Unless you are completely unfamiliar with international adoption, you are probably aware that there is a slowdown in Chinese adoptions right now. What used to be a wait of 6-12 months for a referral of a healthy Chinese infant is now at about 5 years. That means that the folks who are receiving their referrals right now had their paperwork logged-in to China in June 2006. If you sent in your paperwork right now, the wait is estimated to be about 7-10 years. While I don't fault the people who continue to wait, I could never advise anyone to enter China's non-special needs (NSN) program.
What a lot of people don't realize is that most people entering China's adoption program right now are people who are open to adopting children with special needs. These needs range from mild to severe and could include anything from a birthmark to life-threatening heart conditions, and everything in between. For this program, families can complete an adoption in about one year.
Another thing that even fewer people know is that most of the children waiting to be adopted are boys. Yes, you heard that right, boys from China. I assume that there are pretty much equal numbers of boys and girls who are placed on the special needs list, but the girls are chosen for adoption much faster than the boys, and so the boys tend to wait on the list much longer. Currently there are over 1800 kids on China's waiting child list, and over 1300 of those are boys. That's about 70%!
(And you may not have noticed, but I recently added a section to my sidebar with a list of bloggers who advocate for waiting children. If you spend about 2 minutes on these sites you will see the boy-cuteness everywhere. They include: So They Wait..., Loving the Fatherless, Waiting Children, Still we Wait, Wonderful Waiting Kids, Red Thread Kids, Delilah's Dream, and A Family For Everyone. Not to mention Rainbow Kids, which has a large database of waiting children around the world.)
So, after I information-spew all of this onto my dear ones, I then point them to online resources. First, I point them towards No Hands But Ours. This is a website with a whole lot of information and family stories from people who have adopted kids with special needs. Then, I tell them to visit China Adopt Talk (aka Rumor Queen). Obviously, the primary focus of this forum is China, but there are rooms where you can ask questions about other countries' programs as well. And for a good look at adoption-related issues, I would recommend Grown In My Heart. This website features writers from all sides of the adoption triad - first parents, adoptive parents, and adult adoptees.
(And if you have any other resources out there that I have missed - especially for countries other than China - feel free to leave a comment.)
So, where does that leave us? Well, I've been around all of this long enough to know that I could never know everything there is about adoption. And that there are a lot of controversial issues out there that I didn't even know were controversial five or ten years ago. And that it is really important to hear the voices of first mothers and adoptees, because their experiences are not mine, but they do matter. And that it is important for all adoptive parents to know about attachment issues before the kid comes home. And that it is important to be informed on the issues so that we will make good decisions now and so that we can be prepared to parent adopted kids.
Which means you and I both have a lot of homework to do.
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