc. While one of our daughters was in their foster care, they sent tons of pictures and called us with updates.

Anyway, from my experience, domestic adoptions through good licensed agencies are 'safe'.
 
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