International Adoption

Introduction

International adoption is when a child is adopted from another country. Many people choose international adoption, because they want to help give orphan children a better life. Most of the adopted children come from very poverty stricken countries. In 2008, 75% of the children adopted came from the countries of: Guatemala, China, Russia, Ethiopia, and South Korea ("Where Do I Start?"). People who care the most about this topic are Christians and people who are compassionate about helping children in dire need. In the Bible in James 1:27, it states: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world" ("The Holy Bible"). This verse means that it is the duty of Christians to look over and take care of orphans and widows in need and to not let the world affect their duties as Christians. The controversial issue with international adoption is why people are adopting from other countries when there are kids in our own country that need homes and a loving family, too.

Positives:

There are many positives and some negatives of adopting a child internationally. A positive is that the child is getting a family that can take care of them and love them like their own. Also, the child will have more opportunities living in the United States than the country they came from, because the U.S. has more resources than the poverty stricken country.

International adoption is more structured and more predictable than domestic adoption. A reason why that is because, with domestic adoption, the adoption is not finalized for 6 months, and the birthmother might attempt to reestablish parental rights. Even though the guardianship is legal, it would still be possible for a judge to rule in favor of the birthmother. In international adoptions, that is not the case, because most of the time the children are orphans. Also, international adoptions are finalized and cannot be reversed even if the biological parents are present and change their mind ("Where Do I Start?"). With international adoptions, parental rights are terminated before the child is placed for adoption. This takes a major burden off of the adopting family because they know that they biological parents have no chance of taking back their child.

The waiting period with international adoptions may be less than with domestic adoptions. This is because there are more children available for international adoption than domestic. Non-white children are more difficult to place than a healthy white child. Also, the requirements may not be as strict for adoptive parents in international adoption. The reason behind this is because, of the number of orphans needing homes. Some adoptive parents in the U.S. do not wish to have any contact or relationship with the biological family. Most international adoptions do not have biological parent involvement as most of the children have been orphaned Having a first-hand experience on adoption, I interviewed my mother, because she has adopted domestically twice and also she has helped other families who have adopted internationally so she is very familiar with both the international and domestic adoption policies.

Negatives:

A major downside to adopting internationally is the time that it takes to complete