Dana Johnson, director of research and education at the International Adoption Clinic, discusses the choice between adopting domestically versus adopting internationally.
I think that whether to adopt from the foster care system or to adopt internationally is a complicated question and each family is going to answer that differently. I think there are some misconceptions about the foster care system and international adoptions that play into this.If you look at the surveys of families that are thinking about adopting, they are concerned about adopting a child with a medical or developmental problem. And when you view children in the foster care system they are coming from neglectful or abusive homes. Perhaps their mother has used drugs, and that scares them.They are afraid of those issues.You also look at the foster care system very pragmatically and most of the kids are older because the foster care system and the courts take a long time to deprive parents of parental rights. People who are adopting, generally, whether domestic or international, want to adopt as young a child as possible because they want the entire spectrum of the parenting experience. So that leaves out a lot of kids in the foster care system because they are older kids.They are also afraid of perhaps medical and developmental problems that relate back to the child’ origins or the environment that child has been in.The other thing is that parents have an expectation, or I should say that in society there is an expectation, that a child is going to look like you and your spouse. And adopting a black child may not be the thing that Caucasian parents want to do.The irony of course is that in international adoption, 85 percent of the families are transracial families after they adopt. But sometimes that’s not thought of in the same context as the foster care.
The other thing is that many families are afraid of contact with the birth family.And adopting a child out of the foster care system, whose mother or father lives in the same town, presents a specter that that family may come back and contact that child at some point in the future. If you adopt a child from Guatemala, or from Russia, it’s very unlikely that mother is going to show up on your doorstep.So the desire to avoid contact with the birth family is something else that enters into parents’ consideration as to adopting internationally versus adopting domestically.
There are other reasons, too. Some families come from Russia They want to adopt from Russia.And some families are really interested in the culture and that really intrigues them. Other families want to adopt internationally because those children are in worse situations than the foster care children here.Those children are in danger of dying.The kids in the foster care system may not be getting very good care, but quantitatively and qualitatively, the situations are different.