Why not adopt from U.S. foster care?

Why not adopt from U.S. foster care?

I can hear it now.  “Well M, you want to adopt a child who has less chance of finding a family, and you’re not fussed about gender or race.  What about adopting from US foster care?  We have thousands of children in need of homes right here in the states. Plus domestic foster care adoptions cost less.”

B and I thought a lot about adopting from the public system.  It came down to what we were comfortable with.  You’ll probably get sick of hearing that phrase if I don’t chase you off reading this blog with my long posts, punctuation and spelling mistakes :-D

B and I are not willing to adopt out of birth order.  So we will only accept a referral for a child younger than C.  Since we’re being totally honest on this blog (at least striving to be) we’ve thought a lot about age ranges and we don’t think we’re up for a child over 2 years old.  We absolutely know that a child at two years old has a lot of experiences under their belts that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.  They can be severely traumatized. We are not under the impression than a child under two will not remember or not affected long term by their experiences.   We do think that attachment and bonding will probably be easier for a younger child.  It is important to us to be there for as much of our child’s life as possible.  Since we are being completely honest- we’d love to adopt a child as young as possible but two really seems to be our mental cut off range.

B and I are not up for being foster parents.  Thank God people are up for it- but we are not.  Neither of us can imagine taking a child into our home, loving them, caring for them and then having them leave.  We are just not that selfless. We cannot fathom explaining a foster sibling leaving to C.    So if we were to pursue adoption from foster care we would NOT be participating in foster to adopt.

We’ve also really reflected on adopting a special needs child.  It is true you cannot ever know if your children will have special needs or develop them later, but we know that there are special needs we do not feel capable of knowingly choosing.   We would adopt a child with a minor physical disability- missing some digits or maybe even one limb, a cleft pallet, hip dysplasia, club foot, and umbilical hernia- you get the picture.  We would also carefully consider the adoption of a blind or seriously vision impaired child or a deaf child.  We are not willing to knowingly take on a developmentally challenged child, a child with severe physical disabilities, a known shortened life span, or a non-curable communicable illness.   Of course these are generalizations and there is a ton or grey space between the lines we’ve drawn.

We would only accept a referral of a child under C’s age (preferably under 2) that was legally free to adopt.  In other words that the parental rights were already terminated.   Based on those three factors we’re pretty darn sure our wait would be unpredictably long.  Think about it- if a child has been in foster care long enough to be legally free to adopt by their 2^nd birthday don’t you think most of them will be adopted by their foster parents?  I hope most of them are, I hope and pray for as much stability for those babies and toddlers as possible.

If you look at the U.S. waiting children lists- and I have- you see two major types of children under two looking for adoptive homes.  The first is a child under two that is a part of a sibling group.  Since we’re not going to adopt a child older than C this basically rules out sibling groups.  The second child under two has major disabilities that B and I do not feel capable of caring for.

U.S. adoption from foster care just isn’t for us.  We’ve looked into it- we really have and it is not the way for us to grow our family at this time.

~M