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If you and your spouse are planning to attempt to adopt domestically, please see below:
- US (domestic) infant adoption is declining to unsustainable levels. One national agency reports 135 placements in 2017 and only 77 in 2019. It's estimated that 2 million couples are chasing less than 18,000 adoptable infants.
- Age restrictions. Couples between the age of 25 to 35 are being somewhat successful with adoption. (50% failed adoption rate) Statements like this are red flags: "While our adoption agency doesn’t have an upper age limit, it is our prospective birthparents who choose their child’s adoptive family." Their contract will clearly state no guarantee of placement, all risk is assumed by you, not the agency, and you indemnify the agency for making mistakes or any other failures related to the adoption.
- No refunds. These clauses will prevent you from receiving any refunds of fees paid to the adoption agency. This include birth mother expenses and birth mother expenses that may or may not be compliant with various states laws. Please note that these contracts contain clauses that make you responsible for questionable birth mother expenses, not the agency. Many couples are placed into a situation where they can no longer continue their adoption attempts due to financial setbacks.
We have two family members and quite a few friends who have adopted. Only one family that I know was successful in adopting an infant domestically through an agency within the past 18 years (by which I mean that they created a profile and were chosen by a birth mother to adopt her newborn).
One couple who are our friends tried the foster-to-adopt system, but were unsuccessful. Twice they were promised that the children they were fostering would be available for them to adopt by X date, but after an extended time the children were abruptly removed from their home to reunite with biological relatives.
All the other adoptions have been either domestic adoptions of older children, private adoptions, or (the majority) international.
We have two family members and quite a few friends who have adopted. Only one family that I know was successful in adopting an infant domestically through an agency within the past 18 years (by which I mean that they created a profile and were chosen by a birth mother to adopt her newborn).
Yes, some couples have success with adoption. I'm sure they are overjoyed with their new family member and we all rejoice with them. The problem is that there are more couples seeking to adopt than there are babies available for adoption. We also seen a trend with adoption professionals to contract with more couples than they can find placement for. Independent Adoption Center (IAC) was a multi-state adoption agency that filed for bankruptcy protection in Feb 2017. Somewhere around 2,000 couples were impacted by this bankruptcy. Most were unable to find another adoption situation either via an new agency or attorney.
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One couple who are our friends tried the foster-to-adopt system, but were unsuccessful. Twice they were promised that the children they were fostering would be available for them to adopt by X date, but after an extended time the children were abruptly removed from their home to reunite with biological relatives.
All the other adoptions have been either domestic adoptions of older children, private adoptions, or (the majority) international.
I feel for your friends that tried to adopt via the foster care system. Given the priorities of the foster care system, I not sure it is possible anymore to adopt young children or infants. The foster care system is only interested in reunification and the placement of teenagers and medical fragile children. There are very few infertile couples capable of dealing with their infertility and these types of adoption situation.
International adoption used to be very popular and successful about 10 years ago. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. The US State Department - Office of Children Services is clearly using the Hague Treaty to slow down and stop international adoptions.
I work at a small law firm in a small town. We should not be getting 5 to 10 calls per week asking for legal assistance in getting various adoption agencies to find adoption placements. Too many agencies are contracting with too many infertile couples seeking to adopt a baby. All the agencies/attorneys I spoken to state that adoption continues to decline. A couple years ago they were seeing several adoption situation per year. Now they are not seeing any. Major National Adoption agencies are seeing 25% declines year after year. Some agencies have 300 or 400 couples waiting and only seeing at most 50 adoption situations per year. It just like you describe, you only know of 1 couple in 18 years that were successful in an unrelated domestic infant adoption. That information needs to be more widely known. Also, couples signing these contract should know and understand what they are signing. Many don't read or understand their contracts.
You are on record on this forum as being "anti-adoption". You and some others are in an anti adoption "support group".
There are many happy families created thru adoption. There are many happy adoptees.
Adoption has been around forever. And it will be. Things go in cycles.
Really, being against adoption is the center of your life? There ARE bad adoptive parents. I am thinking of that couple in California with double digit kids who starved their children and locked them up in the house. Atrocious.
However, biological parents do the same things. Sometimes worse.
Your problems appear to be the result of personal experience, not a cultural or social trend.
I think they would be best addressed by a skilled therapist.
As a mother of six, I will never understand the desire to adopt a child. I'm beginning to understand the pain of infertility as my oldest daughter is currently battling infertility.
In 2008, there were problems finding adoption matches. Twelve years later this problem still exists. Right now it appears that most adoption agencies have 4 times or more couples waiting for adoption matches. All of these agencies state their average waiting time is 12 to 18 months. Clearly, this estimate is inaccurate. A small agency with 30 couples will wait 4 to 6 years given that the agency is only finalizing 4 to 6 adoption per year. Larger agencies have similar ratios.
These agencies know that infant adoption is declining. Agencies have changed their business models to account for this change. Almost all the funding of the agency is now done via application fees, marketing fees, and education fees. These agencies have setup these fees to be earned prior to any match. These agencies are not dependent upon adoptions finalizing. They are making their money if no adoption occurs, or if a failed adoption occurs. They are also preying upon older couples. They know that couples older than 40 will not be selected by a birth mother.
In states with deceptive business practices laws, we have been successful in highlighting these issues. Adoption agencies have responded with including clauses in their contract that indemnify the agencies against these deceptive business laws.
Couples trying to adopt in 2020 need to first know and understand these facts of adoption. Also, they need to read and understand contracts being written by adoption agencies. Adoption agencies are not reducing risks to hopeful adoptive couples.
I have had professional experience of many children who were adopted at birth, over the past 30 years. This is a horrible but true thing that those adopting should know. Children tend to be like their bio-parents. In today's world, with little to no stigma attached to being an "unwed" mother, people tend to keep their kids. And if they cannot, their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, etc take the babies to raise. By the time that a child winds up going out into the foster care system, it usually means that there is drug and alcohol addiction and criminal behavior on both sides, three generations up and three degrees of relation parallel, who are not eligible to take the child. That means that the child is coming with a very strong genetic tendency towards addiction and mental health troubles.
I ask people, "What would you do if you got a call from DCF telling you that your cousin, whom you haven't seen in 20 years, had a baby who is going to have to go into foster care, if you won't take them?" Uniformly, the knee jerk response is, "I'd take the baby immediately." Even though the cousin was a ne'er do well addict/criminal. It's your relation, you're not letting that baby go to foster care. So imagine how deep and wide the dysfunction is, for the kids to have to go to foster care.
If you have the courage and strength to manage the mental health issues that these domestically adopted children usually have, then may God bless you. As long as you go into it with eyes wide open, knowing what you may be up against.
Chinese adopted babies were mostly fine, because their parents weren't mentally ill - they just came from a nightmare totalitarian society that at first practiced female infanticide (watch One Child Nation) to achieve the "One Child" policy, and then sold the baby girls for "adoption" by foreigners, all against the parents' wishes.
Babies from former Soviet bloc countries were largely the children of alcoholic prostitutes and criminals, many with fetal alcohol syndrome and mental illness.
Babies from South Korea were like babies adopted in the US before abortion became legal - children of girls who "made a mistake", and since society was so rigidly opposed to single motherhood, the babies were adopted out abroad.
I've seen a lot of mental illness in babies adopted from Central America, too - so I assume that it is the same as here - if the extended family is at all functional, they keep the babies.
Please, please DO adopt domestically and from abroad. Just be ready to deal with a time bomb of mental health issues that usually hit in pre-adolescence.
Please, please DO adopt domestically and from abroad. Just be ready to deal with a time bomb of mental health issues that usually hit in pre-adolescence.
I can generally agree with your post. But my question back to you is how?
The demographics of the US is getting older. The demographics that adoption agencies and attorneys want to work with is younger. (25 - 35 year of age). Older couples are not being selected. Foster Care priority is reunification, not adoption. The Hague treaty is shutting down all international adoption.
So again, how? What is the path forward for the millions of couples that want to adopt, but cannot.
Foster care. I know of amazing people who have fostered, and then adopted. Sometimes it went smoothly. Sometimes there were horrible custody battles. In any event, if they were good people, every child who came through their home at least had a loving, safe, peaceful home for the time that they were in it.
Foster care. I know of amazing people who have fostered, and then adopted. Sometimes it went smoothly. Sometimes there were horrible custody battles. In any event, if they were good people, every child who came through their home at least had a loving, safe, peaceful home for the time that they were in it.
Fostering to adoption can be a rough road. I know a couple who have an adorable 5 year old they were able to adopt (after a 2 year roller coaster ride), but have also had to return two other foster kids. One after 2 years and countless assurances by their case worker that they’d be able to adopt her. Random family member popped up days before the adoption was going to be finalized. Why the courts favor someone who had ZERO interest in the child until she was two over the couple she considered her parents is beyond me.
Foster care. I know of amazing people who have fostered, and then adopted. Sometimes it went smoothly. Sometimes there were horrible custody battles. In any event, if they were good people, every child who came through their home at least had a loving, safe, peaceful home for the time that they were in it.
I see that others have chimed in about foster care and its challenges.
It's a little dated, but the information is still valid. The article talks about NC. Just like NC, our state has this problem. In my state we have a nurse that has a teenager with special needs. In the county next door there is a foster child with almost the same special needs. This nurse wanted to adopt this foster child, but county's budgets got in the way. The county next to mine would not send the child to our county because my county wanted the funds to care for this child. They also did not want to terminate this child's parental rights even though her biological parents abandoned this child more than 10 years ago. I would also point out that our neighboring county does not have the medical expertise that this nurse had, especially caring for her biological child and as a result had to send the child to a third county for treatment at the medical practice the nurse worked at. The end result is that this child was not adopted but is stuck in the foster care system.
Our county isn't really better. Our local foster care system is routinely fined by the US government for failing to meet permanency goals under the Adoption and Safe Families Act. They are also fined for failure to provide medical care. They refuse to do non-related adoption. They prefer limited guardianships. Also, like this article we have more than a hundred couples that want to adopt out of the foster care system, but a system that does not support adoption. It's a frustrating system. The foster care system wants volunteers to be foster only couples, but the community wants adoption instead.
So back to my question: How? How does someone adopt a child from foster care given these barriers. The nurse in my case was ideally situated for this teenage special needs child. I'm told that couples wanting to adopt medically fragile children are desperately needed. Why cannot these couples complete adoptions from foster care?
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