Our Adoption Journey Post #2: Why International?

We have often been asked why did we choose to adopt from China? Why not some other country or why not from the U.S?

This is a 2 post answer so in this post we'll address why we did not choose to adopt domestically and we'll discuss why we choose China over other countries in a future post.

From an adoptive parents perspective there are a few reasons we did not consider domestic adoption. One is cost. As much as an international adoption costs, domestic adoption costs significantly more. This is because in the U.S. we have these people called lawyers and the legal fees (and other costs such as the birth mom's medical expenses) for domestic adoption are quite considerable. The other reason we did not consider domestic adoption is because the adoption laws in the U.S. favor birth parents. This means that a child could be placed with us and live with us for awhile and then if the birth mother changes her mind, she could legally take the child back. As much as we can understand (but not agree with) the need for this type of law, we cannot fathom the possibility of getting a child only to have her taken away from us a short time later. It would be emotionally devasting to us. In addition, it would be a financial hardship for us because in such cases the adoptive parents do not get their money back.

Now for the update.
As of 12/13 here's our wait statistics:
Referred through: 3/31/2006
Current wait: 44 months
Projected referral date: 1/13/2013
Projected months remaining to referral: 37
Remember, these are simple projections based on extrapolating the current wait forward. Check out the Rumor Queen (link at top) for more thorough projections