Risks and Benefits of Adopting Independently
Many parents who want to adopt a baby in the United States choose to do so through independent adoption. In this case, prospective adoptive parents work with an attorney to connect with birth parents and then develop an adoption arrangement that meets both parties' personal needs. For many adopters, the direct involvement is empowering. The desire to adopt a newborn may be an even stronger motivation. Increasingly, too, many adoptive parents value having some degree of openness with their child's birth parents.
But there are risks, especially in these three areas:
1 Adoptive parents need to be chosen by birth parents, and that can take a long time, particularly for people in special circumstances (by virtue of their age, profession, location, religion, or marital status, for example). While many adoptive parents complete independent adoptions within 12 months, others wait years for a baby or give up on adopting independently. If it is getting tougher to adopt independently, the reason may simply be supply and demand. The pool of waiting adoptive parents continues to grow. At the same time, some observers believe, the number of prospective birth parents is shrinking, perhaps because the stigma against single parenthood has declined in recent years (but the stigma against making an adoption plan has not).
2 Even when birth parents choose you, the outcome remains uncertain until the adoption is finalized. In attorney Steven Kirsh's experience, "about half the birth mothers change their minds during the process and about 20% after the baby is born but before consents are signed."
3 Costs vary widely (from $8,000 to more than $30,000, according to the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse), depending on many factors adoptive parents can't always control, such as a birth mother's lack of medical insurance or need for living expenses. If an adoption falls through late in the process, adoptive parents usually cannot reclaim any of the money they have spent, and no insurance company is currently willing to insure this risk.
