Why not domestic infant adoption?

Wednesday morning before heading into work I called a home study provider that had returned my contact email.  She wrote a very nice response and asked me to give her a call so we could discuss the process.  Since I had time before work I decided to give her a ring.

Over an hour later……  I was scurrying to be on time.  The conversation we had was interesting and challenging.  She asked me questions I honestly did not expect from a home study provider.  In retrospect they were all good questions aimed at figuring out if we really knew what we wanted, or if we had our head in the clouds.  Our conversation was a winding one but came down to asking a lot of “had we considered? And why not’s?”

So this is my first series of topics.  Tonight’s post is:

Why not domestic infant adoption?

First I want to say that for many parents domestic adoption is a great choice.  Everything I type here is only my (and B’s) opinion and is no way meant to be judgmental.  In figuring out how to navigate our choices in adoption we have to figure out what is important to US as a family and what is not.  We also have to figure out what we think is ethical for US, and what makes US feel uncomfortable.  Others have and will have different priorities and different stances on many of these topics.

There are multiple aspects of domestic infant adoption that have lead us to choose another path, here are a few.

Birth parents looking to place their unborn children into adoptive homes in the U.S. have a huge range of families to choose from.  Unless a child has a significant medical problem already diagnosed prior to birth there is no shortage of families looking to adopt.  It is true that boys and children of color are “less desirable” in adoption terms (not mine!!!!), however there are many families out there willing and happy to adopt infant boys that are not white.  We would be one of those families if we were going with domestic infant adoption.  Burton and I want to provide a family for a child that may otherwise not have one.  We have spoken a lot about special needs and do not feel that we are up to taking on an infant with a serious known condition prior to birth.  Those two things combined drive us to feel that domestic infant adoption is not for us.

In domestic infant adoption there are many service providers, lawyers, placement agencies, full service agencies, local providers and national providers.   In general the smaller the agency the longer your wait time for a referral since they cannot compete with the volume of larger service providers.  The largest service providers are national full service adoption agencies. In general the more you move towards these national full service the shorter your wait and the larger your bill.  Domestic infant adoptions with a full service national agency can be $45,000+.  Not all will be but they can be.

In the US you have to abide by different state regulations.  In many states you are allowed to pay for birth mother expenses.  Some states put a cap on the amount; others regulate it by what type.  This can include rent, food, medical bills etc.  If the birth mother changes her mind and you as hopeful adoptive parents have paid these expenses you are SOL. It is illegal and unethical to buy a baby, so any expenses you paid for are basically a gift to the birth mother and you have lost those funds moving forward toward (hopefully) another referral.  This whole process makes B and I uncomfortable.  We do not feel comfortable paying expenses.  If we were to go the domestic infant route we would be restricting our pool of possible birth parents significantly by not being open to participating.

We also have very strong opinions about prenatal care and substance exposure.  You have to document all of your preferences.  This helps you get matched with birth parents so your agency can send them your profile.  B and I are NOT comfortable with prenatal tobacco, alcohol or drug exposure and we feel strongly that we would want a birth mother that had prenatal care.  So when you combine the fact that we would not want our profile to be shown to mothers that have any of that in their history with the fact that we are uncomfortable with paying birth mother expenses our pool of prospective birth parents gets smaller and smaller.  This is even though we have no preference for sex or race.

In most domestic infant adoptions the birth parents pick out the adoptive family.  Adoptive families make profiles that are placed online and hard copies are sent to birth parents who are using the same agency as long as your preferences match. Many agencies have specific guidelines for profiles and will help you market yourselves.  This whole marketing aspect feels really odd to us.  You can see on agency websites information that tells prospective adoptive parents that the wait times are typically X-X, and if you do not have a referral in that time then you should listen to our profile recommendations, we know what adoptive parents want to hear.  I am paraphrasing of course, but I have seen that type of message on a few sites.   We don’t want to feel like we’re selling ourselves.  We know we’re good parents and we can provide a wonderful family to a child.  If we went with domestic infant adoption I don’t know that I could follow advice about how to market our family.

When you add everything up we’re just not the right family for domestic infant adoption.  There are other things that bother us about domestic infant adoption, but this post is long enough and I think I hit most of the key points. While it would be WONDERFUL to have our child in our home right from birth that doesn’t outweigh all the other things that make it just not fit right with our family.

In all of this analysis we know we won’t be able to satisfy all of our desires.  For example, we know we cannot control the prenatal substance exposure of a child from foster care or international adoption either.  In the end we have to analyze each process and decide which fits us best, knowing that none if perfect.

~M