What’s Wrong with Adopting American Children?

Is it me or does every time we hear about a celebrity adopting the child is from another country? I’m really not opposed to children being adopted from Africa, China or any other country. I believe all children need a secure, loving home but I am wondering what's wrong with adopting American children.

There more than 500,000 American children in foster care, and many of them are waiting for adoption. From coast to coast, babies to toddlers to teens are desperately looking for a home where they can be loved, nurtured and provided for. It’s easy to blast these celebrities by saying it's the “in thing” to adopt a foreign, but the truth is, the U.S. has a serious adoption problem.

The red tape and bureaucracy is unbelievable. American parents are made to jump through enormous hoops, and the process takes years, instead of months. Single mothers have a difficult time adopting a child in the U.S., and many have gone overseas. And often single people and married couples simply grow disenchanted with the process.
We can sit here and criticize the rich and famous all day, but instead of ripping them our energy should be put into a call for adoption reform.

We need to demand that your local, state and federal elected officials clear the pathway to make the process easier. And we need more consistency. Now we have 50 different states with 50 different policies. With so many rules, no wonder folks throw their hands up and head outside the U.S. border to adopt.

The goal of adoption is to put children in loving homes and not have them be the responsibility of the state. Making it harder to adopt affects you in your pocketbook because taxpayer money is spent to care for the children. So changing the laws not only helps the child, but also is fiscally responsible. And in these poor economic times everything helps.

Not only is it more difficult to adopt in the U.S., but adopting parents have a much greater chance of the birth parents changing their minds than overseas. Parents typically want babies, so once a child goes unadopted for their first year of life, the odds of them being adopted fall dramatically. Biological parents of U.S. children put up for adoptions have up to 5, FIVE, years after the adoption is final to decide if they want the child back. So, they can have a couple (or single parent) take care of their child for 4 years and 364 days and then get them back, without recourse. This turns off many, many potential parents, who go overseas to adopt.

There are several key advantages to adopting older children. First, unlike adopting babies, states have excellent histories on them. Second, state provides free health, dental, and other insurance. Third, unlike infants, older kids remember enough about their past that they have more realistic feelings about where they come from, so when they reach their teen years they do not have the same ill-defined sense of abandonment children adopted as babies from foreign countries have. Fourth, older children can go back to houses they lived in and see distant relatives, which helps the healing process. And finally, the biggest advantage in adopting older kids is that you can choose the type of children in terms of their interests, attitudes, strengths, and weaknesses. If you want a boy who is great in sports and loves hunting, the state has one for you. If you would like a girl that loves art and reading, they have one like that too.

And in most cases in the U.S. the process is expensive, but then there are exceptions like this mom from Oregon. She adopted older children and it basically cost her nothing. In fact the state pays a stipend for older children adoptions. The children she adopted moved in quickly once she was chosen. The biologically parent rights were terminated before they moved in. Initially the children were foster kids for about 10 months and then the adoption was finalized. That that part cost her $150 total.