[sub] you know what they say about curiosity killing the cat [/sub]
If you’re ever in an abortion thread in great debates, it will be brought up at least once by a pro-choice person that there are already a lot of children in the world without homes, and that it’s harder for an older child to be adopted because “people want healthy [white] newborns.” I’m sure this is statistically true.
But what if someone wanted to adopt an older child? Personally, I do not anticipate having biological kids, and if I were adopt one, I’d want a child who was at least a toddler, probably older. (I’m one of those rare women for whom infants hold very little charm; yeah, if I had one I’d change my mind, whatever). If I ever did adopt it’d be years from now, but a little knowledge is always good for you.
As factually as possible, I’d like to how comparing older children compares to adopting a newborn. * to simplify things, let’s assume the children in question are from the US being adopted by parents who are also US citizens*
You hear a lot about people being on waiting lists for years before they finally adopt their newborn. Is the wait shorter if you wanted to adopt a two-year-old? A four to six-year-old? Or even older?
Are there different standards applied as to the “fitness” of the parents who intend to adopt?
Is there a difference in the average length of time it takes to finalize the adoptions, or is the age of the child irrelevant? Delays in one case or the other of assuming physical possession of the child?
How does it complicate things (or simplify) if you were to adopt siblings? What if one is a newborn and one older? I assume it would be slightly more difficult to place a newborn who isn’t to separated from their older sibling, is this correct?
Would it be easier or more difficult for an unmarried person, or a gay couple, to adopt an older child compared to adopting a newborn?
We are foster, step, biological and adoptive parents of children 10-24. We’ve adopted through an adoption agency and the state.
The waiting list is much, much shorter through the state for older children. Private agencies rarely handle older child adoptions.
The definition of the “fitness” of the parents remains minimally the same, although if you consider adopting an older child with issues, they do want to make sure you can meet their needs sufficiently to insure the placement works.
In our experience, adoption finalizations take a similar amount of time, regardless of private, agency or state adoptions. They are all following the same set of legal guidelines on minimum times to elapse before finalization.
Most states are hungry for parents who will adopt sibling groups - especially if there are 3+ children.
No personal experience with either gay couple or single parent adoption.
Notable differences:
a) the state is significantly cheaper to adopt through - often times they will reimburse adoption expense up to a cap of 1-2K.
b) the homestudy the state prepares is much more exhaustive than one performed by a private agency. They must be extra cautious that the parents are prepared to deal with any special needs, history or issues the children may bring with them.
I hope someone with expert knowledge will come along soon, but here’s what I picked up while working as a secretary/receptionist at a private adoption agency.
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The agency I worked for had a book full of photos and bios of children from toddlers to school aged waiting to be adopted. There was no waiting list of potential parents for these children, although anyone wanting to adopt them would of course have to go through the usual interview and investigation process. I believe that could take from six months to a year.
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Standards were never lowered for anyone where I worked, and I doubt they are at any reputable agency.
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I don’t think the age of the child had any direct affect on the length of the adoption process. Many older children waiting for adoption do have psychological problems or learning disabilities, and making sure the potential parents are prepared to deal with this might take a bit more time.
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Agencies will usually keep siblings together if they can, and would generally be happy to hear that someone was looking to adopt siblings.
Depends on the policies of the agency, although I doubt it would make much difference other than the relative ease of finding an older child waiting to be adopted vs. a newborn. Of course, many agencies refuse to place any child at all with anyone other than a married, heterosexual couple.
We didn’t have the funds to try for a private adoption, so we went through the county. We were told in the pre-adoption classes that we would never be able to get a baby through the county (since the agencies who charged could, in turn, provide financial aid to the mothers, so the (semi-rural) county never encountered abandoned babies). The private agencies to which the county had connections said that the baby waiting list was a minimum of two years–with no promises that they would ever find a match.
We completed our classes in May and were able to meet our two kids (a 5yo and 3yo sibling group with “issues”–we went for the trifecta) by September and bring them home by November. (And that included two serious delays in the court system and having a neighbor who tried to sabotage the adoption.)
We still had to meet all the standards that the county established. We got no bonus points (other than the kids) for going for an older sibling group with issues. (If I were cynical, I would say that our inspections might have been more stringent, because we were not waving cash in front of an agency to let us “get by.” However, I suspect that most agencies, private and public, are trying to do the right thing and are not deliberately putting children at risk–periodic horror tales not withstanding.)
My wife and I had two boys of our own when we decided to become foster parents. We specified a girl, but ended up with an older brother in the process. This was many years ago and I cannot give any worthwhile information on the adoption process. We adopted the first girl after having her as a foster child for about 6 years. Then we received a set of twins (girl & boy) as foster children and evidentually adopted them.
The pertinent information I can give you is concerning adopting older children. The first two years of a child’s life is very important. If they did not have a stable homelife; if they did not learn to bond; if they did not feel they were loved there will be problems. From our experience this was more true of the girls than the boy. If an older child is up for adoption the chances are very likely that those first two years were not ideal.
An older child probably has been in foster care and knows their biological parents. Knowing their biological parents can cause problems in many ways as the child grows older. Why, well when things don’t go right then the grass is always greener on the other side. Then there is the problem of “why did they reject me?”. This was a big problem for our girls, but not at all for the boy.
I have no experience with this but even the previous foster parents may have some negative influence (but it also could be positive).
I am not trying to discourage you, but rather to warn you about possible problems. Our first daughter died at the age of 24 from ovarian cancer. At the time of her death we were very close and I miss her tremendously. The second daughter is now 24 and is blaming everyone else (not me anymore) for her problems. Today, I went to Mississippi State and watched our future daughter-in-law play softball. So I have no real regrets about the adoptions, only a wish that someone had told me some of the problems to watch out for in advance.
D’oh. I should have been more clear there, I was wondering if the standards would be higher for placing older children (the whole private vs public thing), not lower, since the state has more of a say in what they are, presumably.
I don’t really know about differences between private agencies and the state, since things can vary so much from agency to agency and state to state. But within the same system I doubt there would be much difference due to the child’s age per se, although as I mentioned if the child has special needs (as is more common with older prospective adoptees than infants) the potential parents will usually be held to a higher standard.