According to TheAdoptionGuide.com, Americans adopt tens of thousands of babies and older children every year from the United States and from other countries. Both domestic and international adoption offer advantages and disadvantages. By carefully weighing the pros and cons, you can decide whether domestic or international adoption is best for your family.
Available Children
Adoptive Families magazine reports that about 25,000 to 30,000 infants and more than 50,000 older children are adopted in the U.S. every year. Americans adopt about half that number, both older children and babies, from overseas. If you want to adopt a newborn, you may prefer domestic adoption. If you adopt your child from another country, he'll almost certainly be at least 3 to 4 months old by the time you bring him home.
Parent Requirements
In a private domestic adoption, you won't need to meet age or other requirements, though expectant parents are more likely to choose traditional married couples over singles, gay couples or adopters under age 25 or over age 45. If you are single or older and flexible about which countries you'll consider, you may find it easier to adopt internationally.
Paperwork
Although all forms of adoption require paperwork, international adoptions generate so much of it that parents-to-be often joke that the paperwork process takes longer than a pregnancy. You have to submit documents to the adoption agency, your state, the U.S. government and the foreign government. Documents vary by country, but typically include the home study, birth certificates, marriage certificates and divorce decrees, employment verification, health statements, financial statements, approval to adopt from the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) and photos of you and your family. You will most likely to have to get each document notarized, certified by your state, translated and authenticated by the foreign country's embassy.
Costs
Costs vary widely but often end up being about the same--anywhere from $15,000 to $25,000 and up--for either domestic or international adoption of a baby. If you are adopting an older child, domestic adoption will cost far less and may not cost anything at all, thanks to state and federal reimbursements and subsidies.
Waiting Time
The waiting times for international adoptions vary from country to country and agency to agency, but they tend to be predictable, because countries often match applicants with children in a first-come, first-served order. The waiting time for a domestic infant adoption could be anywhere from a week to years, although Adoptive Families reports that most adoptive-parents-to-be wait less than a year to be matched with an expectant mother.
Child's Health
If you adopt an infant domestically, you will get a medical history on the child and will most likely know in advance about any issues, such as lack of prenatal care. If you adopt internationally, you may get only a basic medical history on the child and little, if any, medical history on the birth family. Children adopted from overseas often face medical challenges, such as parasites and malnutrition, that normally don't affect U.S. infants.
Birth Family Connections
In a domestic adoption, you will get to choose how much contact and openness you want to maintain with the birth family, points out Lois Melina, author of "The Adoption Resource Book." But the expectant parent can also change her mind and decide to raise the child you had planned to adopt. That situation is rarely the case in international adoption. In fact, you may get no information at all about the birth family. One consideration is that your child may feel like part of her is missing if she doesn't know her original family, and international adoptees have lost a culture as well as a family.
