The wait to adopt a baby from China used to be, appropriately, about nine months. Now it’s more than doubled.
“Ours is more like the term of an elephant,” said Grace Carlson of Seattle, who, like her husband, John Pearce, is trying to stay positive as they bide their time taking Mandarin classes and reading Dr. Spock books. They sent their dossier in the fall but don’t expect a match until June 2008 at the earliest.
“If it had been a six-month process, I don’t think we could have gotten enough Mandarin under our belts,” Pearce said. “Now we stand a chance.”
With difficulties in several key countries’ international adoption programs, including China’s, Russia’s and Guatemala’s, U.S. families are hunkering down for longer waits, considering different countries or taking a new look at domestic adoption.
In 30 years of facilitating adoptions, “We’ve seen this roller coaster up and down of countries opening and closing before,” said Lillian Thogersen, chief executive officer of World Association for Children and Parents, based in Renton, Wash.
China, Guatemala and Russia represented nearly 70 percent of international adoptions last year, according to the State Department’s tally of orphan immigrant visas. Overall, international adoptions jumped 175 percent from 1994 to 2004. The numbers hit a plateau in 2005, then fell last year to 20,679.
Perhaps a silver lining
“In the last two years, we’ve seen numbers drop despite an increase in demand from families,” said Dave Ptasnik, co-director of the Seattle-based Americans Adopting Orphans. Adopting abroad “is a little slower and more difficult now, so families have to work a little harder to make it happen.”
Experts say the speed bumps may ultimately be a good thing for the children as countries tighten their policies.
“By and large, countries say they support adoption, but they want to make sure it’s done right,” Ptasnik said. “Once these basic shifts are made, I think [international adoption] is going to be better and stronger than it ever has been before.”
Adopted children “are a gift from that country,” Thogersen said. “Americans are not entitled to these children. Offices want to make the best decisions for the children.”
“They’re looking for families for children, not children for families,” she said. “Sometimes that’s forgotten.”
The New York-based Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute estimates that about a quarter of non-stepparent adoptions each year are from abroad; nearly 60 percent are from the child-welfare system. The remaining 15 percent are domestic infants.
The number of families adopting U.S. foster children through the World Association for Children and Parents has more than doubled in its last fiscal year, Thogersen said. She credits that partly to additional recruitment efforts but suspects the long China wait also is a factor.
“If we had known it was going to take quite so long, we might have looked harder at the domestic route,” Carlson said. “We took it for granted that it was hard to find an infant in the U.S.”
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Carson and Pearce likely will adopt domestically if they decide they want a second child. Married later in life, they no longer qualify under China’s new over-50 age restrictions.
At the World Association for Children and Parents, fewer families turn first to China, mainly because of the new rules, Thogersen said. Some consider Thailand, India or Vietnam instead.
Michele and Jamie Lang adopted their daughter Zoe, now 3, from China in 2005. When they started the paperwork to adopt a second baby, they discovered the wait was much longer. They ended up sending dossiers to China — in October — and Vietnam — in March — but expect to hear from the latter first. “We’ve got one foot in each door,” Michele Lang said.
‘More interest in Africa’
China has ranked first on the State Department’s foreign-adoption list since 2000; its numbers peaked at 7,906 orphans in 2005 before falling for the first time last year. Agencies believe high demand is overwhelming Chinese officials.
While orphan visas dropped last year for many countries, a few saw increases, including Vietnam and Haiti.
Two African countries, Ethiopia and Liberia, saw the largest percentage jumps from 2005 to 2006.
“There’s more and more interest in Africa,” said Marge Toeset, international adoption coordinator for Bethany Christian Services’ Seattle office. Depending on the country, parents may pay $20,000 to $35,000 for an international adoption, Toeset said.
As the U.S. tries to implement the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption this year, agencies are preparing for national accreditation. (Currently, adoption agencies need to be licensed only by the states in which they operate.) Once the U.S. is compliant, Ptasnik hopes additional countries will open to U.S. parents.
“There are still millions of orphans around the world who need a family desperately,” Thogersen said.
Flexibility and patience have always been key with international adoptions, experts say.
“If you ask any of our 9,000 adoptive parents, they’ll all say they got the child intended for them, even if they started in one [country] program and ended in another, or wanted one gender and got another,” Thogersen said. “They all feel, ‘This child is mine.'”
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Delays for adoptions
China: Prospective parents expect an 18-month to 2-year wait to be matched with a child. New restrictions, which went into effect May 1, now bar parents who are single, obese or older than 50.
Guatemala: Earlier this spring, the State Department said it does not recommend adopting from Guatemala due to “serious problems with the adoption process.”
Russia: No U.S.-based adoption agencies are currently accredited by the Russian government. According to the State Department, the country has not announced a date for reviewing U.S. agencies’ applications.
South Korea: The government now requires a 5-month wait for infants. With Korea’s low birthrate, some believe the country may discontinue international adoptions.
Ukraine: The Joint Council on International Children’s Services says the country is processing foreign applications on a limited basis. New restrictions exclude single parents and parents more than 45 years older than the adopted child.
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Sources: U.S. State Department; Joint Council on International Children’s Services; local adoption agencies