The International Adoption Handbook: How to Make Foreign Adoption Work for You

by Myra Alperson

Overview

Foreign adoption is an often tricky, sometimes treacherous venture that is steadily gaining in popularity. Myra Alperson realizes that families pursuing this avenue of adoption need all the help they can get-and she fits it all into this handy guide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805045796
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/15/1997
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Myra Alperson is a New York-based writer whose books include The International Adoption Handbook, about which Booklist wrote, "her advice and counsel are heartfelt, simply stated, and specific." She is the adoptive mother of Sadie Zhenzhen Alperson.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Making the Choice

If you think international adoption is hard or near impossible, just think of this: close to ten thousand children born outside of the United States are adopted each year by U.S. families. The annual number has been relatively stable for years, hovering between 7,500 and 9,800 adoptions (see table).

I predict that number will rise to over ten thousand in 1996, and while it won't skyrocket, international adoption will continue to grow — slowly — and become more common. It's not as difficult to do as it used to be; more countries now have the mechanism to place abandoned children with families that want them, and our increasingly diverse society is more receptive to children who are "different."

After all, the typical nuclear family just isn't so common anymore. (Think of all the "alternative" families that now populate network TV.) Many adopters these days are single, like me, and there are books and support groups just for us. Many are older — some in their fifties — as the mother- and fatherhood age ceiling rises (me, too; I'm over forty). Gay couples are forming families through adoption; and in some cases, couples on their "second-go-round" in marriage, who maybe missed out on children their first time out, are turning to adoption to create families.

The news media and technology have had a lot to do with the increasing openness of international adoption. The world is getting smaller. We learn about countries we never knew existed, and hear on the radio or TV about children from there who have lost their parents or about the overcrowded orphanages they live in. A story on National Public Radio in 1995 about a disabled little boy in a Russian orphanage led to a couple in Ohio adopting him. The new father, hearing the story while in his car, said he just "knew" he had to adopt the child. Could this have taken place even five years earlier? Probably not.

A Tradition ... a More Recent History

Adoption has a long tradition. Remember Moses? You might call that foster care, but yes, that was an adoption. In royal families where there were no male heirs, a nephew might be adopted in order to maintain the family name.

But the types of adoptions I'm writing about here — adoptions of children from overseas by U.S. families — basically goes back to the early 1950s, when a man in Oregon named Harry Holt sought to find homes for Korean war orphans. He eventually founded one of the first U.S. agencies to do international placements, and these days, agencies as well as facilitators (individuals or groups of people not licensed to act as formal agents) help match children needing homes with couples and single people wanting to form families. The children come from all over: Latin America and the Caribbean, India, the Philippines, many Asian countries, and since 1990, countries that once made up the former Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc nations. There are also limited opportunities to adopt from Africa.

Large-scale adoptions from China began around 1992 and spiraled upward as it became clear that there were many babies — mostly girls — who needed homes, and that the process was neither very difficult nor as expensive as other foreign adoptions, and completely legal. Furthermore, the Chinese government welcomed older parents and single adopters. What once seemed beyond reach for many aspiring parents was now available. Vibrant support networks grew in their wake.

Adoption has also become a big business. Go to any adoption conference for the first time, and you'll be surprised by the numbers of "advertisers"— agencies, facilitators, magazine publishers, insurance companies, greeting card vendors, and toy manufacturers — seeking to sell you their services. Talk to more experienced people in the field, and you'll learn that many newcomers are peddling services that they are not really equipped to provide. An experienced adoption expert I know bemoans the way one of her newer competitors "tries to tell people what they want to hear" to get them to sign on with her, rather than sketch out the realities of international adoption: how much it costs, what has to be done, the problems they may encounter — and the fact that children adopted internationally come from deprived backgrounds, and, although some are well cared for, others are hardly the sunny-faced, rosy-cheeked, chubby, and gurgly picture-book babies that parents imagine taking home. Not at first, anyway: the nurturing and love parents give is key to helping children get that way.

But the competition is tough. People seeking to adopt often do so after many years of not having children, and they don't want to wait. Many excellent professionals can help. But a sad reality is that some unscrupulous individuals or groups are giving adoption a bad name, making promises they can't keep, offering babies whose actual orphan status may be uncertain, and asking exorbitant sums of money to help families get them.

Technology and Changing Political Dynamics Make Adoption a Global Village

Fortunately, you can get information about the good, bad, and ugly agencies and services right at your fingertips — if you can type and know how to use a modem. One of the biggest changes in making international adoptions succeed is the wealth of information that is now available to adoption "consumers" as well as professionals. The Internet and the World Wide Web, fax technology and videotapes make it possible to transmit information and images in record time and enable people like you and me to obtain information that was once hard and expensive to track down.

This development has been a real boon. Adoption "chat groups" enable people to share information about their experiences and to highlight good agencies that do what they say and criticize those that don't. I think that over time, technology will also help balance out the wildly skewed costs of adoption that agencies charge. Agencies are having to become more competitive and accountable now, because we have ways of finding out who's charging less for better service, or who's making promises but not delivering. And we're learning that it's okay to ask the hard questions. If one agency doesn't satisfy us, we can find another that will help. Chapter 2 discusses the use of technology to get information and the questions you should ask when looking for an agency.

The new technology means that information about children — photo listings and videotapes — can get to prospective parents much faster. This is the most important part.

A number of people I profiled for this book cited the value of Email forums in helping them make wise choices about their adoption and also in providing moral support during the difficult waiting period and in sharing post-adoption experiences.

• When Alice, a forty-four-year-old lawyer who is single, was doing research on adopting an older child from overseas, one of the agencies she sought information from sent her videotapes of children in a Russian orphanage who were awaiting placement. Each child made a brief presentation, some also singing songs or dancing or reading a poem. In one segment, while a little boy was speaking, she was charmed by the sight, in the background, of a seven-year-old girl who was softly whispering the answers to the questions the boy was being asked. Nadia's lips would move, and then the boy's. Then the girl had her turn. Intrigued, Alice asked to find out more about her. She ultimately signed up with the agency and got a referral to adopt the girl, whose Russian name, Nadia, she kept.

• Patti and Pete selected the agency they used to help them adopt Vietnamese twin boys based on recommendations in an E-mail forum. They had investigated a number of agencies on their own but drew on the forum's references to make their final choice.

• Bethany and Karl's adoption of a little girl from India benefited in many ways from access to E-mail. Through an Indian culture "newsgroup," they linked up with an Indian family living in the United States, and the father in that family, who came from the city where they eventually adopted their daughter, accompanied Bethany to India to complete the adoption. He helped negotiate through some of the red tape they encountered, and she believes his assistance saved her time and aggravation. Also, during the long wait for her adoption to be approved, she drew solace and support from other waiting parents participating in an Indian adoption E-mail forum.

Why People Adopt Internationally — and Why You Might Want To, Too

There are many reasons people seek children outside the United States, especially if they want relatively healthy infant children.

Here are a few:

• Too difficult to adopt in the United States. For couples or single people seeking healthy newborns, there are not enough born in the United States who will be placed for adoption. Some single people who have tried to adopt United States–born children have encountered obstacles when they find themselves "competing" with couples. They then turn to international adoption because it is less bureaucratic and often faster to do.

• Too "competitive." Some people cannot stomach the prospect of "advertising" and having to be "selected" by a birth mother as the best possible parent for her child — and then perhaps face the prospect of this adoption falling through. (They even buy adoption insurance policies in the event they spend money to help a birth mother through her birth and she then decides to keep the child or choose a different family.) Two couples I know — Nanette and Rob, and Ava and Bob — found the idea of advertising themselves as ideal parents and setting up a toll-free number in their home to field calls from birth mothers to be utterly distasteful.

• Too slow. A domestic adoption can take well over a year to achieve. But if you're very organized and focused, you can complete an international adoption much more quickly.

Once they made their decision to adopt internationally and found the right resources to help them, it took Nanette and Rob just six months from their first filings to adopt their seven-month-old daughter from Guatemala.

• Too expensive. Yes, it can be more expensive to adopt domestically than to go overseas. To complete a legal domestic adoption for a newborn infant generally requires the intervention of a lawyer and the payment of the birth mother's hospital fees and occasional aftercare. The costs can be quite high.

• Intrigued by the challenge of bringing a child from another culture into their lives. I like this reason the best, and I saved the best for last. International adoption is a positive, reasonable, and wonderful way to form your family. Some people adopt internationally because they want their family experience to be a multicultural one. This could be because the family itself is "mixed," because the community they live in is a diverse, interesting one, or because one or both parents had lived abroad or it was where the family's roots came from. Once I began considering international adoption, and then when I actually started the process, I realized it was a gift — to me.

More People — and Different Types! —

Are Doing International Adoptions The criteria for international adoption in many countries has loosened up in the last decade. If you read Elizabeth Bartholet's excellent book Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of Parenting, you will be surprised at how much has changed since she undertook two adoptions in Peru in the mid-eighties. When she started out, single women, especially if they were over forty, as she was, were frowned upon as adoption candidates and discouraged.

These days, many first-time adopters are, in fact, single women in their forties. And many more countries are accepting single parents who have responsible jobs, are emotionally mature and stable, can show that they have a support system in place for the child, and are prepared to provide a loving home. While some countries still place children with couples only, or with families of a certain religion, many restrictions are slowly going by the wayside as more children need homes.

Generally, you may be considered a good candidate for adoption if you or your partner (if you have one) are a U.S. citizen, are at least twenty-five years old, have received home-study approval (which indicates you are emotionally and financially prepared to adopt), Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) approval (which includes the home study, references, fingerprints, FBI check), child abuse clearance, and medical clearance (doctor's letter).

Few Boundaries: If You Have Always Wanted to Have a Family, Now You Can

Once you decide to do an international adoption and have ascertained that you have the resources to do it — and this takes time and serious thought — you will be gratified at the amount of support you will find.

I've benefited from the experiences of so many other people, and I'm sharing mine (and many of theirs) with you to let you know how to make your international adoption work for you.

CHAPTER 2

Getting Started

I remember how intimidated I felt when I first sought information on how to do an international adoption. So I've put together this chapter to help you

1. Get good information.

2. Select the country that's right for you.

3. Choose whether an agency or facilitator is the route for you.

1. GETTING GOOD INFORMATION

When you embarked on your adoption, you probably started by telling your closest friends and relatives, by visiting a library or bookstore, or scanning the telephone book for listings under adoption. There's plenty of information to be had!

Much of it is free. But the nitty-gritty information on legal issues as well as different country requirements and, sometimes, requirements in the state you live in, may change without your knowing. Furthermore, not all the information you get may be good information. And new resources for people seeking to adopt, and for your adopted children, reach the market all the time.

Here are some of my recommendations to enable you to keep up to date and informed:

• Read! There are many magazines and newsletters on adoption that can introduce you to the world of adoption and the issues that accompany it. Here are a few that I recommend (see Appendix for the addresses and contact numbers for these publications): Adoptive Families magazine is my personal favorite. The magazine does a wonderful job of covering just about every aspect of doing an adoption and raising a family formed through adoption, as well as legislative issues. It lists upcoming conferences, cultural events, and "culture camps" around the United States. There's also a listing of pen pals for your children. And each issue includes articles divided into age groups on the milestones and issues adopted children sometimes confront as they grow up. Plus, you can learn about companies that offer products — books, toys, music, greeting cards — made especially for adoptive families. I also regularly read AdopTalk, the newsletter of my local chapter of the Adoptive Parents Committee (APC) and Families with Children from China newsletter, an invaluable source of information on adoption issues related to raising a child born in China, which also lists cultural and recreational family events and names of local families with whom to network. (See Appendix for a listing of newsletters for other types of international adoptions.)

For highly targeted information, the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse (NAIC) will send you a free publications and services catalog of fact sheets and brochures on adoption, including a number specifically on international adoption. Its general adoption resources fact sheet lists the addresses of INS district offices; national and regional organizations concerned with adoption broken down into categories such as advocacy and public policy, financial assistance, support networks, etc. It can also provide lists of support groups in your state.

• Speak to people who have already completed foreign adoptions. Find out why and how they did their adoption. Be candid with your questions. If money is an issue with you, ask how much they spent and how they were able to afford it. Some people may find this intrusive, so you will have to "scope out" those whom you think would be willing to speak with you about it.

An international adoption can be expensive, but there are ways to reduce the costs if you ask around, and people in the adoption "network" should be able to come up with good suggestions. One of the best pieces of advice that I received early on was this: Don't see a lawyer! In international adoption, a reputable agency should be able to do all the key work that is necessary, and you can do many of the other tasks yourself, with little difficulty — often by mail — such as obtaining and filling in your INS forms, completing your child's readoption, and arranging for your child's naturalization. (This book will also tell you how.) A lawyer's services would incur unnecessary fees.

• Go to adoption seminars and conferences. Adoption agencies, community colleges, YM/YWCAs, churches and synagogues, and other organizations often sponsor free or low-cost seminars to introduce the adoption process. The people leading the seminars are often adoption professionals who offer free sessions as a way to market their services. This is your opportunity to ask any questions you might have. Once you start hearing the same answers over and over again, you'll know you're ready to move.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The International Adoption Handbook"
by .
Copyright © 1997 Myra Alperson.
Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
Part I: The Nuts and Bolts of International Adoption,
1. Making the Choice,
2. Getting Started,
3. The Next Steps,
4. Facing the Money Question,
5. The Long Wait,
6. The Last Step — But Just the Beginning,
7. You're Home!,
Part II: A New Beginning: Issues and Experiences of International Adoption,
8. Becoming a Multicultural Family,
9. New Adoptive Families,
10. Answering Your Child's Questions About Being Adopted,
Notes,
Appendix: Organizations, Publications, and Other Resources,
Index,
About the Author,
Copyright,