Is it much more difficult for a single woman to adopt than it is for a couple?

You hit it right with the complication of the adoption journey. The red tape surrounding our adoption was tangled beyond comprehension.

Our agency had a "gate keeper" who didn't want to let us talk to the facilitator or the attorney. We finally broke through after getting the run around for over a year. The have since closed their doors like many other agencies. If there is a bump, their idea was to sweep it under the carpet and put you off for another week.

No one knew the answers to resolve our issues except a wonderful group of parents in the same boat. We helped each other and cheered one another along the road to finally getting our 8.5 year old home. She was less than 6 years old when we started and were told it would be 6 months after out dossier was presented. Had she been home at 6, we would have had her in school and with her peers. She is bright and funny and is catching up fast but it has not been easy. We have been helping her nightly with math and English because she is now in 3rd grade.The foster family never sent her to school as promised. She stayed home while the attorney's son attended school daily. We are lucky as she is a social little thing and loves school. Others in the same boat have had a very hard time with children who have languished in one or more foster families and had the attachment and subsequent abandonment twice in their precious lives. This is so unfair.

But, the friendships established via email and web sites is unfathomable to anyone not in this journey. We have made many friends for life whom we can call upon for advice, a cyber hug or just chat. The commarderie is immediate.

People should never judge an adoption unless they have walked in your shoes. This was a full time job bringing her home. We are still learning daily. Life is full of the charm of this darling little girl who has joined her brother in her forever home and we are thankful to God everyday.

Thank you again. Susan

My husband and I got off the infertility roller coaster relatively early, but I remember that when we became aware that we had a problem (and we were in our late 20's) how broken I felt. I remember the hope I felt after each infertility treatment and the depression I felt from taking Clomid. It made it a struggle to believe that it would work out for us to be parents. I know it wasn't rational, but I would fear that this brokenness was a sign that I shouldn't or couldn't be a parent, adoptive or otherwise.

When we began talking about adoptions we were often bombarded with horror stories of failed adoptions. This was not helpful. We heard of birthmothers deciding to keep their children after birth (how could you not support that, I would have fought to keep my child). We attended a "blended" families group where we heard story after story about how the state department of health would let you foster children, but threw roadblocks in the way of adoption at every turn for state resident children; and at the same time would not help with paperwork for adoption of available foster children out of state. Looking into international adoption we were afraid of baby-selling and instances where babies may have been kidnapped from biological mothers. We decided to adopt from China as a relatively stable adoption program where, as far as we could tell, baby-selling was unlikely. During the time we were waiting there were news stories about adoptive parents in Cambodia unable to bring their children home. There are material barriers to adoption in terms of resources needed (financial, time, legal, bureaucratic). There are also emotional barriers of a fear of failure for something so important, in an arena where the person may already feel like a failure.

My husband and I successfully adopted our daughter from China. She is worth whatever difficulty or effort needed. However, it seemed a high mountain to climb when we were in the process requiring both endurance and dealing with a fear of heights. I understand why some people may not be able to make it over.

As the author of the third Comment quoted in the blog post, I would like to thank Dr. Newman for taking up this topic and detailing many of the considerable difficulties currently involved in adoption.

Yet what am I to think when on the local NPR station I hear that there are 85 kids in the local orphanage, and a half dozen or so of my workplace colleagues are having their first or second child? Isn't this indicative of far too little promotion of adoption?

The title of this comment is a direct quote from the United Nations.

"Many see adoption as a universal remedy for a host of problems from overpopulation to infertility; they are quick to advocate for adoption."

Redistribution of children does nothing to help overpopulation or infertility. Families need to receive the support they need to remain together not encouraged to be separated by adoption. Infertility is a medical problem and need educations/prevention and medical solutions.

"The sheer number hoping for an infant is disheartening." YES! Either have your children while you are fertile or more likely to be, or if you postpone childbearing till its too late - sleep in the bed you've made. Accept it, as people have done for generations. No one "owes" anyone a child!

Guatemala and Vietnam closed adoptions for good reason: they have had enough of their people being exploited.80-90% of children globally are NOT orphans, according the th United nations. They have family who visit and hope to be reunited as was the case with David Banda who was adopted by Madonna. This is the NORM worldwide!

Also, because of people willing to shell out $40k plus - more money than people in many countries see in a lifetime - it feeds and supports corrupt baby brokers. Adoption is a $6.3 BILLION dollar industry! It is SO corrupt, that even dealing with an agency you believe to be reputable could unwittingly get you a child who has been stolen or kidnapped and sold to an orphanage.

Read: Romania for Export Only by Roele Post

Read the works of David Smolin
who writes about child trafficking for adoption and has become an advocate after his personal experience. Also read his wife's blog: fleasbiting.blogspot.com

Read a recent article about why Guatemala stopped international adoption: http://tinyurl.com/6nd7za

Read what adoptees have to say: http://tinyurl.com/6dvu

Taking children one at a time from their homeland does NOTHING to ameliorate the poverty of their family, their village or their nation. There are so may better ways to accomplish help: SOS Children's Village, Christian Children's Funds, Foster care, foster-to-adopt programs...

There are half a million children in US foster care. of those 100,00 COULD be adopted and many with subsidies.

Finally - because this is a Psychology Today Blog, it must be clearly stated that ALL adoptees feel a sese of rejection of abandonment...and the lifelong irresolvable grief and PTSD suffered by their mothers and families is likewise a serious psychological issue that should most definately NOT be encouraged to fill someone's desire for a child.

Mirah Riben, researcher and author
The Stork Market: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Indusry

The title of this comment is a direct quote from the United Nations.

"Many see adoption as a universal remedy for a host of problems from overpopulation to infertility; they are quick to advocate for adoption."

Redistribution of children does nothing to help overpopulation or infertility. Families need to receive the support they need to remain together not encouraged to be separated by adoption. Infertility is a medical problem and need educations/prevention and medical solutions.

"The sheer number hoping for an infant is disheartening." YES! Either have your children while you are fertile or more likely to be, or if you postpone childbearing till its too late - sleep in the bed you've made. Accept it, as people have done for generations. No one "owes" anyone a child!

Guatemala and Vietnam closed adoptions for good reason: they have had enough of their people being exploited.80-90% of children globally are NOT orphans, according the th United nations. They have family who visit and hope to be reunited as was the case with David Banda who was adopted by Madonna. This is the NORM worldwide!

Also, because of people willing to shell out $40k plus - more money than people in many countries see in a lifetime - it feeds and supports corrupt baby brokers. Adoption is a $6.3 BILLION dollar industry! It is SO corrupt, that even dealing with an agency you believe to be reputable could unwittingly get you a child who has been stolen or kidnapped and sold to an orphanage.

Read: Romania for Export Only by Roele Post

Read the works of David Smolin
who writes about child trafficking for adoption and has become an advocate after his personal experience. Also read his wife's blog: fleasbiting.blogspot.com

Read a recent article about why Guatemala stopped international adoption: http://tinyurl.com/6nd7za

Read what adoptees have to say: http://tinyurl.com/6dvu

Taking children one at a time from their homeland does NOTHING to ameliorate the poverty of their family, their village or their nation. There are so may better ways to accomplish help: SOS Children's Village, Christian Children's Funds, Foster care, foster-to-adopt programs...

There are half a million children in US foster care. of those 100,00 COULD be adopted and many with subsidies.

Finally - because this is a Psychology Today Blog, it must be clearly stated that ALL adoptees feel a sese of rejection of abandonment...and the lifelong irresolvable grief and PTSD suffered by their mothers and families is likewise a serious psychological issue that should most definitely NOT be encouraged to fill someone's desire for a child.

Mirah Riben, researcher and author
The Stork Market: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry

and then following adoption, it's not like the headaches of regulation and paperwork come to a halt. Here's a story on the lighter side of the never-ending trials and tribulations faced by all parents in the modern day. See

http://writingfrontier.com/2008/09/08/childs-play/

And the answer to "Why More People Don't adopt" is most people want healthy white infants".Their first choice isn't adoption.That is why so much money goes towards infertility treatments. Sadly I have talked with many adoptees that know they are their adoptive parents second choice.How many doctors have told their patients "and if this doesn't work ,you can always adopt? It gives the message that there are all these white girls that don't want their infants.It isn't so. I have also heard adoptive parents angry that more Mothers aren't giving away one of their children. As sad as it is that some people are unable to pro-create their own children, it doesn't mean another woman owes them her infant. More money needs to be allocated for natural family preservation instead of the funds being diverted toward infant adoption.Linda Webber
wwww.opednews.com/webber022704_adoption.htm

the adoption "market" makes no sense to me. We live in a world where an additional child (and pregnancy) has enormous social costs- environmental and natural resource strains, education costs, health care costs, and a whole host of other potential costs. Yet, any two people can birth a child. They don't have to pass any screenings, they don't have to pass a financial litmus test, etc. In fact, any unqualified person can birth an additional child and actually receive tax BREAKS. Yet, when a person choses to relieve some of the social costs of this child (taking a child out of public care, not having a pregnancy, etc), they are penalized. They are forced to pay thousands of dollars to gain the right to raise this child, they have to spend time and money on legal implications, and they have to pass screenings and meet certain qualifications (they can't be too young or too old, they can't be single, they can't be gay, they have to have a certain amount of money, etc). How does it make any sense at all?

Add OUTSIDERS WITHIN: WRITING ON TRANSRACIAL ADOPTION to the reading list (chapter 19 by John Raible, Ph.D. in particular).

I agree with Mirah, but am concerned that this discussion overlooks aspects of adoption. I appreciate the acknowledgement by the author that the topic is complex. Indeed it is.

Allow me first to position myself as an adoptive parent who has never tried to adopt a white infant. I am also not infertile. I'm not sure where the data to support the infertility/white baby quest assumptions comes from, since it's my understanding that the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute (www.adoptioninstitute.org) has been calling for this type of data to be collected for years. The last time it was collected in a formal, organized manner in the U.S. was 2001, according to their website.

Let's all agree that adoption is a "bandage" (to avoid brand names) rather than a cure. Would it be better to fix the problem and eliminate the need for adoption? Of course.Is adoption perfect? No.
Is adoption easy for children? NEVER.
Going forward, would it be better to invest in macroeconomic solutions to make parenting possible and adoption unnecessary across the globe? YES.

Yet there are children who have immediate, urgent need. Those children deserve a solution as well.While there is much emotion surrounding the adoption debate, adoption like all things is neither all good nor all bad.

As the adoptive mother of an 10 y.o. who lost her only living bio relative when she was 5 (and watched her die), I wish my daughter still had her beloved first mother, whom she mourns daily. I also wish I could have met my daughter sooner, so that she wouldn't have spent the next 5 years on the streets, fending for herself, abused mercilessly, tortured, starved. She is far from being well today, psychologically or physically, but she is safe now. And that's something. Every time I hear how bad adoption is, I know the whole picture is not being presented. For children like my daughter who had no chance of finding an adoptive home in her birth country (due to the green drought, poverty, her age,and the Ethiopian attitudes towards orphans),other options were not available under current circumstances.

When I first met my daughter, I traveled with 3 couples who already had bio kids and were simply adding older children to their family (they weren't infertile either). This is part of adoption too. When we focus solely on white infants,we exclude all others who are also part of what adoption is. Not necessarily a better or worse part(that remains to be seen),but just another part of a large and complex institution that powerful elites have access to.

Thank you for this interesting discussion.

I have two beautiful children that I adopted from China in 2000. Many things pointed out in this article are so true. It took about 18 months from the time my ex-husband & I filed papers until we went to China to bring home our children. Sadly, my son spent enough time in the orphanage to have developed Reactive Attachment Disorder. He also is bi-polar and has ADHD. One psychiatrist is speculating Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. While I knew an adoption of the older child would be hard, I didn't realize how hard it would be. Nothing prepared me for the multi-diagnoses. It took a toll on my marriage, and subsequent relationships as well. No one has been willing to be a father figure, except my own father. My son is currently in a mental health treatment facility and school. I was fortunate enough to find a good place for him, and still be a part of his life. On the flip side, my daughter is beautiful healthy and fully attached. While I don't believe that adoptions should be further regulated, I do think that agencies need to prepare potential parents for ALL contingencies. Would I do it over again? Yes. But I might have spaced things differently, and sought out more psychological advice.

In the New York Times article, "Meet the Parents," a 41-year-old man talks about meeting his parents for the first time and discovering he has siblings. The link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/magazine/09lives-t.html?_r=1&ref=magaz...

Yet again another article on the "plight" of the adopter completely disregarding the impact of adoption on the sweet little commodity being adopted.

More adopters blinded by entitlement.

The time has come to shift the focus of adoption away from the adoptive parents and their supposed needs, backed up as they are by social, medical, and legal systems, the government in the form of rebates and tax incentives, the entire spectrum of media (like this magazine), and the general cultural norms that not only support adoption in all of its forms, but actively seek to quiet any resistance to this, the norm of the adoption discourse.

For there are many others involved in the story, and no matter how adoptive parents may try to include this aspect as part of their “plan”, or justify what they are doing in any way, the sad fact is that adoption violently intrudes on a family, on a community, on a culture whose losses are not considered valid because these are the abject masses who exist primarily to work, slave, and endure their condition such that the dominant classes of the First World can maintain their lifestyles and a standard of living that could never be extended to the rest of the planet equally.

To complain about the price of adopting is therefore a disgusting non-acknowledgement of the trafficking that is taking place. I fail to understand how it is that prospective (such an appropriate term) parents are unable to find empathy for those who are asked to give up what is most precious to them. The manifestation of this selfishness in “dear Birthmother” web sites and the mediation of young children on the web as if they are nought but dress-up dolls is a shameful condemnation of a consumerist culture with no sense of what is appropriate, what is valid expression, what is a beneficent act. Vultures have more sympathy and candor than this.

Adoption is based in the leveraging of inequality by a dominant class in order to procure children for those who have none from those who ideally would keep their children except for circumstances that are a direct result of this class difference to begin with.

So this class doesn’t get to have an objective position removed from the fray, when the class position that allows them to adopt creates the problem they are trying to “help” with in the first place. On the international level, this same class is the one that enables, funds, equips, provides for, and sustains economic and political wars around the world that result in the very “orphans” that they claim to “save” by adopting them.

This is like a pyromaniac firefighter complaining about his work, sighing: “Someone’s gotta do it”. And the culture pats him on the back and congratulates him for his efforts. This is twisted and immoral, and cannot go on.

There can be no middle ground. My adoption story does not focus forward on our about me, but reflects backward to the greater injustice that was its source. For this reason, every time someone tells me to “get over being adopted”, I will say: “get over being infertile”. Every time someone uses the word “adoption” I will respond: “abduction”. Every time someone tells me, “you were chosen”, I will correct: “I was procured for a tidy sum”. Every time that I hear that adoption is “God’s plan”, I will state: “To even conceive of such an ignoble, spiteful, and heinous God is the work of the monstrous; the arrogant; the self-conceited and narcissistic; the infinitely vain”, and that those who espouse such a God do not deserve children.

And every time someone suggests that I have no feelings for these children, I will respond: “I am these children; and I have returned; and I dare you to live my life, where I am living now, and see what I see every day; to live the wars, and the poverty, here in my land of birth, among the to-you non-existent strangers who have welcomed me home, and to fathom what I know of my orphanage, and to experience it, and see if you can bear this, the fruit of your labor. I dare you.”

Adoptive parents wish to fill a "hole" in their lives. In so doing, they create multiple holes in many peoples' hearts, and consider this somehow fair. Please explain to me how this is in any way valid?

ORPHAN CARE: AN INTRODUCTION
http://www.socwork.net/2009/1/special_issue

THE LIE WE LOVE: CORRUPTION IN INTERNATIONAL ADOPTIONS
The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism
http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/gender/adoption/index.html

THE PRICE WE ALL PAY Human Trafficking in International Adoption
http://conducivemag.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=94:...

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE
http://www.naomiklein.org/

RE-EVALUATING ADOPTION: VALIDATING THE LOCAL
http://tinyurl.com/re-evaluating-adoption

Since when has adoption become about fulfilling the needs of adopters?

Adoption should be about finding a HOME for a CHILD who needs one, NOT about finding a child for a home that wants one.

Until all the children in the foster system have been adopted into good and loving homes, there should be absolutely NO NEED to convince pregnant women to give up their babies to desperate infertiles.

Just because a girl happens to be 18 and single and pregnant does NOT mean that she is required to fill the empty cradles of the old or infertile. Nor are countries that are poorer or developing required to supply the demand.

We are forgetting the big picture here...these are human beings we are talking about here, and stripping a child of the basic human right to be raised within one's own family and culture should be the LAST resort.

How many adopters are willing to move to the country that they'd like to acquire a child from, assimilate into THAT culture, learn THAT language, and become a citizen of THAT country?

None that I've ever heard of. So why do we expect innocent young children to take on all the extra burdens and losses of heritage just to fulfill an adult's needs? It's sick, it's sad, and it's disgusting.

I for one would have rather grown up with my real family, my biology, my culture...even if it meant we lived in a cardboard box under a bridge. Living in a McMansion and being chauffered around in Mommy's shiny new Escalade will NEVER EVER make up for everything I've lost.

The author states that "The adoption process can be just too hard and should be simplified while still protecting the children who need and deserve to be adopted.".

Well, that hits the nail on the head as to why adoption is so hard. The hoards of hopeful adoptive parents who send out their abhorrent "Dear Birthmother" letters don't want to adopt the children who NEED and deserve to be adopted. They want to adopt healthy white infants from a demographic of pregnant women who are no longer forced to give their babies away. They want to adopt cute babies from China and Guatemala to guarantee that the child will not have access to his/her family of origin.

I celebrate that adoption is hard. It means that young women are no longer forced to surrender their children and that they are loved and cherished by their family of origin. I celebrate because it means that countries are facing up to the horror of exporting their own child-citizens and are using their own resources to take care of their children. I celebrate because it means that the adoption market in countries like Guatemala where soldiers stole children to sell to Americans was closed down by the UN.

I do not see adoption being "so hard" as a bad thing. I see it as a good thing for families of origin and a sign of progress in our world culture.

So you want to make adoption “easy”? How? Turn back the clock to the Baby Scoop Era where young unmarried girls were strapped down with their face covered when they gave birth so they would not see their baby – ever? So you want the Korean culture to turn back to the time when babies of unmarried mothers were exported because Korean families would not adopt them? Should we stop the UN ban on adoption in Guatemala so that soldiers can go back to stealing babies and falsifying DNA tests?

It is people who want to make adoption “easy” who are responsible for adoption corruption and exploitation of women and children.

"All too frequently they espouse their view forcefully with little understanding of obstacles, red tape, and emotional turmoil adopting parents endure."

This really says it all, doesn't it? I find it very hard to feel sorry for adoptive parents when they are the only side of the adoption triad that is actually benefiting from the destruction of a family. There is so much information out there now explaining why we arrogant westerners should stop adopting from developing countries but it is still being ignored on the premise that the children are better off in America - do we need a lesson on supply and demand? There are adoption agencies going to towns in Ethiopia, for example, and asking people to give up their children so they can go live in America. These mothers and fathers are being made promises that their children will have a better life, they are promised money and updates on their children's lives that they never get. These children are not the orphans languishing in orphanages that you all want to believe. These children have families that want to raise them but so-called Christian people are convincing them that they are wrong. You may truly believe that they can have a better life in America but what you are actually doing is stealing the child's heritage, stealing children from a country that needs them, stealing children form their biological family. Adoption stopped being about the needs of children a long time ago - it has become all about the entitlement of people to have children and that is wrong on so many levels.

How is this un-researched propaganda in "Psychology Today?"

Adoption in the US is handled differently than anywhere else in the world, other English-speaking countries included. As other countries have had to face the corruption, illegal tactics, and human trafficking that is at the heart of the US adoption industry's business model, they have learned to shut Americans out in order to protect their children.

The narcissistic demands of American wannabe adopters will always outpace the supply of children. The only humane solution is to cut off the supply.