While most say that adopting a child is “one of the most rewarding experiences in life,” many also report that the process is rife with angst and uncertainty. People are increasingly choosing to adopt when fertility options have been exhausted or when health issues preclude pregnancy.
Others say that adoption is an “inner response” to open homes to special-needs children, those drifting in foster care or the thousands available for adoption in overseas orphanages.
Phil Cott, Webster Elementary School principal, and his wife, who worked through an adoption attorney as well as a private agency, know intimately the feelings of stress and anxiety often associated with the process.
“The words I think of are great vulnerability and nervousness,” said Cott, who successfully adopted two children now 6 and 8.
In the case of one adoption, the Cott’s flew the birth mother in from out of state, funding her medical and living expenses during the pregnancy. “We had a nice relationship with her, we saw her at least once a week,” said Cott.
While acknowledging that this adoption was finalized in court approximately 12 to 14 months from the time of the baby’s birth, he added, until that point “you have to take a leap of faith that it will all work out. You’re in something that’s fraught with a lot of negative possibilities that you have no control over, but the prize is something so big and so important, that when it’s over and you have the baby and the baby is healthy, you’re thrilled, but also relieved.”
According to the adoption magazine Myria, those who opt to connect directly with a birth mother, even through an attorney, will need to choose an experienced lawyer to explain the adoption laws and procedures of that state.
Yet Cott says he found the reality of working through an attorney more of a “matchmaking” enterprise than a strictly legal one. “The legal work is minimal,” he said. “You find that you’re at the mercy of lawyers and birthmothers who in this day and age, choose you.”
Cott said that brochures are often created replete with pictures and professional data specifically aimed at selling eager prospective parents to birth mothers.
“Through a network of referrals and reputation, the lawyer builds a group of parents who want to adopt, and a network of birthmothers who want to give up their children for adoption–and he matches them up. The birthmother has the final say so,” said Cott.
The cost of an independent adoption (without an agency) is said to vary, while fees to adopt through a private agency, which includes inter-country adoptions, are reportedly between $8,000 and $25,000. According to Myria, there are other fees people need to be aware of. “It’s customary for adoptive parents to pay for the birth mother’s medical and legal expenses in addition to their own. Some states require adoptive parents to pay for counseling for the birth mother so that the court can be satisfied that she fully comprehends what she is planning to do.”
According to California law, the birth mother signs an Adoption Placement Agreement once she has given birth and is medically discharged from the hospital. At that point, the birth mother has 90 days to be counseled, consider her options and renege on the adoption before the Adoption Agreement becomes permanent.
“The first thing you ask for is proof of pregnancy from the birth mother,” said Cott, adding quickly, “but you can’t even trust that. Once you enter into this informal, unenforceable agreement, you start paying.”
Malibu attorney Samuel Besse, who at one time handled adoption legal services, concurred: “There are no guarantees that a birth mother can give, that I am aware of, that she can not ‘undo’ if she chooses. That goes for prenatal expenses and following through with giving up the baby after it is born.”
Approximately 120,000 children in the U.S. are currently awaiting adoption. Many are children of color, school-aged siblings who need to be placed in the same home, older children and special-needs children with physical, emotional or mental disabilities. Many are in custody of a public agency after having sustained unspeakable abuse, neglect and abandonment by the birth parents.
A Malibu mother, who did not want to be identified, spoke of herself and her husband’s formidable but highly rewarding experiences in adopting their foster care children.
“We knew there were babies who were addicted through prenatal drug abuse, and how often they are shuttled from foster home to foster home where there is no commitment to them,” said Smith (not her real name). “These children often end up in an institution, unadoptable.”
Smith, who has seven children, said she had “three birth daughters” when she learned she could not have any more children, “but each of us wanted more kids,” she said.
Due to prenatal addiction, Smith said that her oldest child was only a few months old when she and her husband were told he would never hear or see normally–never sit up, walk or talk.
“[Foster care] urged us to put him into an institution so that we could take a child that might have a better chance, but by that time, he was ours,” said Smith. “The county gave the [birth] parents 18 months to get their act together and if they didn’t, then the children became adoptable and the foster parents have first choice.”
Today, Smith’s children are healthy and are reportedly doing well in school.
Adoption services provided through a public agency are funded by state and federal taxes and are typically free or offered at a modest fee.
Another longtime Malibu resident, who also did not want to be identified, said that she and her husband’s experience in adopting two children, a brother and sister, ages 8 and 9, from an orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia was “very positive.”
“A lot of people are having very tough economic times there,” said Jones (not her real name). “No family could [permanently] take these children.”
Jones said that the adoption, up to and including the trip to Russia to meet the children for the first time and legally adopt them, was handled professionally and “ran like clockwork,” offering high praise to the veteran international adoption attorney with whom she and her husband worked.
Jones acknowledged that “there’s a lot of paperwork and footwork” to the adoption process. Things have to be notarized, you have to tell about yourselves, demonstrate sufficient income to take care of the children. “There is a home visit,[and] we took physicals. Jones said the entire adoption process took six months.
Offering insight into her children’s past, Jones said, “The children are very independent–they were left alone. They buried a lot of their grief. They kept telling us they lived in an apartment with their mother before she got sick, often with no food, unattended, sometimes for days on end.”
As to the sometimes, slow bonding process between parents and children of different cultures, Jones reportedly had the opposite experience. “They were just adorable,” she said. “The first night in the hotel [the children] were very affectionate right away–full of life and mischief. They climbed right next to us, and that’s how we slept. They purposely give you time together before you go to court to make the adoption legal.”
While acknowledging that not all adoptions are successful, particularly ones that cross cultural and international divides, Jones recommends the journey to others looking into international adoption. “I would encourage it, there is everything to be gained. We took it on faith.”