Why adoption is so difficult

None of this is true. Adoption is so much more difficult and complicated than people think it is. Many families have to go into debt to fulfill their dreams of becoming parents. Contrary to common belief, there are not a lot of babies available for adoption. Domestic infant adoption is actually rather rare, with only roughly 10 percent of hopeful parents being placed with a baby. The wait is often long and full of disappointment and heartbreak. Even after adopting a baby , adoption is hard.

Adoptive parents struggle with all the same things everyday parents struggle with, and then some. They knew to be on the lookout for malnourishment, learning delays, language transitions.

They didn't know very much about Teddy and Galina's background - only that the children's mother had been an orphan, and had left the institution when she was 16 and had two children she was unable to raise.

At Russian orphanages, children are handed over to their adoptive parents without clothes. On the night the Remboldts came to take their children, they were shocked to learn that a third of Galina's body was severely scared from burns. Chunks of her front legs had been grafted onto her back. A few months after they returned home and were struggling with Galina, they pressed the agency for answers. They would discover the children had been removed from a filthy, feces-infested house with no heat and no food.

Galina would eventually tell therapists her birth mother, in a fit of anger, poured a pot of boiling water on her. When Tom and Beth saw the scarring, they weren't deterred. The Remboldts, like scores of adoptive parents, believed in their heart that they could "love away" their child's hurt. In many adoptions, children do attach and have normal, adjusted, successful lives.

But the odds are stacked against children who were denied prenatal care, exposed to alcohol consumption or abused or neglected. Even those who were adequately fed and nappied may still suffer from attachment disorders because the mother-baby bond was broken and the child learned to turn inward and distrust love.

Galina celebrated her sixth birthday the day the Remboldts returned home to California. During the celebration, she suffered her first explosion after her parents set limits on chocolate cake.

Day after day, the tantrums continued, for hours at a time. Beth wasn't surprised Galina was taking and hiding Grace's jewellery, even though Galina had her own jewellery, or that the child seemed insatiable, or that she was defacing walls with crayons. But Beth and her husband could not understand Galina's outright resistance to basic hygiene. She wouldn't bathe or remove dirty clothing or brush her teeth. Then the wetting began. Galina would sit in the spot where she went, refusing to move or clean up.

The Remboldts were mystified. They knew the 6-year-old was toilet-trained. They thought it might be a medical condition. It wasn't, according to doctors. The couple sought help from professionals who deal with emotionally impacted, internationally adopted children. Beth spent most of her time at home. She wasn't able to send her daughter to school.

She'd be afraid to go to the library or grocery store - holding her breath for Galina to eliminate. All of the legal steps, while they vary from state to state, are designed to protect expectant parents and allow them time to make an informed decision. It is in the best interest of all involved, including the child. The laws exist to prevent coercion and to ensure that expectant parents receive the correct information about what happens once they terminate their rights.

While it can be excruciating to deal with a long revocation period as an adoptive parent, what would be more painful would be to know you have adopted a child from someone who truly wants to parent, but needs help locating resources to make that possible. For domestic infant adoption, there are far more people in this country looking to adopt than there are babies placed every year.

With international adoption , the ratio of children placed has slowed as countries have improved their foster care system. With the domestic infant adoption process, it generally entails the expectant mother selecting a family. For example, if there are 30 families waiting with an agency and only 15 birth parents who place with them every year, the odds are you may wait over a year before an expectant mother connects with your profile and matches with you.

When she went ahead and adopted Sasha, a Pomeranian, through another rescue agency, the first organization was not happy. Then they unfollowed me. It really hurt, but no hard feelings. In some corners of the rescue world, a reckoning is taking place. Rachael Ziering, the executive director of Muddy Paws Rescue , which found homes for around 1, dogs last year, got her start volunteering at other nonprofits whose adoption processes she found abhorrent.

Still, even a more inclusive philosophy toward profiling adoption applicants comes up against the intractable math: There are only so many dogs that need homes.

Though Muddy Paws rejects less than one percent of applicants, some decide to adopt elsewhere if it means getting a dog faster. Is any of this good for the dogs? Depends on whom you ask. Bill and Sherrie, a middle-aged couple who had lost their English bulldog three years ago, were looking for a replacement. The dog with a bright-red boner jumped on Bill, and everyone pretended not to notice.

The couple were on the fence, and the volunteer could sense the close slipping away. Although this organization saw applications rise percent during the pandemic, things are now recalibrating back to normalcy. We are, it seems, witnessing the cooling of the puppy boom. The unbearable loneliness of the pandemic has abated, replaced with anxiety about how to possibly do all the things all of us used to do every day. New Yorkers are being summoned back to the office or planning vacations.

Many young professionals are finding that, when given the option between scrolling through rescue websites until 2 a. Bill and Sherrie went to the hallway to talk it over. He was definitely a puller like their old dog, Xena. And he was also a hell of a shedder. No one was making eye contact. As they prepared to leave, the dog jumped up on Bill again, his tongue flopping sideways and his wagging tail spraying white fur.

He was clearly not aware that the tenor of the room had shifted. We will probably look back on the class of pandemic dogs adopted in as the most desirable unwanted dogs of all time — the ultimate market-scarcity score for a slice of virtuous, privileged New York City. People like Danielle will see them paraded around places like McCarren Park, the living, breathing trophies for self-satisfied owners who made it through the gauntlet.

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