Why did you choose international over domestic adoption?

Question

If you are not an international adoptive parent or are not in the process of becoming one, please DO NOT ANSWER! I'm not interested in the "why adoption is bad" stuff...

I have never considered domestic adoption myself. My first experience of adoption was through foster care, and that is still where I see the largest need, and the only place I would personally adopt from. I get slightly ill when I see celebreties bringing home "rainbow kids" when we have so many here that need love.

Still, I can't believe that all people who adopt internationally only have selfish reasons. I looked, but I didn't find an unbiassed question on WHY yet - at least not anytime recently. So I ask you - why was international adoption the way you chose?

Answer 1

I adopted from Russia because Russian kids are better looking at and smartter (chess), because I am half Russian and because I hate yianckes

Answer 2

Given your preamble, I wouldn't rush to call this an unbiased question.

You are sickened by mixed race families formed through international adoption.

Every parent approaches families differently. Nearly all, first attempt to add a new child to the planet through reproduction. Have you asked each of them why they didn't adopt from foster care?

We decided to adopt first and then decided how to do it. My husband was not adopted and was able to accept first choice adoption but felt strongly about starting with a baby. . We do not believe in open adoption so we knew that we would go abroad. We looked at programs and quickly realized that Korea was the best match for us.

People who choose International Adoption are NOT choosing a greatest need adoption. Why that would make you ill is beyond me. Very few families are formed based on the greatest need of homeless children. In fact, most families are formed without any regard for any sort of need whatsoever. And that is really just fine.

I am very pro adoption and wish that more people would form their families that way, but I know that attacking them is not the way to promote change.

Answer 3

We adopted internationally because we were scared off from the foster care situation.  We are unable to care for a child with severe physical, emotional baggage, or with drug exposure due to the fact we have children already that we didn't want to "ignore" when the child with lots of problems joined the family.  If we were childless we would have definitely considered FC. We didn't want to fall in love with a child only to have it returned to the birth family and a situation  that was not a healthy  in the first place.  Too many times a child is yours only to be taken away and placed with the birth family or another foster family.  This happens too often.

I know not all foster kids have been physically, emotionally abused, drug or alcohol exposed but a large percentage have.  We were unable to care for a child like that based on our family situation. So we chose a country were these problems are not common.  We knew we would/could have to deal with attachment/bonding, institutional behaviors.  But those can usually be over come with love, therapy and time.

Bottom line we chose IA because we wanted to adopt the child that was meant to be ours and they were overseas.  When our youngest is out of the house I would like to foster, but without the possibility of adopting.  I would like to show these kids a healthy home before YOU adopt them.

I think it takes a special kind of person to adopt from FC and I am not that kind of person right now in my life.  I don't think I am selfish or wanting a rainbow family (very offensive termology) because I chose IA just honest with who I am and my abilities.

Answer 4

I will tell you my boyfriend's story as I was not adopted. When he was 17 months old he lived in Haiti and was very malnourished and sickly. His mom went to the missionaries that are in the city and asked them to watch him until he passed on. His mother had a few children before him that died shortly after birth, and she didn't want her family to have to see another baby pass on. Instead the missionaries brought him to the United States and nursed him back to health. The missionaries eventually adopted him, but he has always been in contact with his birth family. He even went back to Haiti for 6 months when he was a teenager. Now that he is with me we are hoping to go visit soon! The way his adoptive parents treated him is questionable, but that's a whole other story. His adoption wasn't planned, but they saw him and "fell in love." I know that TONS of international adoptions are corrupt, but some are legit (like my boyfriends). I plan on being a foster mom (a life long dream of mine) and have been doing research to help me prepare. Like you, I think that US children should always come first, but like I said, some IA are legit. I hope this helps you!

Answer 5

We adopted internationally because when we tried to adopt through foster care the social worker would only approve us to adopt an infant or toddler because we were so young. Then also they didn't do transracial placements, which we didn't  care about, but it meant we were on a long waiting list for a Caucasian infant. We wanted to adopt older children, any ethnicity.  

We were thinking about just going ahead and having a baby the old-fashioned way (our second choice) when a friend suggested we look into adopting an older child or special needs child from overseas.  We were referred a toddler with a whole bunch of health problems. He had been in an orphanage since shortly after he was born.

For our second adoption we tried foster care again, but this time they said that our son's medical problems required too much of our time and attention. They said we should foster instead, because then we could always give the children back if it was too much. While we wanted to foster later, we did want to adopt. So we went overseas again and adopted two older siblings.

We didn't choose the countries we did in order to have a rainbow family. We chose the countries based on where we thought we could have the most ethical adoption.

Answer 6

I have had no such experience, but I 'd like to mention a couple of things, just because I find them interesting.

1. "why adoption is bad" stuff...

:who would ever say that? Adoption is a noble act!

2. I am in Greece. Here, it is hard to adopt a baby. The procedures are very long and there is a long list of parents who wait and they don't get a child for many years. That is the reason they go adopt a kid in Balkan countries, quickly.

3. There are some countries where orphaned children live in awful condition. I mean, in Greece, orphan children live in institutions, well it's better to be adopted, but even if they are not they live under good conditions, in nice buildings, with good food, schools, etc. In other (poor) countries, they live under awful conditions, packed in dirty rooms with not enough food, like Oliver Twist situation. So I would consider adopting from there, in order to save these kids from this situation. And I think this is what the celebrities who are doing so are trying to point out and reveal the problem.

Answer 7

I adopted internationally because I did not want to take a child away from its mother. At the time I did not realize that chinese children were stolen and bought from their first parents, and that IA was a contributing factor to that. I thought it was a more ethical choice.  

Answer 8

I chose international adoption over domestic adoption mainly due to my husband.

We live in Ireland (I'm Irish)are planning to adopt from Russia.

I met my husband who is Russian while I was doing my Masters in Moscow.

He was in and out of children's homes in Russia as a child due to his mothers addiction problems.

I have always known it would be unlikely I could have a child myself and would have to adopt and its important to him to adopt from Russia.

There are just more children than available adoptive parents in Russia.

In Ireland there are only about 50 children a year, if even that, and I've known people to be on the waiting list for 10 years in ireland for an Irish child.

That said, if I had of married an Irishman I would probably have adopted in Ireland.

It's not that I'm against international adoption but if I didn't have the ties to Russia that I have I wouldn't have adopted from there.

For example I haven't even considered China.

Mainly because I don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese, I don't really know anything about the culture. I feel like if I adopted a Chinese child I would raise them to be a perfect little Irishman/woman and I would feel like I had cut them off from their culture etc. It would be better they were adopted by someone who would be confident that they woudlnt do that.

Where as with a Russian child, I'm fluent in Russian. We go to Russia every year to visit family and firends. Where I live in Ireland has a large Russian/Eastern European community.

I mean if I had a child and put it up for adoption I would want it adopted by someone who was going to teach it the Irish language and culture etc.

I can do that for a Russian child.

Answer 9

I adopted my wonderful son from Guatemala because I wanted to.  My personal reasons are just that --- PERSONAL.  He was not a second choice.

I'm not getting into a contest between adoptive parents who want to impress the world with thier charitable adoptions and advertise who gets the biggest prize for adopting the MOST needy child of all.  

I don't have a soapbox.  I don't need to impress anyone...  I've stated my activities and relations with adoptions in the very recent past already.

Answer 10

When we decided to adopt, we looked at all three avenues of adoption very carefully: domestic infant adoption,foster care adoption and international adoption.  We made our decision to adopt overseas after a lot of research on every factor we could come up with, speaking to many different sources (agencies, adoptive parents, adoptees, state services) and a good deal of soul searching.  

In the end, we determined that IA was best for our family. It was an informed and carefully made decision.  I can tell you also things that did not factor into our decision: We did not do it to create a "rainbow family", we did not do it because we want to be like some movie star on a talk show, we did not do it because we wanted to adopt an infant, we did not do it because we didn't want to mess with "birth mama drama", we did not do it because we wanted to "save" a child to feel better about ourselves.  (get the point here?)

Personally, that statement "Why adopt overseas when there are so many children here that need adoption" kinda makes ME ill.  There are children all over the world that need homes.  Why do YOU think that US children somehow deserve those homes more than children not born in the US?  Foster care adoption isn't for everyone and we determined that at this point in our lives, it wasn't for us.  But because of our decision to adopt overseas, two school age children (not infants!) who didn't have a home, have one now.  

If you choose to adopt from foster care, I wish you the best of luck in your experiences.  I'm not going to berate you for choosing to adopt from foster care instead of adopting a child from overseas, because ALL children deserve a home.  If your decision provides a home for a child that needs one, then I support your decision.  From whatever route of adoption you choose.

Answer 11

Okay, well I'm not an international adoptive parent nor am I in the process of becoming one... BUT we do plan on adopting internationally within the next 5 years.

My main reason for adopting internationally is the wait time. I don't care about the age but my partner wants to adopt a baby or at least under 3. Adopting a child of that age domestically (Canad) takes a long time - you can wait for years to even have a bio parent look at your profile. With international adoptions, you can often have a child home within a year of starting the process.

The other reason is probably a silly one, but I've heard too many horror stories of birth parents coming back and trying to take their kids back. This happened in my parents' city a few years ago even after the two sisters lived for 8 years with this new family. The biological parents won. (How is that in the best interest of the children?!)

Anyway, those may not be legit reasons, but they're MY reasons for adopting internationally.

Answer 12

I adopted twins, a boy and a girl, from Honduras three years ago and I'm in the process of adopting another girl from there. Let me tell you the story of my twins, Hannah and Aiden, or Kenia and Jose as they were known in Honduras: They were born to a thirteen year old mother who lived in the poorest slum in San Pedro Sula. At her young age, she suffered from severe alcoholism. The twins were severely malnourished to a point where they almost died. When they were six months old, their mother brought them to an orphanage where they would live while she entered a recovery program. That's where I met them. I'm a pediatrician, and I travel around the world to care for children living in poverty. Trust me, there is no area in the United States as poverty stricken as the place where my children lived. I brought these babies back to health, and in the process, I fell in love with them. Their mother visited them on the weekends, and one day she saw me working with them. She told me that I was a better mother than she ever could be, and asked if I would adopt her children. How could I say no? I loved these children, and this girl asked for my help. I immediately called my husband, and he got the quickest flight to Honduras to meet the babies. We accepted her offer, and now, three years later, Hannah and Aiden are happy and healthy. Adopting them was the best decision I've ever made. Honduras is the second poorest country on the western hemisphere. Although there is much poverty in America, that's nothing compared to this country. That is why I chose international adoption.

Answer 13

im adopted.

and my birth mom was pretty much screwed she was in jail multiple times and **** take care of me and she was (my present moms) best friend

so yea.....