This is where you start.
When you decide to adopt and are trying to get the process going, this is what you have to decide first. By the way, I’ll be wrong about a lot of statements like this because I am NOT an expert on adoption. Tye is really smart, but he isn’t either. Not yet.
When we were faced with this question, our response was “which kid needs a family most?”
That’s like asking which baby penguin is cuter?
Which cake is more delicious?
Or which newfie is more slobbery? Except that answer is Uncle Roger.
It’s all the same. Every child needs a home. It doesn’t matter where they are now, how old they are, what they look like. Every child needs a home. My friend Sara was instrumental in my realization of this. By “my realization” I mean she flat out told me that and then I agreed.
When you realize every kid needs someone to love them, I think it makes the decision more difficult. Now we’re back to the beginning. We don’t have anything to base our decision on. One day I prayed I would come home and find a baby on our doorstep (I still do sometimes). That would make these decisions so easy!
So now where to start? We’re facts people so we started here. Wikipedia.
This website called American Adoptions really does a great job of outlining domestic versus international adoptions.
With domestic adoption you have to think about relationships with the child’s birth-mother, your involvement in the pregnancy, open versus closed adoption, the age of the child, will you be involved in foster care or potentially adoption from a foster care program, etc.
With international adoption you have to think about your ability to travel, the availability (usually lack of availability) of a child’s medical records, re-adoption in the US, specific program requirements, etc.
And with both you have to think about waiting for paperwork and signatures, the possibility of your child spending some of his/her life being raised by other people, the difficulty the child may have adjusting into your home, the difficulty you may have adjusting to being a parent, and the possibility of something changing along the way and delaying the process.
Scary!
Me too, kid. Me too.
We have decided to adopt internationally. We based that decision on many things; the hold on domestic adoptions from the agency we initially were working with, the availability of foster care in the United States as well as services provided to underprivileged in our country, and the general assumption that our country is more wealthy than others. We felt that if we have the option to adopt internationally we should take it. Other families may not be able to do the traveling involved with international adoptions and other families may choose to be foster families for domestic children. Which, by the way, is awesome. Again, EVERY child needs a family. Temporary included.
We decided on international adoption because we think that is best for us. It is not the only way or the better way or the right way. Again, every child needs a home.
After that decision is made, the question of which country is next.
It’s super overwhelming. There are so many countries. 196 of them. Well, that is the “best” answer, apparently no one knows for sure (why don’t they know that?!).
Which country did we pick? I’ll tell you next time.
theeckerthouse 