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We were looking to adopt a newborn to say 6-month old girl of irish/german/polish/scottish descent (like my wife and myself). Every agency and group we talked to basically had the same response:
Baby momma (if currently pregnant) wants all medical covered, a stipend while they're pregnant, visitation rights after birth (open adoption), and of course there were attorneys fees involved.
We were never going to do the foreign adoption thing (same basic reason, plus we'd seen way too many horror stories.)
Fostering wasn't possible as there was none available that fit the criteria.
We'd discussed adopting outside our ethnicity, but seeing the writing on the wall back in 2008 with regards to rapidly deteriorating race relations, plus the crap we've seen some friends who have mixed biological children, we nixed that idea as well.
The experienced crushed my wife; she's adopted and wanted to do the same.
I blame the lawyers for getting involved and turning adoption into a money pump.
Essentially the experiences adopting as others have mentioned. Our first attempt was through one of my wife's friend's father. He was connected to a church group that ran an orphanage in Mexico. When I finally got a hold of the lady who ran the orphanage, it just sounded too convoluted to work out, so we passed.
Next. we contacted one of the state's hot shot adoption attorneys. They wanted a big retainer, which we were getting ready to fork over when I asked the clerk who was working with us how many folks did the attorney have on retainer for adoptions. She told us more than a few. Then I asked how many 'cold' adoptions does the guy work each year, adoptions which weren't previously arranged between birth mother and folks adopting. One or two. So, we saved that money.
A former co-worker suggested fostering, and we looked into it. We signed up telling them up front we were looking to adopt.
It was apparent from the makeup of our class that some folks felt foster care was a low effort way to get some money, and that is a shame. We had foster kids come to us from private houses, and from group homes. The one thing they had in common was that they all showed up with all their worldly possessions in a single cardboard box. When you'd ask them about toys, beds, etc. the answer was always 'it was theirs' (the people/organization that they had come from). At the time folks were getting $600.00 a month per foster kid.
I told the foster care folks that I didn't want to do the culturalization they wanted us to do with kids of other ethnic backgrounds. So what did they send us - black kids, all aged 8 and above. We had two brothers that stayed with us for several years, we didn't want to adopt them only because of the family drama - they were from the area, had older sisters and cousins running around and they both spoke fondly of their dad, who was in prison. I figured it would be nothing but drama to adopt them. I figured they'd stay with us until they got through college and/or got jobs and then they'd always have a place to call home even if they weren't adopted. Just as the oldest hit his teens, they were adopted, along with their little sister, who we never could get for foster care. And they didn't leave our house with cardboard boxes, it took a trailer to haul their stuff. The basketball goal wouldn't fit, but we tried.
At that point I was past my adopt by date, so we dropped foster care for a while. Then, my friend that got us into foster care rolled out to Denver to pick up two kids who had been removed from the court's jurisdiction by birth mom. She told the placement folks, Dan and his wife wanted to adopt toddlers, and all you gave them was older kids, place these two with them. The girls were 3 months and 15 months at the time. We got them and ended up adopting them a year or so later. The oldest was bi-racial, the other had a slight case of cerebral palsy and a bit of ADHD. They received a medical card which paid their insurance co-pays, but we had to have insurance for them.
I wouldn't give up on foster care, in fact, were I 15 years younger, I'd probably be all for adopting a kid that was about to age out of foster care, just to give them an anchor.
Bi-racial families have become much more common, I had a couple of incidents where the boy's race was an issue, but I took care of them. I had one incident with my oldest daughter where I had to go talk to some folks down the block about something one of them said, but that was all that was needed.
Sorry to interrupt with an on topic post...
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Since, dogs....
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