At playgroup the other day, I sat next to a mom who adopted her daughter from Guatemala. "Everyone always said, 'You can always adopt'," she said. "Like it's so easy." I knew exactly what she was talking about. I watched my closest friend go through the adoption process, and it's anything but easy. Despite the fact that she was adopting from the foster care system and had chosen to adopt an older child, the process was still one long roller coaster ride.
That's not meant to discourage anyone from adopting, of course, because both of those moms would say that the rewards FAR outweigh any difficulty they had adopting. But it does make one wonder, why is it so hard to adopt? Especially in the case of domestic adoption from the foster care system, where -- according to this article -- there are far more waiting parents than their are kids?
A recent survey found that there are 600,000 women in the United States seeking to adopt a child. In 2006, there were 129,000 foster children waiting to be adopted. So why don't the numbers add up? Commonly accepted roadblocks are that people don't want to adopt outside of their race, that families don't want to adopt older children, or that there aren't enough families for those with severe disabilities. But according to this same survey, that's just not true. A large majority of respondents said that none of those things would stop them from adopting.
Jeff Katz, founder of the Listening to Parents project, says that the answer lies instead in bureaucracy and red tape, and cites the statistic that for every 1,000 parents people who call social services to inquire about adopting, only 36 do so. It's an interesting perspective. At what point to the strict regulations put in place to protect foster children actually keep them from finding loving families? On the other hand, when parents aren't properly prepared for for adoption, they're at risk of disruption, which is terribly traumatic for children.
There's no easy answer to this question, but it's one to mull over carefully. If you're an adoptive parent, what do you think?
1. Maybe that's why people are adopting from other countries so much now, more of a guarantee for a child. A friend of mine recently adopted a 9 month old from Guatemala too. I asked her why there instead of from here in the US ( so many children in the us need homes just as much as children from other countries) and she said because she wasn't married and they wouldn't let her have an infant. I'm not sure about that, but I can't help but wonder why, if so many children need homes, they put so many silly restrictions on adoption. You can't be single, you can't be gay/lesbian, you have to be married X amount of years, you have to be a certain race and make a certain income. I understand that they are trying to protect the children but what's better...being adopted into a loving home with parent(s) who had the honor of choosing you no matter what their marital status or sexual orientation or growing up in the system getting tossed from one place to another you're whole life?
As scary as it is my husband and I plan to start the adoption process in a couple of years and I guess we'll get to see first hand how it works. We have a child but we still want to adopt one or two older children also.
Posted at 5:27PM on Nov 11th 2008 by c_rousseau05