Choosing to Adopt
Making the choice to adopt a child can be a difficult one. Many individuals and families may want to adopt for a variety of reasons. In any case, it is important for potential adoptive parents to consider all aspects of their decision carefully. It can be extremely valuable to take the time to do research and ask yourself some important questions.
- Are you prepared to handle explaining the adoption to the child if or when it is old enough?
- Would you rather have a younger or older child? What issues might you have to confront with a child who has a longer memory of a different life?
- Would you like to adopt a child from your country or area, or from a foreign country?
- Would you consider adopting a child with a disability?
- How might adoption affect any children you currently have or your current lifestyle?
- Would you rather have a child whose biological parents may never be involved or one whose biological parents may want you to agree to allow them some involvement?
These are just a few of the most important factors to consider in your decision to adopt a child. Like having a child of your own, bringing another person into your home and taking responsibility for his or her care is a big commitment, and adopted children often come with different issues or emotional baggage that will need to be dealt with.
Adoption Options
Once you decide to adopt, it will be necessary to make further specific decisions. Many different types of adoption agencies exist which work with different types of cases and procedures.
If you would like to adopt a child from you area, it will most likely be a child whose parents cannot care for it for one reason or another. In many cases, unplanned children of very young parents are adopted by families in their area. These adoptions can be set up so that the biological parents have some amount of contact with you and the child, if all parties agree, or they can be set up with no contact. In many of these cases, the biological parents will plan ahead before the child is born and may choose to work with an agency that allows them to see profiles of potential adoptive parents and essentially choose their baby’s new parents. If you work with this type of agency and this type of adoption, the process will involve creating a profile of your family and your lifestyle for biological parents to look through, and probably one or more meetings with the biological parents.
Adoption agencies that specialize in cases where the children will most likely not have any further contact with their parents and where the parents may not have planned to give the child away, work differently. These agencies will require the same paperwork and background information as agencies that allow for more biological parent involvement, but they will not require the same extensive lifestyle profiles and will do the work of matching potential parents with children that might be a good fit for you. If you would rather adopt as soon as possible and not have to wait for biological parents to choose you, this may be the best option for you. Most adoptions from foreign countries work this way.
Once you make some specific decisions about your preferred adoption method, finding more information is as easy as searching for agencies by region or adoption type with a phone book or the Internet and calling them to get more information. In any case, it will be important to think through your decision, plan ahead, and prepare for any and all issues that may arise.
By Kristin Cleveland
Other Resources:
Announce your new arrival.
Get you and your family back into shape.