Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Apologies that this question is bordering on not being at all relevant to ERE, except that focusing on reducing spending and setting money aside for later perhaps allows for the flexibility to take on new responsibilities (financial and otherwise).

Does anyone happen to have any experience with the adoption process in the U.S.? DW and I are starting to be a little bit more serious about possibly adopting a kid, because, you know, paying parochial school tuition for 2 kids just isn't painful enough.

Thanks!

Only indirectly (friend and a cousin have both adopted kids and my niece was adopted). Plus another friend works for an overseas adoption agency.

I guess the first place to start is choosing whether you want an intermediate step of foster children (my niece), local adoption (my friend), or an overseas adoption (my cousin). Racial, sex, and age preferences (if any) also should be decided. Once you've got that figured out, then I suppose approaching the appropriate agencies would get the ball rolling.

have you considered spending more time in local orphan house (like helping these kids to solve homeworks) before making more serious decision?

We offered fostering respite care for two boys (one for three years and then after a break of 12 months another for 10 years). In UK. Both had ADHD and behavioural problems as well as complex food allergies (latter was our area of expertise because of our son). The commitment was one weekend a month - so not large and I like to think we had a positive impact, the social workers thought so. But looking back the bigger impact was probably on us. Coming into contact with families very unlike our own (largely because their lives were lived with social services systems as fall back or even main support). Working with social services is not easy, they are all very nice individuals but the systems are intrusive and frequently so inefficient/ineffective that an ERE person will want to weep. This mangles you a bit as well as any children or families caught up in it.

I have a friend whose job is working in adoption (this is in the UK). Her role is now primarily working with families who have adopted and are suffering violence or extremely disrupted households at the hands of the children they adopted. That must be heart-breaking for the parents who went into this with such high hopes. So be careful and perhaps try some fostering first if that is possible.

A cousin of my husband's wanted to adopt. She only wanted to adopt children with no connection with their birth families. A clean break, and I can see why she thought this was best. From my experience social services try to keep families together. If that breaks down completely to a no-contact extent with ANY family member then I would suspect that something may be horribly wrong. Sexual abuse could be the problem and that can spill over into your own family, affect your own children. On the upside you could save someone through all this and lift them up but its a decision that needs so much preparation, research and good luck. Hope that if you do it it works.

If you are going international, you will most likely end up with these people:

https://www.holtinternational.org/adoption/

Mr. Holt established the laws governing the international process. When we were looking at it many years ago it was like 21K just for the kid, not inclusive of flying back and forth and picking it out. We were thinking Chinese girl because of the one child policy and from the way we understood they were throwing the girls out with the trash at that point. An issue arose filling out the questionnaire based upon drug use, specifically that although not Keith Richards, I took a shitload of drugs. Well, one thing led to another and before you know it, blah blah blah fuck you and your adoption process. And well, here I am, childless. Fortunately for me, I hate fucking kids.

First thing you do is basic math: add up your and Mrs. Botev's age. If its over 80, think Eastern European because they value maturity in parenting. If it's under 70, you can think Latin America because they value more youthful parents.

On a side note, I would be very careful with domestic adoption. Certain ethnic groups do not like their children being raised by other ethnicities.

Good luck although I have no fucking idea why you would want to do something like this at this point in your life despite the fact that you are by all accounts a water walker.

Jason wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 07, 2019 3:43 pm

If you are going international, you will most likely end up with these people:

https://www.holtinternational.org/adoption/

Ah, yes, that's where my friend works.

Yes experience - both challenging and rewarding - and sometimes you can't tell the difference. Not for the timid. Are you a gradually wade into the pool while holding the tropical umbrella drink only between 75 and 95 degrees kind of person or a jump into Lake Superior with the Polar Bear Club type? Kids can be very stressful for a marriage - my experience is that adopted kids can increase that. Having said that and even though my kids aren't yet completely independent adults, I'm glad I did it.

My professional experiences have lead me to believe that adoption is a deeply flawed system. International adoption can be especially fraught with shysters. I worked in an international adoption clinic at a large teaching hospital. People adopted children to find much more serious health concerns than were disclosed to them and on occasion sent (without the adoptive parents knowledge) a child different than the one they had been assigned to initial.

A good book on the topic is. The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption by Kathryn Joyce.

Sorry to be so negative but I do think we live in a society that likes to glorify adoptive parents and forget that birth parents exist. In the long run it would benefit the entire culture to talk about these inequities instead of pretending they don’t exist.