Dear Wendy,If you are struggling with deciding whether helping your friend in her adoptive decision, I would like to offer my perspective. I am an adoptive mother of 2 and my 24 yr old daughter rec...
Dear Wendy,If you are struggling with deciding whether helping your friend in her adoptive decision, I would like to offer my perspective. I am an adoptive mother of 2 and my 24 yr old daughter recently chose adoption for her child. Your fear that the child will end up in "the system" is understandable, but probably unfounded. Adoption today favors the birth family with an overwhelming choice of couples waiting to adopt. Your friend's most important choice is to find an agency that provides adequate counseling for the birth family in terms of emotional support in preparation for the placement, as well as follow-up support for continued contact through open or semi-open adoption. Our experience having now gone through the process 3 times total, is that smaller local agencies rather than larger ones such as Gladney, are much more responsive to the birth families' special needs. We also found that the wait list for couples wanting to adopt is as much as 50% longer today than it was 24 years ago when we were an adoptive couple. So waiting families are all the more eager to respond to the birth families' needs. The cost of adoption is almost 3 times more than it was 24 years ago, so the families that can afford the fees generally are more likely to have the means to provide for the needs of the child.