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

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

Continued...

So what do you think? Personally, I really hate to see potential adoptive families “knocked out” by rules and regulations. There are SO MANY children…even in China…that I have a hard time agreeing with limiting potential families for those children. One of my biggest adoption pet peeves is that most (if not all ) of the states in our country would not even consider my family to adopt from foster care, despite the fact that my family is more qualified than most to handle the issues that would likely come with a child from foster care... more

One of the largest and steadiest adoption programs for transracial adoption over the past years has been the China program. China, a country struggling with a very large population, has thousands upon thousands of orphaned baby girls at any given time, due largely to the one child policy in China and the strong cultural desire for families to have a son.

Along with baby girls, China also has some baby boys, special needs children and older children available for adoption.

Over the past year or so, the wait for a referral from China has... more

Here is a great article on transracial adoption and the overwhelming need for more intercountry adoptions from Africa.

The news release is from Brigham Young University and is titled, “Crisis calls for a radical increase in international adoption of African orphans, BYU study finds”.

The article focuses on the work of Jini Roby, an associate professor at BYU, an international authority on intercountry adoption and a transracial adult adoptee.

While Roby’s earlier work found that the African traditions of extended family, kin and communities taking in and caring for orphaned children was meeting... more

It has been pointed out to me that I have been neglecting my “Transracial Adoption Options”, where I give posts on countries that allow transracial adoption and some specifics about the adoption programs. To see the rest of these posts click here.

These are kind of like the immigration posts…they are timely to write and require quite a bit of research, and are probably on the boring side to read…but I sure do hope that they come in handy for someone.

I “left off” somewhere in Africa…I... more

I have gotten a bit off track and have neglected my “Transracial Adoption Options”, so today I am back at it. I have already covered all of the Asian countries that I am aware of, and I’m now working on African countries. I have already covered Ethiopia, and today I am working on Liberia.

Liberia is a small country in Western African that is suffering from the devastating effects of long-term civil war, poverty, etc. Right now the country has little to no electricity, running water or mail service. The country of Liberia was originally purchased by the American Colonization... more

So now that I have covered Asian adoption programs and U.S. adoption options, I am moving on to African adoptions. The first that I will cover is Ethiopia, which is a program that is close to my heart.

Ethiopia is a country near the equator in Eastern Africa, which currently has approximately 5 million orphans. Drought, famine, poverty and disease, especially HIV/AIDS, has devastated the people of Ethiopia and creates more and more orphans each year. The children are gorgeous and are tested for HIV, Hepatitis and several other diseases before being ready for adoption.

There... more

Vietnam is a country and an adoption program that are very close to my heart. Five years ago, Josh and I were embarking on our very first adoption journey, and between our research, our hearts and our prayers, we were led to Vietnam. We brought home our daughter Maggie at the ripe old age of 3 ½ months, and although the process was a bit rocky at times, overall it was a wonderful experience.

For multiple reasons, including allegations of corruption and a program lacking in set procedures and guidelines, adoptions between the U.S. and Vietnam are just re-opening after being... more