Adoption: from birth to placement

Factual Questions
1

The thread regarding adoptionin IMHO has several posts discussing the ease - or, rather, difficulty - of adopting from the point of view of the parents. It’s generally true that in the US and Canada adoptions of babies born in those countries are very difficult, hence the going outside the country to get a newborn/young baby.

It got me wondering; how hard is it to be adopted if you are the child, from birth?.

One of the alternatives to abortion(*) is always “you can always have the baby adopted” which is a nice idea, but is it really that easy? I presume it is for the birth mother, but is the system set up so that a baby given up for adoption is immediately placed in an adoptive home (let’s allow for a couple of weeks here), or is there a significant delay? Is there generally a list of approved potential parents available for every child given up for adoption or are there months or even years before a “suitable” home is found for domestic adoptions?

I’m just having a vague sense of disconnect between how easy it apparently is to give up a baby for adoption and how hard it apparently is to be approved for adoption and I’m wondering if that disconnect is real or easily explained by having a high demand for newborns. I realize this varies by jurisdiction, but I’m putting this in GQ because I assume there’s some sort of average that is “true” for the USA and/or Canada.

ETA: I guess the question boils down to how many kids are given up for adoption and how many parents are approved and how does that mesh together.
(*) I have no particular agenda here, it’s really just a way to frame the question. I don’t want to discuss abortion or other topics in this thread. Mods, feel free to move if this isn’t the right forum!

2

We brought our adopted daughter home from the hospital 2 days after she was born. In our state, the birth mother has 48 hours after giving up the baby in which to change her mind, which was why we needed to wait 48 hours; otherwise we could have brought her home sooner. The birth mother had selected us a few months earlier, all the legal paperwork was in place, and it was just a question of waiting for the birth to occur.

3

It definitely depends on the state and what the mother wants to do, but typically there is a supply/demand issue with babies. There aren’t piles of babies in orphanages waiting to be adopted or anything.

4

In Australia Victoria at least it depends entirely on the babies health condition at birth.

A fairly healthy baby will generally have no place finding a home. One with significant health issues can face a much harder road, they were advertising in the paper for one child to get adopted because they had no luck with the available adoption pool.

There were about 80 couples signed up, for about 14 children becoming available a year. So there were more couples than babies but it wasnt like 1000 parents for every child. Partly self confirming of course, in that many couples probably dont apply because they hear the odds are so bad.

Otara

5

This gets confusing because the state can play two separate roles in adoptions, and people conflate the two.

Two things have to happen for an adoption to take place: the parents and children have to be matched up, and the adoption has to be approved.

The former can be done by the state, by private agencies, or between individuals. When the state does it, it is looking to place children whose parental rights have been terminated. These are never (AFAIK: there may be the occasional exception) newborns simply because even if someone is a serial killer in prison with no interest in hindering the process (but not actively expediting it), it still takes about six months to go through. These kids can be placed in the homes of adoptive parents before this (foster-adopt), but nothing can be made permanent until the parent loses their rights. The state is also the group most likely to be placing older children, because older children who are available for adoption are virtually always the result of legal loss of custody: not many people are actively looking for adoptive parents for their three year old. In all these cases, the terminating of parental rights can take a long, long time–months to years. It’s not something the state does lightly. These kids may also be placed with potential parents in the meantime (foster-adopt, again). As mentioned above, the adoptive parents are “pre-screened”, so there isn’t much waiting on that end: you don’t even start the process with a potential parent(s) until you are sure they are ok. This option is very low cost, and can be very quick if you aren’t “picky”: parents can place limitations on the sorts of children they will accept (like “no sibling groups” “only newborns” “no history of sexual abuse”) and obviously the pickier you are, the longer it might be before you get matched up.

When agencies get involved, it is because someone has voluntarily decided to give up a child and is looking for potential parents. They go to the agency, which has compiled dossiers on various parents who are looking to adopt, and the bioparents can basically look through them to find a family they want to place their child with. Details such as open/closed and such can be worked through there. The agency usually has some sort of screening process as well. Again, the parents “available” have been pre-screened and each agency will have its own standards. Generally in these cases the baby goes home from the hospital with the parents, but there is generally some sort of waiting period before the paper work is filed. This is much more expensive, and the time really can vary before you are matched up because the bio-parents have a lot of control (which is not crazy: if you are giving up your child, you’re going to go to the agency that allows you to screen). Some people are selected quite quickly: some people wait years.

Last is totally private adoption, where it is arranged between two individuals. A lot of these cases are inter-family, or between people already known to each other. Each of these is different.

In all three cases, the state enters into it again when it comes to approving/performing the adoption. Obviously, the stat acting as an adoption agency doesn’t place kids in home that the state as adoption-approver won’t allow. In terms of private agency adoptions, parents can be approved by an agency but not by the state or by the state but not the agency. I think that in most states, the investigation/approval process of reputable agencies suffices, but I am not sure about that. In terms of totally private adoption, the state certainly has the right to reject an adoption application even if all parties agree to it.

These two roles of the state: placing children (in some cases) and approving adoptions (in all cases) is often conflated and is part of the reason people get confused in debates about gay/older people/atheist/single-parent/whatever adoption. State adoption agencies may have policies to not place kids with parents that they would still approve in cases of private adoption.

TL:DR: There are two processes here: the placement and the legal adoption. The timeline on the first varies widely and the timeline on the second can’t even start until the first is in place.

6

I’m not sure what you mean by this statement. What do you mean?

7

I have some experience with this very issue, as it happens I surrendered a child to adoption when I was a teenager. There were few to no open adoptions at the time. I did not select the parents, in any way, the social service agency did. I received to financial aid, beyond housing if I required it. I had 3 months, I believe, to change my mind, after signing the papers before the judge. The system was set up to not surrender those children to the adoptive parents until that time period has expired. They were placed into foster care. When I learned that I was hot to not have that happen to my child and kept telling the social worker, "I will not change my mind!’, I must have surely said it a thousand times, hoping she’d help me. I thought it was heartbreaking this child should lose their mother, but to then lose their substitute mother, a few months later, that seemed torturous to me.She never said she would do anything about it or even that she could.

Of course, when the day arrived, the last day for me to change my mind, I walked through the day like a zombie, at high school, with my own voice ringing in my ears, “I will not change my mind!” You cannot imagine how painful it truly was.

Long story short, (like that’s possible now?), that child has joyously returned to my life, her family and I, we’re all wonderful together, they are awesome and remarkably openhearted people. I trembled with fear, my heart almost stopping, when, early in our reunion, I inquired how old she was when she came home. Straight from the hospital! God Bless that woman who listened to the voice of a frightened 16 year old!

8

That was pretty much our experience, too (we’re in Texas). We adopted a little boy 7 years ago.

Nowadays, when a couple wants to adopt domestically, they typically create a profile, filled with photos and descriptions of their lives and interests. A pregnant woman who goes to an adoption agency is given a set of profiles to choose from. When she finds a couple she likes, she’ll contact that couple and try to work out most of the details before the birth.

In our case, we met with the birth mother about a month before our son was born. She liked us, and told us she or her parents would call us to come to her town (about a 6-7 hour drive from Austin) when she went into labor.

Sure enough, we got the call, drove there, met our son about 2 hours after delivery. Our social worker met us there 48 hours later, the birth mother signed all the paperwork, and we took him home.

The process was very expensive (around $25,000 total, and it might well be a lot more expensive now), but it wasn’t particularly difficult for us.

9

Our adoption, while still expensive, cost much less money than that because we did not go through an agency. Our birth mother answered our ad in the local newspaper, and everything was handled through the adoption attorney. With our second child, the birth mother contacted the adoption attorney herself directly and chose our profile on file there. The child was already 18 months old. That meant there were far fewer costs involved. Now that newspapers are going the way of the dodo bird, I don’t know if people still place adoption ads in them, or what the modern equivalence would be. In some states, private non-agency adoptions are very easy, but in other states, not so much.

10

What they mean, I assume, is that a white middle-class couple hoping to adopt a normal, healthy (white) child at birth will 99% of the time not get one from the social services agency.

As mentioned above, the majority of such mothers will likely make arrangements before birth, either a private deal with the adoptive parents, or through some private agency which somehow seems to charge the adoptive parents a hefty fee from what I’ve absorbed in various news reports and articles. (Not sure how this is not baby-selling).

The social agencies deal with the children taken from birth parents due to neglect, drug problems, etc; either these children have some health or developmental problems, they are “challenged”, they are minorities (possibly with all these problems too). Sometimes the mother tried for months or a few years before giving up, so the child may have developmental and emotional problems. Eary childhood environment is thought to be critical for mental development, so these children, even if born healthy, may have long term lingering problems. (How bad a mother do you have to be nowadays to lose your kids?) The days of little Orphan Annie or Anne of Green Gables (what’s with orphans and Ann?) are long gone.

11

Bolding mine.

I see adoption ads in our city newspaper(I’m in Kansas) They generally say that a loving couple wants to adopt, and a contact number is given. Sometimes the ad mentions paying expenses, living and medical.

12

As an adopted child, my parents sat in the waiting room together while my birth mother had the c-section that was my birth. A few hours later they were told I had been checked out and they could take me home. My mother was shocked. She thought I had to be in the hospital for, like, a week (at that time, new moms were kept for as long as two weeks). But that was for the mother, not for the baby’s sake.

This was a private adoption, but due to some state law the birth mother had a year to change her mind. She did change her mind, but it had been longer than a year.

Some years later I gave up a baby, and I was told that he would be with his new parents at about 10 days–essentially would go straight from my arms to his new parents. The opposite of elbows, that did not happen. They didn’t get him for nearly three months, and I don’t know why. He is also back in my life now (obviously, or I wouldn’t know this). The agency also pretty much lied to be about how long I had to change my mind–they said ten days, and once I signed the papers that was it. In fact I had six months by state law, if only I’d had the brains to actually look it up and not take the social worker’s word for it.

13

Just a note on this … it is perfectly legal in lots of states and used pretty frequently, I believe. In some states, however, it is illegal to advertise in this way (Ohio, for instance, prohibits adoption advertisements).

I’ve seen a fair number of blogs by prospective adoptive parents. Things may be swinging more that way.

14

My wife and I were foster parents and decided to adopt. We adopted 2 boys and with each we adopted them within a day of their birth. Our situation might be a bit unique in that both of our boys were “crack babies”. Very difficult during the first few months as they were going through withdrawal. Thankfully both are almost 10 now and well adjusted.

15

Do eBay or Craigslist accept such postings?

16

I don’t think Ebay does, but I think Craigslist does. I’m not sure if you are kidding, but online sites are a common way for prospective families to find birth mothers.

17

Not kidding - just curious.

18

Pretty much this; I’ve read enough stories to understand that, in general, domestic adoptions are harder/more expensive than foreign adoptions. Snce I’m in Canada but these boards are largely American, I just generalized the case to include both countries in a single “experience” because it wasn’t the details I was concerned about but rather the “average” process.

Thank you, everyone for your responses; the whole situation is much clearer to me now. I’m glad that babies are - for the most part - placed very quickly and that the delays/complications are pretty much on the prospective parents’ side of things (not that that makes it easy for good people to adopt, but rather that it means some poor baby isn’t placed in a weird sort of limbo most of the time!)

Fascinating stories, all. Thanks again for your responses!

19

Elbows. I want to say thank you. I saw what my brother and sister in law went through in trying to adopt. They were able to finaly adopt a boy and a few years later a girl. My brother’s grandaughter graduated from San Diego State with honors. Our whol family has been blessed because two young girls were brave enough to see their children adopted.

I am really glad that the ending for you has beeen a good one. Again thank you.

20

Given that it was in a different countries, and almost 40 years ago I don’t think my experience is so relevant - but for us (there were three in total) it was all within a few days of birth.
I will be looking up my birth father next year for the first time.