[spaypets]

As someone who adopted internationally I have to chime in here and say that race absolutely played no role in our decision to adopt internationally. There have been allusions that people choose the international route because they want "anything but black" and I think that grossly misunderstands the reason why many people choose the international route.

Speaking for myself, we wanted timeframe that could be estimated. Neither DH nor I are very patient people and the idea of waiting for an indetermined amount of time to be chosen by a birth mother and then waiting on pins and needles until the birth to see if she chose to parent was terrifying and upsetting to us. Furthermore, we did not feel we could promise to maintain an open adoption with visits and so were faced with a wait that would likely be longer than if we were enthusiastic about a fully open adoption.

The potential race of the child never entered our discussion when we were choosing to pursue international adoption. Nor did it enter our discussion when we chose a country. We chose a country based in part on the amount of time we would have to spend in the country, the possibility of escorts (this was shortly after 9/11 and traveling was a little scary sounding), the countries that the agency near us worked with, the age of the child, the availability of girls. Ultimately,the final choice came down to which country we felt a greater affinity to.

We went into the adoption with the assumption that our child would not look like us, but as far as parsing race, that conversation never, ever happened. I suspect we are not alone in our reasons for forgoing a domestic adoption.