Differences in the adoption process in UK and US?

Question

I have been reading the adoption Q & A's on here for some time now and wondered about your opinions and thoughts on the adoption process in different countries.

Now in the UK it is free to adopt. The only time you pay is if you go overseas for a child. To adopt a UK child doesn't cost a penny and you can even be eligable for adoption payments.

In the US it seems totally different. I gather that lots of agencies are involved who charge adoptive parents to adopt a child. To simplify this it seems to me that babies are for sale and only those with the financial means can adopt. It also seems to me that using agencies who are, at the end of the day, in it to make money is just plain wrong. What is important here is the child and the birth mother.

I have read on here of birth mothers who felt they were pressured into putting up their child for adoption through an agency in the US, that they weren't given or shown any other options. How can that be right?

Answer 1

I'm not sure exactly how it works in the US, but in Canada we pay a fee for the home study (~15 hrs with the social worker) and birth parent counceling and the legal process of changing guardianship/parents.  Yes, the adoptive parents pay a pooled fee for couceling for the birth parents to help make the adoption easier to cope with.  

This is only if you go with a private agency and it's always open adoption (birth parents have contact with you and the baby, no secrecy).  You cannot get an infant unless you go through a private agency.  The only children the government deals with here are special needs (mental problems) and seized children (come from unfit homes).

It does seem like we're buying a baby - but we try to remember how much work and care goes into the whole process from our social worker (she's awesome!) and realize in the end it's just money (we're only paying $6500, international is >$15000).

I just think our government doesn't want the responsibility - however abortions are paid for by the government - doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me!

Answer 2

It's alot more humane in the UK.  It is a social service and private adoption involving money is illegal - it's considered unethical.  Although not without it's problems, the UK system does not leave room for the unethical practises and money-making corruption that the US system is left open to

In the USA free enterprise includes money changing hands and people profiting off the backs of little babies - it's disgusting the way things are done in the USA IMO and in the opinion of many many folks looking at the system of adoption in the USA from the outside-in.   The US System is in urgent need of reform and federal regulation

The icing on the cake is that birth records in the USA are sealed from the very people they belong to - the adoptees!!!  in all but 8 states

In the UK records  have been open since the early 1970s and none of the problems that the US National Council For Adoption and Pro-Lifers in the US fear have ever come to fruition.  Yet still, they fight to keep our records sealed for all the wrong reasons.  Land of the free?  MY A**!