So here goes.....I'm uncomfortable with these adoptions from all over the world, when there are children in the US who need homes. It seems hypocritical to be opposed to abortion in the US, then go elsewhere for a child. And yes, I understand the problems that can be involved with the stability of the adoption of a US child.
Most people I know who adopt are very prolife.
>So here goes.....I’m uncomfortable with these adoptions from all over the world, when there are children in the US who need homes. It seems hypocritical to be opposed to abortion in the US, then go elsewhere for a child. And yes, I understand the problems that can be involved with the stability of the adoption of a US child.
Most of the kids who need homes in the US are abused or have disabilities. Very few people want to take on a burden like that.
Realistically adoption only works very well when you’re adopting a family member. When you get farther away from direct blood there are more and more problems.
“I’m uncomfortable with these adoptions from all over the world, when there are children in the US who need homes.
2 words- legal entanglements
Most of the available children in the US who need homes, appear to be non-white kids from "inner city" parents, a number of whom may have "issues" related to mom's drug/alcohol use while pregnant.
I don’t know the facts, but I have got the impression that it is older, significantly handicapped, minority children who are most available in the US. With some parents not feeling equipped or able to take on the older, troubled, and/or handicapped challenges and official policy often limiting the ability to adopt interracially.
In that environment, I can understand the impulse to look abroad. But I also am uncomfortable with what readily becomes a market for finding “adoptable” children worldwide.
Have you by chance seen the film “Lion”? It is a heartwarming true story of an international adoption.
It is almost impossible to adopt a baby in the USA. Two of my nieces are adopting black children after having them as foster children.
The one of them adopted a child from Somalia 6 years ago because they weren’t having any luck adopting in the USA. She had 3 boys and wanted a girl and tried again and had another boy, the foster child is a boy so the girl she adopted from Somalia will still be the only girl.
I have two daughters, both adopted from China. They are now older, so my information is more than 20 years old, and the situation does change. With that said: when we started the process, we inquired about domestic adoptions. We were told to expect a five to seven year waiting period for a healthy infant, with no guarantees at the end of the process. We were also told that if we were over 35, we would be deemed too old.
Those were rules of thumb, not iron laws. People arranging private adoptions had considerable latitude, and a lot of money was changing hands in pre-natal "support" to pregnant girls who planned to give up their kids. There is a fine line between providing support and buying a child, but I will leave it to those who went that route to get into the details.
We inquired about interracial adoptions and were told very bluntly that various activist groups made that very problematic in the U.S. The National Association of Black Social Workers, in particular, was on a crusade to ensure that black kids not be adopted by white couples. It was, of course, not put so bluntly; the stated rationale was that black kids should be raised "culturally black." The snarky retorts almost write themselves.
Then there was the option of adopting an older child, or a special needs child. Had we been experienced parents with several older children, and had we been living somewhere other than in a big city, we might have considered it. For a first child who would be raised in the city (not the far suburbs, but an inner city location), that was a bridge too far.
So we started looking abroad. There were a lot of adoptions at that time from Russia and Eastern Europe, and a lot of problems related to parental drug and alcohol use and disastrous orphanage situations. Other parts of the world had their plusses and minuses. China liked older parents, and the kids coming out of China had usually received decent care; China has people to thrown at problems, and children in orphanages get enough attention.
Last but not least, foreign adoptions are final. You do not have to worry about the birth mother getting out of jail and/or off drugs for a couple of months, and deciding she wants to get reinvolved with her child. Bottom line, in the U.S. most children who might be good candidates for adoption are aborted. If they survive that, the system favors foster care and the hope of future family reunification over certainty for adoptive parents. People don't go abroad for fun. They do it because they hit roadblocks here.
The biggest reasons people go overseas include (1) smaller, faster, and cheaper bureaucracy; and (2) in the U.S. almost all adoptions are "open" adoptions, meaning that the birth parent still gets to be involved in or in contact with the child in some way. Dealing with adoption agencies in some parts of the country is a nightmare, especially if you have guns in the house. We were told flat out that unless we got rid of our guns, we would have a very difficult time getting approval for adoption. Waiting lists for healthy babies are incredibly long, compared to other countries where the problems are primarily not associated with baby health but rather with finding homes for the extraordinary number of healthy children they have.
And, while Mrs. FATC did succeed in getting preggers shortly before we were going to pull the trigger on going the international adoption route, I was really concerned about the involvement of some American birth mother (and possibly father, but rare) in my family. I'm selfish. I was thinking, if I couldn't replicate my genes, at least I could replicate my upbringing. That's harder if it's an open adoption.