Adoption - Does red tape stand in the way?

by Bethany Sanders (Subscribe to Bethany Sanders's posts) Nov 11th 2008 5:00PM

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?

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Comments (29)

Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)

Diane 11-12-2008 @ 11:27AM

I was in 15 foster homes, each one was an abusive situation...all they wanted was the little bit of money they get and some wanted pats on the back for being such a good person to take in foster children.. I was raped, beaten, burned, locked away and tortured...15 homes.!!!!!!! Out of 15 homes you would have thought there would have been ONE kind family, Not So!! and as soon as I hit 18,,, it was goodbye from the system and get lost from the foster care family...This country is so sick,, a group home would be better, at least there would be more people there to monitor what was going on..Foster Care should be abolished!!!!!! Someone help the children!

Maggie Vink 11-12-2008 @ 12:21PM

First off -- and this where SO many adoptive parents go wrong -- adoption is not about the parents. Sorry. I'm an adoptive parent, too, and I know how badly I wanted my son. But all of your fears of kids going back to their birth parents yada, yada, yada -- it's not about you. It's about the kids and if the world were a perfect place, adoption would not exist.

Even though these comments have gone way off track and aren't even really addressing what the original post is about, I think many of you have illustrated why only 36 of every 1,000 parents that contact social services end up adopting from the foster care program.

Foster care exists, first and foremost, to give children a place to live while their birth parents get their problems straightened out. Whether it be drugs, abuse issues, neglect... whatever. The system is designed to help birth families become healthy and reunite. That's why adopting a young child without being a foster parent yourself is rare (not impossible, but rare). The system does not exist to hand over children to waiting parents.

My son was 10 when I adopted him. He's been through a lot -- years of abuse and neglect with his birth family, multiple foster placements (some good, some not good, one that was wonderful), and a disrupted adoption. Because of his past he has fears and worries and anger that we deal with on a daily basis. He also has developmental problems because of in utero exposure to alcohol and the lack of proper parenting when he was an infant and toddler.

Adopting an older child from foster care is enormously rewarding, but it isn't something that should be entered into lightly. I'm glad that the screening process weeds out a lot of potential adoptive parents -- it should.

Adoptive parents need to enter the foster care process with the correct mindset -- that the system exists for the reunification of birth parents and their children. If you're going to foster, do so knowing that your goal is to reunify children. If you don't want to foster, than explore the issues involved in adopting an older child and work through an agency that will help you do adopt only (your best bet might be a private agency) -- there are many children in the system whose parent's right have already been terminated.

SKL 11-12-2008 @ 12:55PM

You make many good points, Maggie. I would just say that it's not only the parents who suffer when a child is moved from family to family. My daughters have been with me for about a year now - that's about half of the time my older daughter has been alive. It was very hard for her to understand, accept, and finally embrace what happened to her a year ago. She still has many personality traits that reflect a distrust of how the world is going to treat her. But, at least she now trusts me as her mother, and gets a lot of comfort from that. I can't imagine how much she'd be harmed if she had to suffer another disruption for any reason.

Based on what you've said, I am sure you completely understand what I'm saying. I just didn't want other readers to misunderstand and think that we adoptive parents are only considering our own feelings when we say we worry about disrupted adoptions.

Not everyone adopts because they have no other way to have kids. I could have had biological children but decided to give a home to someone already in need rather than add another human or two to the earth. I know there is an attitude in some groups that adoptive parents only care about their own desires, but I don't think that's true at all. It's not true of adoptive parents that I know, many of whom have or could have biological kids.

Maggie Vink 11-12-2008 @ 1:02PM

Very good, clarification, SKL. Thank you.

My son went through a disruption. I know how much it affects a child. It's devastating.

Amaya's Momma 11-14-2008 @ 12:16PM

Maggie, I think you are being harsh and judgemental. What I meant to say is that yes, it is red tape that kept my husband and I from adopting through foster care, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't consider it in the future. Like you said, the foster care system exists to reunite birth families. My husband and I wanted our own, family. Is that selfish? You may think so, but I wonder how many pregnant women and mom's whose children are white are stopped by strangers and asked why they didn't choose foster care! I don't judge people who are taking the best care of their children they can. I do judge selfish parents who choose to put drugs, alchohol and sex in front of their children, and quite honestly I don't belive they deserve all the chances they are given. I think it is completely unfair to the children in the foster care system, that the law puts their selfish parents before their welfare. I saw this personally when my cousin lost custody of her children due to drug use. I loved my cousin, we were raised very close, but she deserved to lose custody of her children and was given too many chances to get them back, even though she had exposed them to drugs and sex at 4 and 6 years of age.
All of us make personal decisions on how to expand our families. My husband and I CHOSE adoption, instead of biological children. I don't want praise for it, it was our desire and has added immense joy to our lives. What I do want is for people not to judge me and not to be racist and for goodness sake, don't ask rude questions in front of my child whom I want to be happy she is where she is, but proud of her heritage. Every day I think of her birth mother and the huge sacrifice she made out of love, and she is the selfless person that I feel deserves praise!

SKL 11-12-2008 @ 1:03PM

Diane, I'm sorry to hear what happened to you in foster care. You make some good points. The more I read, the more I am convinced that our foster care system needs to be rethought. I agree that there are some kids who really shouldn't go into foster homes at all. I think people were so proud of the fact that our country basically abolished orphanages, they were blind to the fact that some kids actually do better in an institutional setting than in a family setting. And of course, when they are putting "all" the kids in the system into foster homes, they necessarily lower their standards for the foster parents. I think there needs to be a movement to identify and resurrect the good side of institutionalized care and other options, such as paying a relative or family friend to foster. Another thing we need to do is figure out how to get foster kids to tell what's happening to them in real time and have some meaningful punishments / deterrents for the foster parents. I'm not ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but there is way too much harm being done by the current system.

Sue 11-13-2008 @ 11:28AM

I am also stopped by strangers and asked if my daughter is adopted or my biological child. In the beginning I was excited to tell people of where she came from and how she became a part of our family. But in the las couple of years I hve become quite weary of how ignorant people can be and how unreserved their questions can be in front of my now three year old daughter. My husband and I already had three biological children when we agreed to fulfill my life long dream of adopting. We did not care on race or location. We did not want to go the International route where people are waiting in line for a child. Because we already had children we did not think it was fair to keep someone else waiting for a child that did not. We wanted to adopt a child that may not have a chance at a family. We were surprised at all the road blocks set in out path to keep us from doing what I always felt in my heart was right. We were treated by some agencies quite indignantly. It was either a teenage child with emotional and behavioral problems or no child at all. (we did consider this but with three other children in the home we did not feel it was the right thing to do at the time) In some states biological parents have the right to change their minds up to 90 days after you take a baby home. Ours is one of them. It is now very common for adoptive parents to pay for living expenses for the biological mother during her pregnancy along with the birth expenses and we were told by an adoption attorney that although if the adoptive parent changes their mind they are legally responible to reimburse the adoptive parents for the expenses, that very rarely happens. We found a wonderful agency in Orlando Florida, Celebrate Children, that walked us through everything. They explained each program's requirements because there are different criteria in each country. Because the length of time out of the country was very short (we couldnt afford to take the whole family out of country for 3 - 4 weeks as some country's require) we decided Guatemala would work best for us. The process was quite a bit faster than that of other countries like China because so many people want to adopt from China there is a long waiting list. Because Guatemala is not exactly the vacation capital of the world (terrible poverty and crime) fewer people are adopting from there compared to other countries. We started our paperwork in Sept. 2005 and We accepted Emmas Referral on Nov. 14 2005 when Emma was only 4 days old and we were able to bring her home March 13, 2006 right after she turned 4 months. Our other daughter Maddie was in the 3rd grade at the time and her class had been anxiously waiting her arrival. During the four months that we had to wait to bring Emma home my daughters teacher had a special day discussing families. What family means and all the different types of families there are. When we received updated paoto's Maddies class received updated photos. At the end of March they also had another day that was Guatemala day; and she encouraged parents to participate and dress their children in traditional Guatemalan clothes and bring in food dishes from that country and spend some time with the class and meet their guest of honor. Maddie's new sister. I believe that one of the best things we can do for society in general is to give a child a family that doesn't have one. I know it changed Emma's life and it certainly changed ours and I believe that of my daughters 3rd grade class with a ripple affect that will continue beyond my life time.

Pat 12-02-2008 @ 5:07PM

Thirty-eight years ago I brought home my beautiful daughter who we adopted. It was a long and sometimes heartbreaking process..it took five years and two rejections before our dreams were fulfilled.
Shortly after we brought our daughter home, the adoption process took a turn for the worse. Private adoptions, through an attorney became legal...If you had money this was good, if you didn't it was bad..very bad.
We adopted through Catholic Family Services, and we paid a percentage of our income...which was more than justified. When adoptions went private, the costs skyrocketed and became impossible for the everyday working class.
Wait, I jumped ahead of myself.....FIRST, all of the homes for unwed mothers were closed...THEN private adoptions became legal.
The State and Government refused anymore financial assistance for these homes....SAD, very SAD.....for everyone, especially the unwed mother. Up until then it was unheard of to find a baby in a dumpster or a young girl killing her own newborn.
A year and a half after we brought our daughter home, we were blessed with adopting a son....by this time, the system had gone from bad to worse. Courts were giving back adopted children, to a natural parent, who had been adopted for many years. It didn't matter whether the biological parent could take care of the child, financially, physically or emotionally....and it didn't matter how well the child had been loved and cared for....the were taken away. Not a single child who was taken away from their adopted parents were taken away because of neglect or abuse.
Normally, an adoption isn't finalized for a year, but when the above started, adoptions were being finalized sooner...we were part of that nerve racking period....during and after that period, adoptive parents lived in fear, daily, that their children would be ripped out of their homes and hearts.
It is almost impossible to adopt a child in this country and money is the biggest factor...another huge factor is the foster care program.
If a child goes into foster care for any reasons other than health or servere financial problems, that would hurt the child, and that child is in foster care for over a year, then parental rights should be removed and the child should be allowed to be adopted.
Celebrities, looking for public praise and admiration (which is mainly for financial gain and popularity, i.e. Joan Crawford type, to name one) has thwarted the attempts of middle class people to adopt....it has become all about money.
My children are adults now, 38 and 36, and I have been blessed with three beautiful grandchildren. I give thanks everyday that I was able to adopt and have the wonderful family that I have. But I see so many young people today, who are unable to have children and the prospects of adopting become slimmer and slimmer. While the prospects become slimmer and slimmer, wonderful children will continue to waste away in the foster care system or become financially unavilable to a loving family.
There is no reason for a baby to die in a dumpster or be abandoned where no one will find them...or worse, be sold into slave trade (and this truly does happen).
If people choose to adopt from other countries, that's fine, but make our children available to us...all of us, not just the select wealthy.

patty 1-19-2009 @ 11:05PM

i am a foster mother have been for 13yrs. all 6 of my children were from foster care. i do think our system needs revamping. no they dont all ways put the children first, i know its all about reunifacation. now not only does our ocs dept . suck sorry but it seems they dont have enough education , and traing.hey lets dont forget about our judges who send these children home with birth moms against ocs wishes. 6 mths or earlier they are back in the system. one of my children with through that. i dont know if he will ever recover from that. also adopting from the ocs does take 2 to three years and its not the bio parents holding these up. yep good ole ocs. the workers really dont care how long it takes they dont get paid anymore for how many adoptins they do, i really believe in adopting from our country but my last 3 children took almost 3 yrs come feb. something has to chane with this system. what is the new law about children being in fostercare for a year? its very very sad at all these children waiting for a home. its a sad day in america because some of these ocs people dont care. they really dont its just a job and dont get paid enough at that. go figure

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