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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Domestic or International Adoption

Now that I have put it out there that we are planning on adopting, I can start to post about the journey. The heart journey, the mental journey, the paperwork journey, the financial journey, The Journey.

Right now we are in the stages of research and contemplation. One of the most important decisions, and one that is not easy is "from where do we want to adopt?" The broadest category being, domestic or international? There are pages and pages and oodles (yes, I said oodles) of information on the topic.

One of my questions and one that I feel like will push us in one direction or another is, where is the greatest need? Here is my quandary. We are not barren. We can have biological children, and so I do not want to be a person who "beats" someone out of the game that cannot have their own children. When contemplating domestic adoption, I take that into consideration. There are oodles (there is that word again), of organizations in the good ol' US of A that we could probably sign up with. We pay them an exorbitant amount of money, create a "dear mother" letter trying to sell ourselves as good potential parents, and then we wait until an expecting mother chooses us among other waiting, hopeful adoptive parents. I am just not sure that is for us. We want to adopt, we don't "need" to adopt. We want more kids because frankly, we are having a blast with Ella. We want a home full of laughing, happy, screaming, crying children. Not only do we want to help out a baby/child in need, we want to help ourselves out.

So, where is the need? From my current research and findings, there is a need for families wanting to adopt African American or biracial babies here in our home country. We don't want to turn our backs on our own country if it is in need. But upon further research, the need is really much greater for African American families or biracial families wanting to adopt. It makes sense, expecting mothers of African American descent often only want to place their newborns with others of the same color/race. They want to give their unborn child all the chance in the world to have as normal a life as possible. I am sure it is not easy to grow up as a minority in an interracial family. Although there is still a need for people of all colors wanting to adopt a minority child, it just doesn't seem like there is as great a need as we might find elsewhere. But, we haven't completely ruled it out yet. There are many great benefits to domestic adoption - mainly, you get the infant usually fresh out of the oven, so there will probably be less attachment issues, and you get a better idea of the medical condition of the baby and prenatal care of the birth mother. Big plusses.


And then you have a large variety of international options. It does seem like there is such a great need for adoptive parents in many places in the world. Maybe a greater need than domestic adoption. But one has to weigh the options. A baby from another country will be older, having already undergone possible and probable traumas, a good medical history is most likely unknown, and we would be taking a baby from their culture. I feel there is definite value in being raised in one's own culture, but I am not blinded to the honest truth that there are some countries that just cannot support and feed all of their population, sad as it is. The need is definitely there, and it would help ease the burden on the country as well as provide financial support to the orphanages to purchase food, formula, diapers, etc for the orphans. It seems a "noble" cause.

Which actually, may I digress for a quick moment? We are not considering adoption to be "noble". It is in no way a sacrifice on our parts, or is it altruistic in any way. Babies and children make us happy. We want more so that we can have more happiness and hopefully to be able to share some happiness with a child that needs some in their life as well. We want a large family, I don't want to give birth,  be pregnant many more times. We want to adopt a child that needs us, so we can feel good about ourselves and the fact that we are helping someone already born and not bringing more people into the world to use it's resources. The need goes both ways. We need/want a baby to adopt, hopefully a baby will be out there in need of a home, and the four of us (Eli, I, baby Ella and unknown baby) will come together and create a larger, more loving, happier, more fulfilled life because we are all in it together.

I think I will wrap up this post because I have realized it is starting to get kind of long. There is plenty more to discuss/ blog about on this subject and I will save it for another day.

Thanks for reading.

1 comment:

  1. Hi,

    You were the winner of my giveaway on the Natural Kids blog. I need your contact info so that I can send you your baby bandana. Also, the choice of bandana is up to you.

    My e-mail is: ruby.r.slippers@gmail.com

    Congratulations!

    ReplyDelete