A huge question in the minds of many adoptive parents is how on earth they'll ever be able to afford the costs associated with an international adoption. I have blogged in the past about the estimated cost for our current adoption, and how we afforded the adoption costs for our other children. I also wrote about the timing of adoption-related expenses (hint: you don't have to come up with all the money at once!). I want to write now about some of... more

The vast majority of families adopting for the first time request a 'healthy' child. Any thoughtful person realizes that there are no guarantees in parenthood, whether the child is born to you or to a stranger. And yet adoptive parenting, with it's special needs checklists and the probing questions from social workers sometimes lets folk feel like they have more power to 'opt out' of special needs parenting than if they'd birthed a child with special needs themselves.

I read an article recently in the New York Times by a woman who had adopted... more

Adoption from Ethiopia has increased markedly in the past year. In 2006, 732 Ethiopian children came home to America, up from 441 children in 2005. With all the new adoption agencies licensed in Ethiopia this year, I would suspect that these numbers will increase even more dramatically in 2007. I’m guessing well over 1000 kids could come home from Ethiopia in 2007

This increase could very well affect processing times within the next year, though it is difficult to predict how much. Some of the more established agencies with many clients are taking the conservative approach and are asking families requesting infants to wait a couple months to begin their paperwork after submitting... more

One of the peculiarities about adoption is that the intensity of the waiting waxes and wanes. When you are waiting for one particular document to reach your agency so that your paperwork can go to Ethiopia, you can be almost jumping out of your skin with impatience.

When you hear it will be months till you get your referral, you settle down, and can sometimes go hours (days?) without devoting much thought to the adoption. That cycle repeats over and over until finally you get your child home.

We are waiting very-- um-- intensely here today. Our court date in Ethiopia was scheduled for today. We are hoping to get news very soon that we have passed and that the girls are ours.... more

I wrote in a previous post about the I-864, a screening tool to make sure that families who bring kids into the U.S. will have the resources to support them. If you take a look at the Poverty Guidelines and find that your family doesn't meet income requirements, don't despair.

Prove Assets

Another way you can prove your capability is to show that you have assets that you could sell that would make up for the shortfall in cash if needed. For example, there will be 12 people in my family after our... more

The I-864 is a convoluted bit of paperwork required before the U.S. government will issue your child's visa to come into the U.S. The purpose of the document is to prove that you will be able to support your child without government assistance after he comes to America. Your adoption agency will provide you with the form and instructions at the proper time in your adoption process.

The document looks at the income of the sponsor (the parent) and determines if it is adequate to meet the child's needs. The standard that they use is the U.S. Poverty Guidelines. An adoptive family must make 125% of the Poverty Guidelines according to family size to bring a child into the U.S. You need... more

I got a question recently from a reader.

I'd like to hear from someone who has adult children living in the home who is also wanting to adopt an older child. I have this situation in my own home. I have 6 birth children ages 2-21. The princess of the family who also is 18 and graduating high school this month is not approving of the decision my husband and I have made to pursue adoption. We tried for a year or so to have another child on our own but at my age(41) I am becoming too old and after tons of testing it is confirmed that my old eggs probably won't produce another baby.

We want to parent another child. We don't care how it gets here. ... more

Part One: Getting Your Dossier To Ethiopia

Identifying Your Child

The wait for referral is perhaps the biggest variable in the whole adoption process. If you are adopting a waiting child, you may accept a referral before your dossier even gets complete. If you are requesting an infant, you may wait 4-8 months for a referral, with an infant girl being at the longer end of that spectrum. Wait times do vary between agencies. A brand new agency may be able to give referrals quickly at first before they gain much of a client list.

Children’s Commission

In... more

I thought that people would be interested in hearing a run-down of the whole process of adopting a child from Ethiopia. I know that when we were beginning our first adoption from Ethiopia, I had a lot of questions about the process and what was involved at each step.

Homestudy Agency

Most people start by choosing a homestudy agency. A homestudy is a document written by a social worker and usually consists of 3-4 interviews with the adoptive family. Before those interviews can be scheduled, he family will be asked to provide a long list of documents: birth certificates, marriage licenses and divorce decrees, proof of employment,proof of health insurance,... more

Recent rumors about Angelina Jolie claim that she is currently in the process of adopting a little boy from the Czech Republic. In the past I've shared that I'm a fan of Angelina. I’m all for adoption. I’m all for big families. And certainly she has the financial resources to pull this off. We'll see if there's any truth to the stories currently circulating. But if it's true, this adoption seems very close on the heels of the adoption of her son Pax from Vietnam.

Kids take time to settle into families. Preschoolers are especially challenging. They’re old enough to... more