This may or may not be a debate but I’ve been trying to figure out why adoptions are so expensive? I know there is alot of legal hurdling and hassling to get it done but the whole process seems to be set-up to prevent anyone but the most well off from adopting a child.
I have a buddy who recently adopted 2 children from Uzbekistan and it cost him a whopping $60k when all was said and done. This is a ridiculous sum of money and I’ve heard that it can be substantially more.
My wife and I have recently started entertaining the idea of adopting a child vs. having our own 3rd. We are both stably employeed, make around $150k a year between us, have little debt and have 2 great kids. Our house is very large and we live in a nice neighborhood. Ultimately the huge initial financial outlay will most likely prevent us from giving a needy child a home. Even though we make good money and are not struggling we just don’t have $10’s of K to spend adopting a child. Hell, we don’t have $10’s of K period. This just doesn’t seem right.
I realize there are some huge tax breaks and programs for families that adopt, but a tax break tomorrow doesn’t make it financially feasible today.
I think the government should facilitate the entire adoption process. This does several things. It gives a child a healthy home with a shot at a good life and it keeps the child from having to be financially supported by the state when they are in foster care, orphanage or wards of the state. It likely will keep the child off the streets and out of jail and off unemployment when they are older. In the end spending a few K NOW can save $100’s of K over the life of the child.
My wife and I would almost certainly adopt if the $$ outlay wasn’t so high upfront. The way it is now that likely won’t happen.
What is the outlay to adopt in the US? You are quoting the cost of adopting from another nation, but the US government should only subsidize the cost of adopting in the US.
I was only giving that as an example. I know others who have spent over $40k to adopt an American child. We aren’t particular about where he/she is born or what color they are. A kid is a kid to us. We aren’t equipped to adopt a special needs kid though. I’m military and we move every few years and have no family around so it would be more than we can handle right now.
I guess I’m not sure why adoptions have a cost associated with them at all. Doesn’t the Government pay lawyers for other things? Why not pay some to handle adoptions?
Define “special needs” The thing is…special needs can range from anything like mild ADD to drug/alchahol damaged kids to the stereotypical profoundly MR with about ten million medical problems.
I think adoptions got a bad rap throughout American history. I read Catherine Reef’s book Poverty in America which is a great book by the way. Anyway in it she explains a history of adoptions and such.
For instance did you know of the “adoption trains?” The local and federal governments would sponsor young children (generally between 10 -15) considered too old to be adopted and too young to go to work.
They would put them on trains and send them all over the West till they turned 16 or got adopted. Basically it was “forced labour,” the farm people out West that took them in got additonal farm hands.
Reef does say in her book that the children probably were better off even working in a farm than living in a slum in the city.
By the 30s and the Great Depression people were just leaving kids all over. Then it became all in style for rich people and celebrities to adopt kids rather than have them.
Reef points out that at the time local governments had a concern because they were still running workhouses and poor houses so to speak so they wanted the kids out at any cost.
A lot of these options led to a backlash after WWII and propserous times, and the society moved from removing kids to keeping the family together at “almost” all costs. That along with the end of the stigma of being a single parent, kind of ended the need for any government subsidy of adoption.
Reef’s explination isn’t the best, but it does show how society changed and adoption which we view as noble today was in the past seen as a blatant explotation of kids, either for farm labour or for celebrity status.
And if you do look today the government does give money to foster families and group homes, which have replaced adoption in a sense.
Some adoptions in some states are subsidized - the court/attorney fees are paid for by the child welfare agency, the family gets a monthly check for expenses, and possibly the adopted child gets a medical insurance card paid for by the state.
They’re not special needs adoptions, either. (by not “special needs” I misspoke)
Now wait just one goldurn second, partner. You have identified something that is expensive. you then ask “why doesn’t the government subsidize this expense?”
Could you explain why you did that? That is, it seems that you think just because something you want is expensive, the government should pay for it. Why is that? Why not ask why the government doesn’t buy every American a Peraves Ecomobile?
You think maybe you could outline rational reasons why the government shouldn’t fully subsidize the adoption of American orphans instead of offering up another half-assed conservative objection?
I can think of one reason: it would mean the government would have to be responsible for determining whether the children are being adopted by responsible parents who aren’t committing fraud.
I was wondering about this myself, the other day. I read somewhere on the internets (I can try to find it if anyone cares) about a couple who had adopted both internationally and in the US, and the US adoption (of an older child, I believe) ended up costing them something like $60K in court costs, etc. They said the international adoption went much more smoothly and cost considerably less.
I don’t think the US gov should subsidize international adoptions, but I don’t understand why adopting a kid who is currently in foster care and costing the state money is so damn expensive and difficult. Where is all this money going? Just to lawyers? Because people should not be punished financially for tying to do a good thing for a child in a terrible situation.
Stop and think. Children that aren’t adopted are going to stay in the foster care system. Subsidizing their adoption arguably saves the government money.
He’s a Randian. I expect his “solution” for unwanted children would be to let them starve, or dismember them for their organs. After all, they can’t defend themselves so anything that happens to them is just what they deserve for being weak.
For anyone who is not familiar with Der Trihs–this is what he does. He never makes an actual argument, he just states conclusions, which are usually accompanied by personal attacks. Let’s carry on.
The U.S. federal government is not in the business of just paying for anything and everything that a U.S. citizen wants. By asking me why the U.S. federal government should not pay for it, you are looking at the issue from the wrong angle.
If you are looking for a little baby you’re not actually looking for a ‘needy’ child as there is a greater demand for babies than there are for older kids. If you wanted to work with older kids you could try fostering, for which the state will pay you, and then eventually adopt. It’s probably one of the least expensive options.
As for getting kids from Uzbekistan, why should the government subsidize foreign adoption?