Open Thread

No comments on the ROTD, Randazzo’s Clam Bar?

no way suez canal would be disrupted – too much $$$ for Egypt to allow that to be disrupted. Army would fire upon the people if they had to

I think it’s a shame so many people only want to adopt newborns or infants. There are so many young children in the faster system, so many kids who are abused and damaged because people want cute little babies. If I had had the means to adopt, I would have adopted an older child.

And when the papers were all signed
And a million copies made
They bowed their heads and joined their hands
And prayed, for peace was theirs.

MM, it’s completely different now.

When you were placed, it was not an option for most unmarried women to keep their baby and abortion was not legal or safe. Now there are many fewer children placed for adoption. There is a choice for women who are unexpectedly pregnant and most will either end the pregnancy or parent the child.

Most infants available for placement are adopted privately–even if it’s through a nonprofit agency or a lawyer, the birth mother selects the parents for her child. Because there are fewer babies and because so many women wait to start their families and therefore have fertility issues (fertility starts declining at 30, and after 35 it’s a steep slope), there is a huge demand. So potential adoptive parents curry the favor of pregnant women, offering all kinds of support and presenting themselves as ideal parents who will raise the baby in the lap of luxury. A tough pick for a pregnant woman who thinks she may want to relinquish.

Many couples looking to adopt won’t go through an agency, and nonprofit adoption agencies are going out of business for lack of babies to place. So placements are done through brokers and lawyers. Couples advertise in pennysavers for pregnaqnt women who may want to relinquish.

Potential birth parents often (like 50 percent of the time) decide they will parent after all, and the potential adoptive parents start all over again, spending huge amounts of money. There is plenty of demand for healthy newborns of every race although, disgustingly, agency fees are lower for biracial or black babies. Private adoption costs $30-60k, from the time the family decides to adopt until they have the legal papers to know a baby is theirs.

There are few newborns available for adoption in the child protection system. Families that want babies have to be willng to foster many babies in the hope that one will wind up permanently with them. Many times the birth family attempts to parent and the baby goes back and forth until it isn’t a baby anymore and s/he has been damaged by multiple placements.

And internationally, it is nowhere near as easy, cheap, fast to adopt, and the countries that remain open have children with many health issues. All this while there are huge waiting lists (years and years) to adopt from most countries, and it’s increasingly rare to adopt a child less than a year or 18 months old.

So it’s uncertain and expensive and just different. And yes, there is some screening but a lot of success in placement is by those who have plenty of money to spend or are willing to adopt older (like over 5) children and/or children with considerable health issues.