[AlabamaDad2Be]

All of this reorganization and uncertainty about the current situation is scary. It has so many people anxious, scared, and nervous (myself included).

I'm just wondering why we can't get real adoption reform here in the US? I mean something that would really have an impact on the domestic adoption process, where adoptive parents would really see more benefits of adopting here where at least there would be some more control over the situation, and you'd know where you stand or who to contact in situations like this to get the real story.

Arrrrgh!!!

[cindyc]

I agree that domestic adoption reform is needed. My husband and I have two children adopted domestically from our home state. We are now about to adopt a child from Russia.

We did not even consider domestic adoption this time. In our state (and likely most states), we would be required to cough up thousands of dollars in birth mother expenses with no assurance whatsoever that we would actually get to adopt her baby. The birth mother can change her mind at any time, and we would simply be out of luck (and out thousands of dollars). Also, if we don't get the birth father to sign papers, the adoption doesn't go through. And then....the birth mother can still change her mind after we've taken the baby home, and there's nothing we can do.

I spent much of my time in tears of anxiety while we adopted domestically. I would love to adopt here in the United States, but I'm just not willing to go through that again (or be devasted if a birth mother changed her mind).

CindyC

[spaypets]

Do you know that there are agencies that assume that risk? In other words, you pay the agency a fee and if a match falls through, the fee is applied to the next match. You don't lose the money.

[needpink]

That's a great angle to consider as we are worried and frustrated about what's going on in Russia.

One major consideration that led us to Russian adoption was the increasing difficulty in obtaining a "closed" adoption in the states. We found an agency in Lubbock, TX that only arranged closed adoptions, but we were on their waiting list for two full years with no referrals.

As we waited, we fielded countless questions from family and friends as to whether our decision to pursue only a closed adoption was based upon fear that the birth parents would change their mind. Of course, everybody who is involved in the process knows that isn't what the "open"vs. "closed" decision is about at all. But the trauma/media attention involved with domestic adoptions gone awry is still very close to the surface to John Q. Public, and so lack of information translates quickly to suspicion.

We, as a country, vaccillate too much about the issues of termination of birth-parent rights as they pertain to adoption. And that uncertainty alone gives domestic adoption an air of uncertainty that would otherwise diminish the number of children here at home who are growing up "in the system" instead of growing up in loving homes.

Every party certainly should have clearly defined, immutable rights in the adoption process, but we really should make the 1st priority in establishing those rights the best interest of the children who will be affected by them.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if those who wanted children and those children who needed families could find their way together with out so much fretting about the issues that truly aren't relevent to their respective needs?

Samantha

[AlabamaDad2Be]

Spaypets, I didn't know that agencies like that exist, which is a good thing, but it still doesn't address some of the fundamental problems in the domestic adoption process.

Samantha made some very good points in her response. The biggest, and most obvious difference between US and Russian adoptions (and consequently one main reason why my wife and I are going with Russia) is because Russia puts the best interests of the child first, whereas the US puts the birth parents above the child.

Russia looks at what is best for the child; at who can provide the child with the best life. And that's what is sorely lacking here in the US.

[spaypets]

Russia puts the best interests of the child first, whereas the US puts the birth parents above the child.

I don't understand? How is the US adoption system not taking the child's needs into account? As far as I know there aren't widespread cases of voluntarily reliquished infants going without homes and being placed into institutions.

[cindyc]

The U.S. system is completely driven by the birth parents. Birth moms pick out the adoptive parents. Adoptive parents could wait years without being selected - or never be picked at all, even though they might make terrific parents and come highly recommended on their home study.

I know of one case in my home town where a sixteen year old birth mom selected two gay men to adopt her newborn infant boy. I really question whether a sixteen year old has the wisdom to properly make such a decision that will affect that child's life forever more.

Call me old-fashioned,
CindyC

[Lorraine123]

The biggest, and most obvious difference between US and Russian adoptions (and consequently one main reason why my wife and I are going with Russia) is because Russia puts the best interests of the child first, whereas the US puts the birth parents above the child.

AlabamaDad2Be,
I don't understand the above quote. How does Russia put the best interests of the child first? How can being in an orphanage ever be in a child's best interest?

I agree that there are problems in the US system, but in their own way, they are trying to keep birth families together. That, I believe, is in the child's best interest.

I think adoption as a rule always hurts the child. The child loses their birth family. While they may be grateful for their adoptive parents, they still hurt for their birthparents. It is a loss.

Adoption is always the attempted solution to a problem. The best solution is to get rid of the problem altogether. I know that can never happened. There will always be unplanned pregnancies or abusive parents, but working towards keeping families together should be our focus. While that appears to be in the best interest of the birthparents, it is really in the best interest of the child.

I have a hard time accepting that institutionalized living is ever in the child's best interest.

[toria]

I know there is good and bad with all of this.

But I am thankful for the orphanage that my babies got to live in until i could bring them home. They were clean, loved very much and took care of the best that was possible as far as i could tell.

I'm sure there is alot of good in domestic adoption. But i have also seen (thru an organization in which i volunteer) that many children are sent back to homes that are VERY unfit when there are foster parents that are fit who want to adopt them. All to keep the children with their biological families. This is not fair to the child who many times will be shuffled again to another foster family after the biological family is AGAIN determined to be unfit!!!
They will still not be available for adoption, waiting for their family to become fit!! Even a 17 year old was wanting to be adopted but her whole life she was shuffled around and never able to be adopted. Soon, she will be out of the foster care system. Have no foster parents or biological!!!!!!

Again, I realize there is good and bad in all of these situations.

[AlabamaDad2Be]

Let me get this straight, Lorraine, you are anti-adoption?? What are you doing as a senior member of an adoption forum then? Have you adopted? I don't understand.

Cindy pretty much laid out how the US favors the parents over the child, spaypets.

[Lorraine123]

Oh no! I'm not anti-adoption at all. Sorry if it came across as that way and by re-reading I can see how it did. I apologize.

I am an adoptive parent. My daughter was in foster care for 2 years before coming to us and with a severely abusive mother for 4 years prior to that. So, no, I am not at all anti-adoption. Adoption built my family and for that I am so grateful. I love my daughter with all my heart.

Let me try to say this again (a little more clearly). I was simply stating that adoption is always about losses for the child. My daughter loves her birthmom (I have a hard time understanding that, but its the case). I think all adopted children love their birthparents on some level. So there is a loss.

If we could alleviate that loss, that would be best. I know it isn't possible. But it would still be best. Ideally all children would be born to parents who are able to parent and love them. So therefore, I think adoption is second best. I hope that doesn't sound anti-adoption. I hope I explained myself better. If not, ask me again.

I have many problems with the current US system for adoption. I know most of you are talking about infant adoptions and I am most familiar with foster care adoptions, so some of my experiences may not apply. What I wanted to say (and again this probably more applies to foster care adoptions) is that if the system can get the family the resources to stay together, then the child experiences fewer losses. Of course in reality, this has gone too far. I agree that parents are given way way way too many chances. I think I was just trying to explain why its done the way it is. And in theory it makes sense.

As far as infant adoptions, I still think the birthparent has the right to choose whether to parent or not and also to choose who will parent. We may not agree with that choice, but they have the right to choose. I can only imagine the frustrations of being a potential adoptive parent of an infant in the US. But all types of adoption have risks. We all just have to choose which ones we will take.

I really feel bad for coming across as anti-adoption because that is so far from the truth. Sorry about that.....

[spaypets]

The U.S. system is completely driven by the birth parents. Birth moms pick out the adoptive parents. Adoptive parents could wait years without being selected - or never be picked at all, even though they might make terrific parents and come highly recommended on their home study.

Granted that's a disadvantage to adopting parents--it was the main reason we chose to adopt internationally. But it doesn't answer the question of how that's to the _child's_ disadvantage. Indeed, it seems that in many cases birth mothers choose parents who have similar interests and talents, thus providing a better fit than the essentially random matching that goes on in international adoption.

As for a 16-year-old choosing a gay couple to parent her child, I fail to see how their sexual orientation in any way will affect their ability to parent. She obviously thought they had something special to offer her child. You apparently disagree -- that's a topic for another thread, but it's probable that that couple's homestudy also highly recommended them for parenthood.

[needpink]

Let's remember that:

1. We are grateful that women(of any age) are willing to carry a pregnancy to term even though they intend to relinquish their rights to their babies when they legally have other options.

2. We are grateful to be legally allowed to add children to our families through routes other than biological birth even though as a nation we are somewhat concerned and in disagreement with the definition of family (look at the election)

3. We all want what is best for all children--the ones whose lives we touch and all others.

But then, can we discuss and perhaps agree to disagree on issues like

1. A system that allows a child who is bearing a child getting to "pick" the wealthiest, prettiest, youngest, hippest family for her infant's adoption in lieu of an experienced bank of counselors or facilitators making that decision based, hopefully, on other criteria

2. A system that prizes a biological link so much as to allow repeated "chances" to re-assimilate a child into an home which has already been proven to be a hostile environment for that child, perhaps preventing that child from being able to become part of a new family.


We shouldn't try to think alike- agree on everything. Some of these issues are moral issues for some of us, political issues for others and perhaps even non-issues for others. And some of us are ready for sweeping reforms while others would like to see slow, cautious progress.

Let's discuss with out taking offense, and feel free to express our own thoughts without trying to oppress others.

I love coming to this board because you all are taking with me or have taken this incredibly strange journey that quite often is difficult for my husband and I to deal with. And I love the issues that we come up to talk about, many of which I would not ever think about on my own. I don't want my own comments to be offensive to this community, but I do want to see our diverse opinions expressed here.

I've really come to love you guys! So let's play pretty!

-Samantha

[BrandyHagz]

Ya, all in all…I try not to buy into the stereotypes regarding anyone…and it seems like a great number of the “fears” expressed on this forum regarding domestic adoption and birthmothers as based off of just that, a stereotype.

I know this was posted on this forum one other time by Regina, but I’m going to post it again…because I think the information contained within it is invaluable, especially to people who continually perpetuate the stereotypes.

The Truth About Domestic Adoption
Eliza Newlin Carney

http://e-magazine.adoption.com/arti...ic-adoption.php

Not long after my husband and I adopted our infant daughter, we went to a summer barbecue where we met another couple with a young child. When it came up that we had adopted Beth domestically at birth, they were unbelieving. "We thought that didn't happen," they objected, seemingly incredulous that our family could exist at all.

I was tempted to quip that the three of us furnished living proof to the contrary. While our adoption wait lasted 18 months and had its share of ups and downs, it was by far the least difficult leg on our journey to parenthood. Once we made the decision to adopt, I was buoyed by a sense of hope and expectation, knowing that we would now inevitably become parents. By contrast, the preceding years of invasive tests, failed treatments and miscarriages lasted twice as long and were a dark time.

Still, I spared the couple at the barbecue wry quips and lengthy sagas, and instead tried to explain that domestic adoption is still quite common, that we know literally dozens of families like ours. But our new friends remained skeptical, even suspicious. They continued to insist that infant adoptions such as ours didn't happen any more.

Since then I've fielded lots of similarly ill-informed questions and comments about the way we built our family. Fortunately for us, most of our friends and relations are either too tactful or too knowledgeable to make offensive remarks. But as any adoptive parent can attest, the myths that surround domestic adoption are legion, and they are surprisingly well entrenched.

PERSISTENT MYTHS

One fellow adoptive mom told me that she'd been asked point-blank how much her daughter had cost. Another said that a friend wanted to know: "Do you think you love your child as much as if she had been born to you?" And virtually no parent in a domestic adoption hasn't been asked, in one way or another: "Aren't you afraid the real mother will try to take her back?"

To a degree, such blundering remarks reflect a simple lack of information. For those with no direct adoption experience, a little education can go a long way. But just beneath the surface of these myths lurk some unpleasant value judgments. The popular image of infant domestic adoption, particularly as reflected in sensational news stories and movies, is often less than pretty.

In the public eye, it seems, the typical domestic adoption looks something like this: Adopting parents wait five years or more for a baby, pay tens of thousands of dollars, and remain at constant risk of having their child snatched away by birthparents. (The birthmother was a troubled teenager who was coerced into adoption in the first place.) Adoptees exhibit a range of behavioral and identity problems. The bonds between adoptive parents and their children are not as strong as those between blood relations. And so on. To adoptive families, such stereotypes seem so outrageous that they hardly merit rebuttal. Nevertheless, we often find ourselves acting as educators and advocates. This is also true for families formed through international adoption, of course. But the false assumptions around domestic adoption seem particularly persistent--and far off the mark.

MYTH #1: THERE ARE NO INFANTS AVAILABLE FOR ADOPTION IN THE U.S.

Take, for instance, the widespread belief that, as one woman assured me, "there are no babies" being placed for adoption in the United States. While domestic adoption statistics are hard to come by, the Alexandria, Virginia-based National Council for Adoption estimates that 20,000 or more U.S.-born infants are placed for adoption every year. That's more than the 19,000 or so international adoptions annually.

To be sure, infant domestic placements are less common than they were 30 years ago. [To understand why, see the interview with adoption historian Barbara Melosh on page 36 of this issue.] But there is a substantial community of families formed through domestic adoption in this country, and their story goes largely untold.

MYTH #2: ENDLESS WAIT AND PROHIBITIVE COST

The myth of the five-year wait also appears to be unfounded. The agencies and lawyers I spoke to assured me that a more typical wait would be one to two years. Nor are domestic adoption fees so staggering as people tend to assume they are. They can range from as little as $4,000 to $10,000. (In cases where people choose to adopt without the assistance of an agency, the wait and cost are less predictable. Perhaps the exceptional, high-cost cases in this category are the ones people hear about.) Most domestic adoption agencies are nonprofits, with sliding scales based on income.

It should go without saying (but doesn't) that the fees involved in adoption pay for such services as social work counseling and legal consultation--not for "buying" a baby, which is illegal around the world and in every state in the U.S. All aspects of adoption are regulated by state laws and reviewed by judges who preside over finalizations to assure that "baby buying" does not occur. I'm often struck that the same folks who inquire how much our adoption cost would never dream of asking proud parents who've just given birth in a hospital how much they (or their insurance) paid in medical bills.

MYTH #3: THE BIG BAD BIRTHPARENTS

Particularly pernicious is the myth that birthparents can resurface at any time and reclaim their children. One mom I interviewed calls this the "Big Bad Birthmother" myth.) Notwithstanding the much-publicized cases of Baby Richard and Baby Jessica-- both adoptions, by the way, to which the birthfather never consented less than one percent of domestic adoptions are contested in the courts.

Of course, domestic adoption does involve an element of legal risk. Once birthparents have given their consent, they have a small window of time in which to change their minds. (In Maryland, where we adopted Beth, that so-called revocation period was 30 days.) It is vitally important for everyone involved--parents and children--to know that the birthparents have been given every opportunity to make the right decision and feel good about it. By the time an adoption is finalized, both adoptive parents and birthparents are cognizant of the fact that the family formed by adoption is the one recognized as the child's family under the law. Post- placement revocations are devastating when they occur, but they are extremely rare.

MYTH #4: OPEN ADOPTION CONFUSES CHILDREN

A corresponding myth--that open adoption invites birthmothers to intrude on adoptive families--is likewise unfounded. Parents who choose open adoption are often hard- pressed to convince friends and relations that birthparent contact can be positive. Instead of meddling, many adoptive parents say, birthmothers tend to be reluctant to intrude. Nor do children appear confused about which is their "real" family. Susan Saidman, director of the domestic infant program at Adoptions Together agency in Silver Spring, Maryland, says, "Even when adults are confused, children are remarkably clear about relationships. As my daughter informed me one day, 'I love my birthmother because she made me alive; I love you because you take care of me.'" For Janice Witt, an adoptive mother of two living in Orange County, California, face-to- face contact with her children's birthparents "really dispels myths and insecurities, rather than creating more, because you have an open and honest relationship with the birthparents."

MYTH #5: THE TEENAGED BIRTHMOTHER

Another variant of the "Big Bad Birthmother" myth is the one that says birthparents are troubled or callous. Making an adoptive placement remains frowned-on by much of our society--one reason, I believe, that so many people are eager to assume that our daughter's birthmother was a teenager. In fact, adoption professionals tell us that most birthmothers today are older than 18. Some are struggling to rear a first child and don't believe they can manage parenting a second. Yet the idea of a pregnant teenager making an adoption plan strikes many as more acceptable, and perhaps less threatening, than the notion of an adult woman facing such difficulties that adoption is her best option.

"One of the biggest, hardest myths for birthmothers is that they don't care," says Susan Saidman. "They do care. They care enough to know that they can't parent at this time."

MYTH #6: THE TROUBLED ADOPTEE

Perhaps the most damaging myth of all is the one that says Adoptees are disproportionately troubled, developmentally and emotionally. If anything, recent research suggests, Adoptees may be better adjusted than their non-adopted peers. Adopted adolescents have a positive self-image and resolve their identity concerns "at rates as high or higher than their peers," according to a study titled Growing Up Adopted, conducted by the Minneapolis-based Search Institute. The study also found that adolescent Adoptees have "extremely high rates of strong attachment to adoptive parents" debunking the notion that adoptive families have weaker bonds than those related by blood.

THE TRUTH: IT'S UP TO YOU TO DISPEL THE MYTHS

For families touched by adoption, combating all the myths may seem like a burden. Yet there's an urgent need to set the record straight because such myths have serious consequences. Women in crisis pregnancies who receive bad information (or no information) about adoption may make parenting decisions they'll later regret. Prospective adoptive parents who are spooked by domestic horror stories may overlook an important option, or reject openness for unsound reasons. For Adoptees, the message that their "real" parents are elsewhere and may come to reclaim them could be devastating. Children need to understand that adoption is forever.

While I cannot anticipate every hurtful or misinformed comment my daughter will hear over the years, I can arm her with some basic facts: That we are her very "real" parents and will be here for her for the rest of her life; that she was not "given up" for adoption, but loved by her birthmother and birthfather, who chose us to be her Mom and Dad; and that adoption is a normal way to build a family--even when it happens right here in the United States.

More Facts:

What is adoption? Answer.
Who can adopt? Answer.
How high/low are adoption costs and fees? Answer.
What are the types of adoption? Answer.
Who are the "waiting" children? Answer.
What does "special needs" mean? Answer.

[numbr1dbcksfan]

Birth moms pick out the adoptive parents. Adoptive parents could wait years without being selected - or never be picked at all, even though they might make terrific parents and come highly recommended on their home study.

I dont think we ever see homestudies... at lease I have never heard of that. The representation that we get is usually from a profile created by the parent themselve. Some people just come across more down to earth than others... I know I put down any profile that sounded snobby. Just input...

I know of one case in my home town where a sixteen year old birth mom selected two gay men to adopt her newborn infant boy. I really question whether a sixteen year old has the wisdom to properly make such a decision that will affect that child's life forever more.

If that child has the wisdom to choose adoption over abortion then she is certainly entitled to choose the parents if she so desires. I dont think that it is about being a child-- but about it being HER child.

The U.S. system is completely driven by the birth parents.

The reason that it needs to be this way, again, is because a 'birth' parent is THE parent until he or she signs termination papers. It would be, IMO, more irresponsible to sign your child over to no one-- without a care in the world. Choosing the parents that we think are best is sometimes the only thing that we can give to our children. Taking that opportunity is definately wise, to me.