Can you answer dumbblond’s question about Adoption?:

I have a four year old and a one year old. My partner and I would like to be foster parents. Should I wait until the are older? Does any one have experiance with this?

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Can you answer Green A’s question about Adoption?:

Would like to here from adult foster children and foster parents who have this experience. thank you.

How Do I Find My Birth Mother

Can you answer Proud New Mommy ’s question about Adoption?:

Ok so i know what adoption is, but what exactly is foster care, like how is it different from adoption? and What is your opinion on which is better?
I was talking to my husband about us one day adopting and he mentioned being foster parents so I was curious as to which is better, and how exactly foster care works so I can make a better decision when the time comes.

Guatemala Baby Adoption

The title of being a mother stems beyond just the fact that she has given birth. It requires unconditional love and a lot of responsibility in order to foster healthy relationships with your own children and ensure their personal growth as well. After all, parents play a huge role in influencing their children.

Moreover, the responsibilities of being a parent to a child not your own may be no different to being a parent to a biological one. In fact, it may entail even more. Being a foster parent requires deep awareness and understanding of the bond between a biological parent and a child.

Foster parents should work through their thoughts and emotions about this special bond, whether these children go back to their own homes, be adopted or stay in foster care for a longer period.

Mary Alexander shares all these and more in her self-published book, A Walk in My Shoes. She narrates her ordeal as a foster parent looking after children who look to her for their day-to-day guidance and comfort.

From her experience, she gives readers helpful insights to other foster parents, as well as adoptive parents, on dealing with children’s struggles, whether behavioral or medical, so they can succeed.

A Walk in My Shoes is published by Xlibris.

About Xlibris

Xlibris was founded in 1997 and, as the leading publishing services provider for authors, has helped to publish more than 20,000 titles. Xlibris is based in Bloomington, IN and provides authors with direct and personal access to quality publication in hardcover, trade paperback, custom leather-bound, and full-color formats.

For more information, please visit http://www.xlibris.com/requestkit/index.asp?src=apr&key=gc , e-mail pressrelease@xlibris.com or call at 1-888-795-4247, to receive a free publishing guide.



Thanks to Michael McCain for contributing this article to our Adoption blog:

Adopting A Child From China

UNICEF has been waging war against international adoption for many years contrary to popular understanding.  It’s a war with results that fall far short of real time solutions to the spoils of its victories.  UNICEF’s premise that parents in underdeveloped countries should be provided the means to keep their children is not arguable.  Neither is UNICEF’s stance that international adoption should only be a last resort.

However, UNICEF’s tough and effective pressure tactics and  lobbying efforts towards developing nations calling for ratification of the Hague Treaty for the Protection of Children and implementation of adoption law and policy models which effectively serve to close programs completely or almost completely to foreign adopters belies a misguided, unrealistic and out of touch policy contrary to the best interests of hundreds of thousands of legitimately orphaned and abandoned children around the world. These efforts have resulted in the semi or complete closure of adoptions around the world in such countries as Guatemala, Bulgaria, Paraguay, and Romania to mention just a few examples.

 

Let’s take the example of Guatemala.  After intense pressure from UNICEF, Guatemala finally closed its doors to international adoption on December 31, 2008.  Prior to that time, foreign nationals adopted approximately 5,000 Guatemalan children per year.   Oscar Avila, “Guatemala Seeks Domestic Fix to Troubled Overseas Adoptions,” Chicago Tribune, October 26, 2008 indicated that “Guatemala has launched an ambitious campaign to recruit foster parents and even adoptive parents at home.”  So far, the program is failing miserably.  Avila reports, “Only about 45 families in a nation of 13 million currently have taken in foster children since the program began this year.”

The approach that Guatemala is taking by attempting to gain domestic attention to the problem is certainly meritorius; however, this approach could and should have been implemented concomitant with an international program which would ensure that thousands of children will find homes rather than waste away in institutions that are often underfunded, understaffed and unable to provide for the needs of these children.

One of the main criticisms of the Guatemalan adoption program prior to its closure was that it was in the hands of private attorneys who depended on sometimes unscrupulous middlemen to procure birthmothers wanting to give up their children and perhaps those not wanting to give up their children.  Of course this depiction glosses over the nature of how this practice developed in remote villages in Guatemala, far from the lawyers in Guatemala City who could arrange adoptions by foreign nationals.  It was a practical way to connect birthmothers, who were seeking adoption as an option to their usually dire circumstances, to attorneys who could then take the children into custody through the use of foster homes and then place the children with families abroad through adoption proceedings.  It is interesting to note that neither UNICEF nor the Guatemalan government could see that there could be a middle ground to solving the problem of unscrupulous middlemen who were supposedly forcing these women to give up their children, paying the women as an inducement, or even, as many reports claimed, kidnapping these children for adoption.  Many of these reports glossed over the fact that birth mothers had to relinquish their child to an attorney advising her of her rights, undergo an interview with the Family Court, DNA testing of the birth mother and child, review by the Guatemalan Solicitor General’s office, and once again, the birth mother’s consent to the adoption after the Solicitor General’s approval.  The Embassies regularly interviewed birth mothers and conducted investigations at random or of cases that appeared questionable.   During the last year of adoptions in Guatemala, a 2nd DNA test was required at the end of the process based on accusations of child switching with unimpressive findings to back up these wanton allegations. 

Avila’s report indicates that the Guatemalan Department of Social Welfare has now created satellite offices all over the country in an attempt to increase its pool of families interested in fostering or adopting these children.  Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of reform that many adoption attorneys called for which would remove involvement by middlemen but allow attorneys to work with the Department of Social Welfare in concert with its ongoing program to promote foster care and adoption domestically.  UNICEF would not come to the table nor would the Guatemalan government which was eager to completely shut the door on international adoption in response to UNICEF’s strong and effective lobbying efforts.

Another example of misguided criticism regarding international adoption is in Malawi, where the infamous Madonna adoption took place.  Malawi is a country of 13 million and approximately 1 million are orphans half of which are “AIDS orphans”. Solutions are slow in coming in a nation beset by an AIDS epidemic infecting almost one fouth of its population.   These orphaned children deserve a chance at having permanent homes and families.  International adoption is not a perfect solution to the problem in Malawi and so many other nations of Africa but it saves lives, gives children a chance, one adoption at a time.

Of course, most would agree that international adoption should not be the sole answer to poverty faced by nations around the world.  No rational person would think so.  International adoption should be seen as a stopgap emergency measure taken while the United Nations, human rights groups, humanitarian organizations and the governments of these underdeveloped countries seek answers to the abject poverty, high birth rates, AIDS epidemic, malnutrition, lack of education, lack of women’s rights, and massive unemployment which lead to parents making these hard decisions about the future of their offspring.  International adoption is one temporary cog in the wheel.  UNICEF and other detractors and critics of international adoption have continually failed to recognize the vital emergency role of international adoption and how compromise and middle ground solutions could serve the orphaned and abandoned children.



Thanks to Candace OBrien for contributing this article to our Adoption blog:

State Adoption Laws