Why didn't you adopt from foster care?

This Post is From Becky Fawcett at An Infertile Blonde
5/4/10

"Why didn’t you……
When I speak of my adoption journey and the frustrations and costs involved —OK complain about process and the costs involved….. Inevitably someone always says ”Why didn’t you adopt out of foster care? It’s free and it’s easy.”

At these moments I take a deep breath. First of all the person usually saying this to me is not an adoptive parent for one. And secondly…..they have no idea what they are talking about.

Nothing is as easy as it seems.

I recently read an article in Adoptive Families Magazine (www.adoptivefamilies.com) by Jeff Katz. It’s not easy. There are many obstacles that the system presents to hopeful adoptive parents that prevent these amazing kids from getting adopted into the homes they so deserve.

I don’t get it.
I can’t explain it.

And this article “Impassable Borders” by Jeff Katz (no link provided) just confirmed that the system is the kids worst enemy.

He states:

“For many years I ran an agency in Rhode Island that recruited families to adopt children from that state’s child welfare system. Like many such organizations, we had a “waiting child” feature on a local television station.

After one of our TV spots showed a seven-year-old black boy named Justin, I got a call from a woman in Massachusetts. She was a lawyer, and her husband was a doctor. Both were black. She told me that they had been considering adoption for several years. They saw Justin and were moved by his story. They prayed. And they decided that they would adopt this child.

But they couldn’t. Rhode Island could not legally provide a homestudy to a Massachusetts family. And Massachusetts would not use state resources to prepare a family to adopt a child from another state. This situation repeats itself, every single day, in America. The simple fact is that it is virtually impossible to adopt a foster child across state lines in the United States.”

Mr. Katz goes on to say that “When a pediatric nurse in a small community says she wants to adopt a child with spina bifida or another developmental birth defect, she may wait years before one is available in her community. Meanwhile, 50 miles away, in another county, a child waits.”

I still don’t understand.
Maybe I never will.
The system clearly needs to change."

I included Becky's post for the hundred thousand people who have tried to santimoniously tell me that adopting from foster care is the solution to all my problems. It must be so nice for them to know that they have the perfect answer! But it's an entirely different thing to practice what you preach, and I bet most of them don't.

Let me explain how this goes in real life.

We always wanted to adopt an older child from foster care. We still do. Just not as our first child. These children need special care and deserve experienced parents, not bumblers like us. So we tried to conceive a child, to experience the newborn phase, get our feet wet before turning to an older, special needs child.

Cue several years of hell, emotionally and financially. Lots of crying, hoping, waiting, agonizing, medications, and research.

We didn't want to spend ten years trying to conceive like other people we knew. We just wanted a child and didn't care about biology. As a lesbian I always knew there was a chance I wouldn't be genetically related to my kids anyway. So we looked to adopt an infant. And yes, we immediately applied to adopt from the state, as well as to an agency and independently. The state told us up front there were no babies available for years at a time, but we wanted to try everything in the hope something would work out.

Cue almost another year of hell. I can't tell you how many doors were slammed in my face because we were a same sex couple. How many agencies proclaimed a DIRE NEED for adoptive parents of African American children, then ignored my inquiries or told me they weren't that desperate. We went back to the state and said we'd be happy to take a sibling group of an infant and a child up to age 5. No luck. Finally, we began many conversations about fostering to adopt. Here's what that looks like:

Call the county DSS. Leave a message. Get no response. Keep calling.
Get asked to attend an orientation, usually during work time.
Attend 30 hours of parenting training about stuff you already know, if you're like me and research everything. Get told your $3000 private agency homestudy isn't good enough and you have to do another one with the state. more interviews, physicals, home inspections, references, etc.

Hire a fire inspector to come to your home and pronounce it safe.
Lock all medicines, cleaning supplies away even if they're on the top shelf.
Complete more paperwork than you ever thought possible.
It gets lost a few times and you complete it again, sometimes paying for things twice like child abuse clearances.
This process takes a year, according to many friends that have done it!

A YEAR later, get approved and start waiting. Months go by. Then you get call that they're bringing you a five year old right now, with no time to shop for a 5 yr old instead of the 2 yr old you decorated a room/bought clothes for. You're told it will be for a week. Then it turns into months. The child has reactive attachment disorder and appears to hate you. She's angry, throws things, bites you, runs away (I'm using real life examples here). Completely understandable from what she's been through, but are you prepared to handle ANY issue that may arise when the child gets to your home, with no advance preparation/warning?

Then just when you get her settled in and she's sleeping through the night and not hitting kids at school anymore, the state calls and says she has to go back to her parents right now. Her birthday is tomorrow and you've planned a whole party, which is now cancelled (this happened to someone I know). She goes back to her parents. Two weeks later they bring her back to your doorstep, with emotional and physical scars. It takes months to get her to feel secure again. Repeat cycle for years. You waited this long to be a parent, and yet you don't know if she'll ever be yours, right up until the date it's actually finalized. After she's been in your family five years and you've cleared tons of legal hurdles and she calls your mom Grandma, you're about to finalize the adoption. Then her second cousin comes out of the wood work and says she wants the child. You get no say. A week later she's gone. You never get an update on how she's doing.

Repeat until one of these children actually becomes yours forever.


I have the GREATEST respect for foster parents. Honestly I don't know how human hearts can withstand this much. Where would we be without them? But this is why we have not yet adopted from foster care. It is not right for all families, and I don't know whether it will ever be right for us. Perhaps when our hearts have healed a little from all that we've been put through on this journey, we could contemplate embarking on something like this. But for now, I'll take a private infant adoption, thanks. It's a tough enough road as it is. And no, I don't feel the least bit guilty about it. I look forward to the challenge and reward of adopting a foster child one day. But right now, this method is what is right for my family.