*These posts are part of a series discussing some of the barriers and issues of adoption that prevent some people from starting the adoption process, and are often still concerns for people that do move forward. The purpose of these posts is not to say or suggest that adoption is right for everyone, but to look into the issues/concerns and address them and discuss them.



Thanks to all of you who chimed in on my question about “adoption hang ups”. I have quite the list to work on now!

I decided to start with the big money issue…the cost of adoption as a hang-up, because I think it is one of the things that can stop people very early on when they are considering adopting a child, and it is one of the comments I got the most when I asked for your thoughts.

Adoption is expensive.

There… I said it.

There are exceptions…such as adopting from the foster care system (which is basically free even) and some special needs adoptions that can be highly subsidized, but the majority of adoptions are going to have a significant cost associated with them.

I remember when we first started looking into adoption…Josh and I were a young couple with three young sons and our finances were extremely tight. I desperately wanted a daughter, and KNEW that we had a daughter out there to bring home via adoption. Josh was rational…he thought we should wait until our kids were older and we were in a better financial situation. I knew we had to find a way to make it happen. (You can read Maggie’s whole adoption story here.)

It took a huge leap of faith, but we took out an “adoption loan”, for about the first third of our adoption expenses so we could get the ball rolling. During the adoption process we did fundraisers (raised just over $4000), we had some help from family and we used credit cards for some of our travel expenses.

It was stressful at times figuring out where the money would come from, and it was stressful at times having debt afterwards, but it was so, so, worth it.

Most of our adoptions have gone the same way…some debt here, a little help from family there, some adoption grants here, some fundraising there…somehow it has all come together each time just right (and we still have a very modest income).

It comes as a shock (and a frustrating one at that) to many people that there is such a high cost related to adoption, and it is easy to just say, “oh, we could never do that.” But in reality, almost everyone CAN do it if they really set their mind to it.

Here are some of my thoughts on the costs of adoption as a barrier (followed by some hopefully helpful suggestions)…

Continued...