cowboypack02 said:
Packchem91 said:
cowboypack02 said:
Oldsouljer said:
cowboypack02 said:
Oldsouljer said:
statefan91 said:
PackFansXL said:
We did take in about a million folks just last year who believe they can get out of poverty in their countries and traveled a lot farther than anyone you can mention already living here. Regardless, slaughtering people is not a solution to poverty. That's a terrible answer if that is the best you have.
How many children have you adopted?
I've had experience with this. Married relatively late in life. We found out we medically couldn't have children. Looked into domestic adoption (I wasn't interested in going overseas again), found out it's nearly impossible for a middle aged Caucasian couple to adopt, we just weren't considered suitable parents.
If you don't mind me asking...why?
It's hard for me to answer, I can only tell you what adoption agencies told us, but many kids up for adoption in this country aren't white so that was a strike against us, but our age was the real deal breaker, I think.
The entire adoption thing is hard, which it should be, but to be honest it would seem to me that having a foster child with a middle age couple who were already settled would be a better option than someone who is just trying to get started.
I think you'd find today on average that the courts and DSS would agree -- though like a lot of government agencies, their is a lot of issues within DSS that are not in the best interests of the kids.
But there still aren't nearly enough people willing to foster or adopt....lots of kids are stranded in crowded foster systems for years.
Clearly, fostering is hard work....and i have to think ghe general busy-ness that people live in today, prevents them from considering it even if their hearts may support it.
I have a friend that has been looking to adopt for years and is finally at fostering a baby to start but the system is very convoluted.
My friend who couldn't have children and decided that they wanted to adopt. After working with a group they had a baby that was just born placed into their care with the mother giving birth in prison and the father also in prison. Both parents will be in prison for several more years and the rest of the family has been deemed incapable of taking care of any children. Since there were three children with the other two being in foster care my friend went to the court and asked to start the adoption for all three children, since they believe that the children would be better off together. The wife has also quit her job (nurse practitioner) to be there full time for the children (the husband makes mid 6 figures working for a global company). After all of this they have been told that in 10-15 years when the parents get out of jail that they could still lose possession of the children if either the mother or father decide that they want the kids.
I'm pretty tough skinned but I that would break my heart and my wife couldn't go through that. If this was us we would decide to just not have children at all instead of trying to adopt
Just for perspective - The couple are both white, between 30-32, she is unable to have children, between the two of them they made about 300K per year (before she quit her job to take care of the kids so it's about 200K now), and have been trying to adopt since 2017 and this is the first child that has been placed with them.
That story is why we chose international -- we were afraid of the risk of parents coming back. We chose Guatemala b/c you could get babies, w/o much travel (china), and didn't have fetal alcohol (russia). Plus if an agency worked with gov't down there, they were placed in foster, not orphanages.
In turn, my in-laws adopted the child of a 16 yo white woman where the father was in prison, and she wanted to go to college. They have an open one where the mom sees the baby (now 9 yo) and its never been an issue.....though who knows if the kid is impacted by that --- may not show up for a few more years.
My experience is it was one of the toughest, most emotional, gut wrenching processes even gone thru....especially when dealing with the lack of communications from a 3rd world nation in 2003/04 timeframe!!
Even discounting the costs....i get why parents wouldn't want to go thru with it because of the process, which is a horrible shame.