In my last post, I wrote about an article in a recent series by the Salt Lake Tribune on international and transracial adoption. In this post, I am going to discuss another one of these articles.

This article is titled “I realized I was a permanent outsider”, and was written by Salt Lake Tribune reporter Sheena McFarland. It starts off by telling her story… of being adopted from India by a family living in Utah when she was very young, and just recently taking a trip back to India in an attempt to help... more

The Salt Lake Tribune has been running a series of articles on transracial adoption that I have been enjoying, and wanted to share with you.

The first one is titled “Kids Find Homes but Search for Identity”.

This article talks about the increasing number of transracial and international adoptions in the United States every year and provides a lot of information on the number of adoptions happening, where children are being adopted from, average costs and waiting times for different programs, etc. Make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom of the article for the “Tips for Adoptive Parents”,... more

I said I was going to write about the blessings and the “good things” about transracial adoption, and I was planning on it and looking forward to it, but today there is another topic that I feel I should not skip over, and need to write about today.

I was not going to write about the horrible tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech, because while it was a terrible national tragedy, it was not really relevant to transracial adoption in any way that I could see at first.

However, over the past few days, as the media has attacked this story from every angle and the stories, pictures and video are everywhere you turn, the coverage has started to have a negative effect on some transracial... more

I have been writing a lot lately about “transracial adoption barriers”…the big, often intimidating issues that can prevent people from adopting, and can cause a lot of concern to those who do choose to adopt.

To lighten the mood and create some balance, I wanted to spend some time now celebrating the wonderful things about transracial adoption (although I am sure there will be more “adoption barrier" posts in the future as well). It is important to remember that adoption is not all wonderful, happy-happy and perfect, and neither is it all stress,... more

There has been a lot of news lately in regards to international adoption programs, and most of it is not overly encouraging. I wrote awhile ago about all of the changes in the China adoption program, and how officials have decided to become more restrictive on who can adopt from China, starting in May of this year. You can read those posts here and here, and you can get lots more information on China adoptions on the China adoption blog.

Even more recently... more

In my last two posts I have discussed the fear of adoption scams, and a recent article showing how ugly things can be when families put their money and trust into unethical agencies.

Here are some tips to avoid being scammed…

-Research, Research and Research! Look into agencies and programs. Talk to references (those provided by the agencies and those that are not). Join email lists and talk to parents that have used a variety of agencies. Find out why the happy families are happy, and why the dissatisfied or... more

In my last post, I discussed the fear of being scammed in adoption. The reality is that adoptive parents are vulnerable people, and orphaned children are also highly vulnerable. There is a lot of money involved in adoption. It is easy to see, if you take a step back, how easily someone could take advantage of such a situation for the sake of money.

It is easy to think that all people working in adoption are in it for the children, and truly want to help orphans find families. It is easy to think that all adoption agencies and the people working in them are full of good works and good intentions, and yet,... more

Another of the many fears of prospective adoptive parents that can often turn into an adoption barrier, is the fear of being “swindled” by an adoption agency.

I remember when we first started our very first adoption, and planned on adopting a baby girl from Vietnam. One of the reactions we got early on from family members was along the lines of, “What if the agency takes all your money and you never get a baby?”

I have heard this fear repeated over and over, and it is a legitimate one. For many adoptive parents, and many parents considering adoption, money is a huge issue and worry. For the average adoptive... more

In my last two posts I have written about fears that some adoptive parents have about their adoption travel, and then gave some tips on making your adoption trip less intimidating.

In this post, I am going to give suggestions to make it easier to leave children at home while you travel for your adoption.

-Try to keep things in perspective. Your children at home... more

Today I am discussing the adoption roadblock of travel worries and fears, and in this post I am going to give you some tips to help ease your anxiety about your adoption trip and offer ways to make it smoother and easier, and in my next post, I will write about tips to make is as painless as possible to leave children at home while you travel.

Tips for smoother adoption travel (and ways to calm your fears)…

-When you are early on in the adoption stage and still... more