Deciding to Adopt

In the early 1990s, many families were moved to adoption and took action when they saw the plight of the children in Romania. Many believed that with enough love and good medical care these children would be all right. Most of the children are doing well, but some have permanent scars. Again, pictures moved us the day after Christmas 2004 with the great tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean. Many people inquired if these orphans could be adopted. Unlike the babies and children of Romania, these children could not be adopted. Officials in poorer countries usually do not permit candid shots of orphans who live in desperate situ­ations; yet these children do exist. They need homes just as much as the orphans that we have seen in the news.

International adoption may be the right choice for you if you:

• Have the ability and resources to be a good parent and feel compelled to help an orphan
• Want to adopt a baby within about nine months
• Have the resources to pay for an adoption and related expenses that may come to about $30,000, have some time to travel, are interested in other cultures, and understand that there are many unknowns about the child’s background
• Have other children and want to add to your family but possibly could have more biological children if you so chose.

With an international adoption, you are not waiting for a birth mother to select you. You can proactively start the adoption process, and you can adopt a child usually well within one year. Although there is paperwork to negotiate, it is manageable.

If you want to adopt a toddler and not an infant, you are much more likely to find such a child internationally than you would either through private or agency adoptions or through public agencies. Here in the United States, birth mothers almost always relinquish only infants, and the majority of children available through the social services departments are school age and older.

If you want to adopt an older child or a child with special needs, you can make a difference in a child’s life. Remember, you will not be provided the same public services as someone adopting a child that has been in foster care.

If you are interested in adopting a child from Asia or South America and are Caucasian, then you should be willing to be part of an interracial/ethnic family and be comfortable accepting your differences.

Millions of children around the world need a family, not just for their emo­tional well-being, but also often for their very survival. Although only a fraction of these children are legally free for adoption, this fraction still translates into tens of thousands of children being available and waiting for adoption. During the 1980s, the number of international adoptions rose from 5,700 in 1982 to nearly 10,000 in 1987. The numbers dropped in the early 1990s, mostly because South Korea reduced the number of children placed for adoption. In 1992, about 6,500 orphans were adopted from other countries. In 1994, the number climbed to 8,200, a 12 percent increase over 1993, and the numbers are continuing to rise, largely because of an increase in adoptions from China, Russia, and Eastern European nations. In 2003, more than 21,000 children from overseas were adopted by Americans. Since 1956, when adoptions first began from Korea, about 250,000 international children have been adopted by Americans.