Families Grown through Adoption: Private Adoption

Over the last month I have been re-posting articles that I originally wrote for Regarding Nannies website this summer.  I encourage you to check out their great ideas for working with children. 

Today I am continuing my discussion about methods of adoption with Private Adoptions.

Private adoption is any adoption in the USA that utilizes an adoption agency.  Sometimes the adoptive family finds the birth family on their own and simply uses the agency for the legalities of it all and sometimes the adoptive family works through the entire process with the agency.  If you are an adoptive family that found a birth family on your own, it is also possible to use a private lawyer.  I still consider that a Private adoption.  

This type of adoption has a lot of benefits.  Like a foreign adoption, you are working with a group of people that know what they are doing and are able to help you through every part of the process.  After the application and home study is complete, the adoptive family puts together a portfolio that tells their story.  This is what birth mom’s will look at to make the biggest decision of her life – whose family her baby will go to.  Once this portfolio is complete, adoptive families have nothing to do but wait for a birth mother to make the life altering decision.  This can take weeks to months and even years.  

Then again it could happen in the blink of an eye like it did for Valerie and Will.  They learned through someone they knew, of a baby that was 3 days old.  They had to work through 6 months of applications and home studies in 2 days so they could fly to meet their baby girl.  For this adoption everything went well.  Their second adoption did not go as smoothly but they now have two beautiful children Debra-Jane and Sam.  

Domestic private adoption is a more doable price.  It can cost anywhere from $12,000 to 20,000, which certainly isn’t free, but is not as steep as the foreign adoption.  Most of this cost can be recouped eventually with the tax incentive I talked about last Thursday from the US government.  This fact makes private adoption a real possibility for a lot of families. 

So once a birth mother chooses an adoptive family, things move forward.  However there are still some potential bumps in the road.  At any moment, even up until 2 days after the birth of the child, the birth mother has the right to change her mind and keep the baby.  This has broken the hearts of a good number of families including Robin and Scott.  They had been chosen by an adoptive mom and flown to Georgia to be present for the birth.  They spent 2 days with the little baby girl that had been promised to them only to have the birth mom change her mind just before signing the necessary paperwork.  Scott and Robin had to fly home empty handed, save the car seat and all the supplies they had bought thinking they would be flying home with a newborn baby.  The good news here is that a few months later they got a call that there was another birth mom that had chosen them.  This time all worked out well and they now have two beautiful children – Ella and Emmett. 

Another possible distraction is if the birth father is not willing to give up parental rights.  This can potentially stop the entire adoption but will at least cause things to drag on longer and make things more expensive because an additional lawyer needs to be paid for by the adoptive families. This happened to Steve and Jennifer with their first child.  It meant that they were not able to bring him home for almost 2 months due to a court hearing to legally terminate the parental rights.  They were eventually able to bring him home and now have 2 wonderful children; Josiah and Sam. 

Next method of adoption is Public Adoption, the method my husband and I choose.  

Check out the other adoption artcles:

Previous

Families grown through adoption: BOOKS

Families grown through foreign adoption

Later


Families grown through public adoption

Families grown through adoption: TIPS