Question about International Adoption

[RiverandJulie]

DH and I have a 13mo  DS that we adopted domestically.  We are just starting to think about and discuss another. 

We are discussing international vs domestic and a question has come up that I feel silly I dont know the answer to.

Why are babies adopted internationally always older...as in, not newborns?

Thanks-more questions coming as we have more discussions

[Whistler]

Hazarding a guess here, from what I know about int'l adoption and from the training we did, the newborns are usually adopted in-country and older children who live in orphanages and are harder to place or who have special needs are offered to American (or British or Australian or ?) applicants.

Also the process takes long enough that even the very young ones who come into care are several months older when they get to come home than they were when they are matched.

If anyone knows more about this than me, feel free to speak up.  I think this would be a better question for a worker in an int'l agency than here.  You'd probably get a more accurate answer!

[Polliwog]

I would also think that many women try to parent their babies and then realize that circumstances make it impossible and that they want a "better" life for their children.

[sugarandspice697]

Its because the process it takes to qualify the child for international adoption take several months to complete. If the child was abandon, the local authorities must attempt to find the birth parents in case the child was kidnapped. In many poor countries that lack a lot of the modern technology was have can make it difficult to find the parents who may live several miles away in a rural village.

Second, some children must be on a national registry for several months so people who live in the country have priority to adopt them. For example in China, children must be register on a national databank for six months before they are deemed eligible for international adoption, during that six month period, citizens of child may adopt that child. Russia and South Korea also have similar policies.

Finally, a lot of the adoptions need to be finalized in local courts and it can take several months to schedule a court date because the officials have to gather all of the paperwork that proves that a particular child is a true orphan.

All of these situations is why most children who are adopted internationally are at least six months old by the time they come home but nowadays, most are toddler aged.

[RedOakMomma]

Yup.  All of what sugarandspice said. :)

Our dd came home from South Korea at 9 months old (almost 10).  That's about as young as I've heard of children coming home, though I think there are some countries (in Africa or the former Soviet republics) that have children coming home a little younger.

It's both understandable and maddening that it takes so long.  On the one hand, with a child that is very clearly placed for adoption and is unlikely to be adopted in-country, how on Earth can it take nine months to get a baby from there to here?  What paperwork takes THAT long??  (Especially when babies would have such an easier transition if they had families sooner.)  On the other hand, kids fall through the cracks and there's room for horrible corruption when the process is quick...just look at Vietnam and Guatemala to see how that happened. :(

In South Korea, kids used to be referred very young.  Shortly after they were born, from what I heard.  Kids were frequently home by 4 or 5 months old, sometimes younger.  But then there were pressures to increase Korean domestic adoptions, so now all children must wait 5-6 months so that babies are first available to be adopted domestically.  Children who aren't adopted in Korea are referred at 5 or 6 months old to international couples, and from there it takes at least 3 months to get all the paperwork all in line...paperwork goes between US immigration (USCIS) and South Korea, visas have to be issued...there are several steps that rely on one or the other country doing something. 

I wish some exceptions would be made to this rule.  Special needs kiddos that are unlikely to be adopted domestically, for example, I feel should be able to be adopted more quickly.  And sibling calls (where a sibling is born to a child you've already adopted)...Korea puts a lot of importance on those children being placed with the same adoptive family, but still you have to wait 6 months in order to get the official referral.  It is what it is, though.  South Korea has done a lot to increase domestic adoptions and cut back on any abuses or corruption in the process, and I have to respect that.

[alwayslearning66]

I have the same info as the above posters. I will also add a brief historical perspective domestically, as I can remember it. It was in the early 20th century that animal cruelty laws were passed and THEN human rights laws re. child abuse were passed (10 years later?). Orphanages sprang up and continued into the 50's. A relative of mine remembers orphan trains that would travel through the midwest and make stops for farmers to get free farm hands. Families were broken up for a variety of reasons including debt and racism. A friend who is Romani was removed from her family in NY. A grandfather-in-law was placed in an orphanage with siblings because they didn't have enough money. Fast forward to our current foster care system with all its broken parts. I only take you through this journey as a way to get relative perspective.

[tiffani]

ditto what everyone else has said, but I'll add that in Uganda, it is possible for babies to come home fairly young, but it only happens when all the cards fall into place a certain way... for example, some of the judges want to see that the child has been in the orphanage for a certain length of time, so that family may come back for them, or locals may adopt them.  Our daughter was referred to us at 4.5 months of age, I think because she was abandoned in a way that would indicate that nobody was coming back for her.   Not much local adoption from the orphanage in her home region, so they referred her very young, and we thought we'd have her home at 7 months, and would have if the US embassy didn't stick a giant awful American wrench in the process for many families. In the end, she came home to us at 16 months old.  So you never really know what might happen with international adoption!  

she's still our tiny baby. :)

I consider a 6 month old baby really young for international adoption, and that is fairly common in ethiopia, is it not?