Considering adoption...is overseas an option?

[BarefootWanderer]

Hi, I'm new to Mumsnet and am hoping to learn from your knowledge and experience.

I'm a single Indian women, 39yo, considering adoption. Call me naive but my preference is to adopt a within my ethnicity, ideally a young child/baby. I have a vague understanding of the challenges of matching with young children/babies as well as them being South Asian.

Can anyone advise me on the feasibility/legalities of adopting from overseas, or point me in the direction of trusted organisations?

If anyone has any personal experience to share I would be grateful to hear it.

Thank you in advance.

Plenty of babies of that ethnicity in my local area. I think you’d be fine in UK

Yeah same thinking as above. Saw some current data from our local agency of ethnicity and sadly there is a range of children in care looking for their forever families.

It is perfectly fine to engage with an adoption agency with a preferred ethnicity.

If your main reason for wanting an intercountry adoption is to have the same ethnicity as your child then it's likely to be more straightforward to go the UK route. If you're reasons are more complex and you are particularly drawn to going abroad then have a look at ICA Centre. You will need to be eligible under both UK and the other countries requirements. You will have to pay for your assessment but the process is the same for UK up until the point at which you are approved, then it's different.

That's all I know. Good luck, whatever route you decide on.

I was also going to suggest the ICA

It is much more complicated going abroad and its also very expensive.

You would need to factor in spending time in the country you choose to adopt from and also ensure that you can bring the child into the UK.

I’ve seen posts on other forums from BAME adopters who are having difficulty getting matched. There may be children waiting of the right ethinicity now, but given the time it takes to get through the processes, the picture may look very different when you are looking for a match.

Thank you all so much for your advice. I'm so early on in my journey and have to admit that its daunting doing it alone but I'm encouraged by your messages that I have options in the UK. I've registered with my local council as a first port of call. Thank you again! I guess I should take some time to read the other related threads to learn more.

BarefootWanderer I think you would be very popular with a local authority or county council as there are a lot of children from different ethnic groups who are waiting to be adopted.

We did look into adopting from overseas about 14 years ago. It was very expensive, and there were lots of conditions etc. We looked into China.The waiting list was very long. We went down the IUI/IVF route to have a second child and when that failed we looked at UK adoption.

Our little boy joined us 6 years ago (aged 3). The benefits of a domestic adoption is that you do usually get quite a lot of info (well we did), we have some letterbox contact with birth family (by choice) and generally I am a huge fan of domestic adoption.

I do also know people who adopted from overseas and are very positive. However, I do know the number of countries you can adopt from overseas are limited and the costs are high.

One thing you may need to ponder about is religion/culture.

Say you are quite religious and Hindu, how would you feel about taking a child from Muslim background if the SW asked you to support their birth family cultural/religious identity? Or even if not really religious yourself.

I don't know what the current views are of SWs on this, but you may want to have a think of this. (Even I guess some names give a strong sign of background? )

@Sarahstwogirlseast

Yeah same thinking as above. Saw some current data from our local agency of ethnicity and sadly there is a range of children in care looking for their forever families.

It is perfectly fine to engage with an adoption agency with a preferred ethnicity.

Just looking into adoption and came across this thread.

We are looking to adopt in the future (currently we are both 33, with combined income of 70k (almost equal split) 150k savings/inheritance, but do not own. We don’t want to adopt until we own - hopefully next 1-3 years).

My wife is adamant she doesn’t want a white child. We are white. If we wanted a white child we would just have our own, probably.

Does your final comment still stand?

@Doomsdayiscoming

why is your wife so adament about she doesnt want a white child. What is your view.
To be honest it does sound a bit odd.
International adoptions aside, Trans racial adoption in this country is still controversial and rare.
I’m a trans racial adopter, I didnt set out to adopt a child of a different ethnicity. It brings a whole host of issues with it.

As part of the assessment process you will be probed on your motivations to adopt. Some people do decide to adopt rather than have birth children, but to adopt soley to get a child of a different ethnicty comes across as a bit odd to me

[quote Ted27]@Doomsdayiscoming

why is your wife so adament about she doesnt want a white child. What is your view.
To be honest it does sound a bit odd.
International adoptions aside, Trans racial adoption in this country is still controversial and rare.
I’m a trans racial adopter, I didnt set out to adopt a child of a different ethnicity. It brings a whole host of issues with it.

As part of the assessment process you will be probed on your motivations to adopt. Some people do decide to adopt rather than have birth children, but to adopt soley to get a child of a different ethnicty comes across as a bit odd to me[/quote]
I think it is a whole range of issues, which I completely agree with to be honest. However I am more realistic, as I expected it was more difficult to adopt trans-racially.

I’ll explain a little more. We have never TTC (she has been on pill for our entire relationship (13 years) and we even use condoms frequently too. And although I believe our own biological children would be amazing, we decided we could not live with ourselves bringing another mouth to feed into this world (climate change etc), and what our prospective child’s live would be like in 30/40/50/60 years time.

So we want to adopt to help a child (or more than 1) that is already here, and needs our love and support.

In terms of non-white. We are quite ashamed of our white British historical past, especially mine, my great grandfather was a doctor in the British Army stationed in India before WW2. Although my wife is 1/4 Yugoslavian (modern day Serbia), I don’t think she is interested in even say a child from that part of the world, although I would be more open to that.

Plus, other smaller reasons like: we don’t want people to think we have adopted to “hide” infertility, or that our child is biologically ours. I couldn’t imagine the awkwardness for the child or parent when someone says “Oh my gosh, they look just like you”. This way everyone is on the same page.

Perhaps we sound like lunatics. I worry that we do.

Also, I don’t want our potential future adopted child(ren) to think they were a back up plan because we couldn’t conceive. They will be our first choice. This is important to me. (This has nothing to do with the specifics of trans-racial adoption, obviously)

wow there is a lot going on there @Doomsdayiscoming

Coming from a child’s perspective, to be honest if I would be somewhat perplexed and concerned about your reasons for wanting to adopt a child of a different ethnicity.
I’m sure many of us have distant long dead relatives with pasts that we aren’t comfortable with but to feel guilty to the extent that you would adopt a child of a different ethnicity sounds to me a bit extreme.You cannot use a child in this way.

If you are going to adopt any child you are going to have to get over what other people think about your decisions.

In my experience many adopted children are thrilled when people make comments about them looking like their parents.
Speaking as a tran racial adopter, when he was younger, my son who is mixed race and viewed by society as black, often said he wished he was white skinned, so he looked like me.

Adoptive familes have different views and approaches to how open they are about their adoptive status, but taking their lead from the child. As white parents with a child of a different ethnicity you are completely removing their privacy.
Raising a child of a different ethnicity is hard work, you have to be very tuned into the subleties and complexities of racism in this country. Its taken me years to get my son to be proud of his skin colour and afro hair, now I have to teach him why these very things make him a target of abuse and prejudice, why he more likely to get stopped by the police than his white mates, I could go on.

The child should be at the heart of any adoption. You seem to want to use ethnicity to deal with your own issues, its not coming from the child’s perspective.
To be honest, if as a white couple you approach an agency and say you only want to adopt a child of a different ethnicity, you are unlikely to be accepted.

Adoption is about you being able to meet the needs of a vulnerable child OP and about your desire to love and parent a child. Your post only focuses on how a future child would reflect your strong political / cultural views and I think this would ring alarm bells with most social workers. Your post doesn’t give any details of why you’d be the best fit for non white child or how you’d practically and emotionally support their development / sense of identity or navigate the complexities of multi racial families.

@BarefootWanderer (OP)
Apologies my post was in response to @Doomsdayiscoming

@Ted27

wow there is a lot going on there *@Doomsdayiscoming*

Coming from a child’s perspective, to be honest if I would be somewhat perplexed and concerned about your reasons for wanting to adopt a child of a different ethnicity.
I’m sure many of us have distant long dead relatives with pasts that we aren’t comfortable with but to feel guilty to the extent that you would adopt a child of a different ethnicity sounds to me a bit extreme.You cannot use a child in this way.

If you are going to adopt any child you are going to have to get over what other people think about your decisions.

In my experience many adopted children are thrilled when people make comments about them looking like their parents.
Speaking as a tran racial adopter, when he was younger, my son who is mixed race and viewed by society as black, often said he wished he was white skinned, so he looked like me.

Adoptive familes have different views and approaches to how open they are about their adoptive status, but taking their lead from the child. As white parents with a child of a different ethnicity you are completely removing their privacy.
Raising a child of a different ethnicity is hard work, you have to be very tuned into the subleties and complexities of racism in this country. Its taken me years to get my son to be proud of his skin colour and afro hair, now I have to teach him why these very things make him a target of abuse and prejudice, why he more likely to get stopped by the police than his white mates, I could go on.

The child should be at the heart of any adoption. You seem to want to use ethnicity to deal with your own issues, its not coming from the child’s perspective.
To be honest, if as a white couple you approach an agency and say you only want to adopt a child of a different ethnicity, you are unlikely to be accepted.

@Ted27

You sound like an excellent parent. Really heartwarming reading that.

I think perhaps am I being too blunt about this. We want children to take care of them, protect them, guide them, nurture them. We would want to make them proud, like you did with your son, of their ethnicity, if that was something that was appropriate. We would learn their native language, if appropriate, we would take them to their “homeland” if we felt it was something they wanted/was appropriate. I would want them to feel as though they could be whoever they wanted to be, and we would be there to help make this happen.

I guess honesty in this instance cuts a bit close, but I’m not sure my view would be seen as more controversial than a white person only wanting to adopt a white child?

Perhaps my naivety about the adoption process/system shows, but I imagine in the U.K. there is a gap caused by white people wanting white children, and not enough non-white people to adopt all the non-white children. Perhaps this is a misjudgement on my part.

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I really appreciate it.

@GreyGoose1980

Adoption is about you being able to meet the needs of a vulnerable child OP and about your desire to love and parent a child. Your post only focuses on how a future child would reflect your strong political / cultural views and I think this would ring alarm bells with most social workers. Your post doesn’t give any details of why you’d be the best fit for non white child or how you’d practically and emotionally support their development / sense of identity or navigate the complexities of multi racial families.

@GreyGoose1980

Thanks for the comment. Yes, I can see how you have come to that conclusion, but this desire for a non-white child is not the crux of why we want to adopt.

As I put in the last post, we want to take care of a child, help them develop, see them grow up, and face the challenges that will come with it all. My wife is a loving person, and I feel I am too. I honestly know if we had any child we would care for them, cherish them, adore them.

We would take into account their ethnicity, culture, learn their native language (if appropriate), possible religion, and we would mould ourselves to them, rather than the other way around. I would want them to be whoever they want to be. We would help them with that process in whatever way we could.

@Doomsdayiscoming

my son’s ‘native’ language is English.
His ‘homeland’ is Buckinghamshire.

I’m sorry but you show no indication that you have any clue what raising a child from a different ethnicity would entail.

Although I am a transracial adopter, I do also believe that there should if possible be a reflection of the child’s hertitage. My son’s birth mother is white, as am I. I therefore reflect his ethnic heritage. It was made very clear to me that if his birth mum had been black, I would not have been allowed to adopt him. I agree that placing a child with a family of a different ethinicity should be a last resort.

There is nothing controversial about white people wanting to adopt white children or black/brown people wanting to adopt only black/ brown children. People generally want children who look like them, Children generally want to see themselves reflected in their parents.
My heart sinks when I read white prospective adopters declare they just want a child to love and they don’t care whether they are black, brown or orange and green stripes. It shows a complete lack of understanding.

If I am being brutally honest, your posts sound like you just want a cute little black/brown baby as a project. Black and brown children are not there to help you atone for some misplaced guilt about what your great grandfather may or may not have done in India.

[quote Ted27]@Doomsdayiscoming

my son’s ‘native’ language is English.
His ‘homeland’ is Buckinghamshire.

I’m sorry but you show no indication that you have any clue what raising a child from a different ethnicity would entail.

Although I am a transracial adopter, I do also believe that there should if possible be a reflection of the child’s hertitage. My son’s birth mother is white, as am I. I therefore reflect his ethnic heritage. It was made very clear to me that if his birth mum had been black, I would not have been allowed to adopt him. I agree that placing a child with a family of a different ethinicity should be a last resort.

There is nothing controversial about white people wanting to adopt white children or black/brown people wanting to adopt only black/ brown children. People generally want children who look like them, Children generally want to see themselves reflected in their parents.
My heart sinks when I read white prospective adopters declare they just want a child to love and they don’t care whether they are black, brown or orange and green stripes. It shows a complete lack of understanding.

If I am being brutally honest, your posts sound like you just want a cute little black/brown baby as a project. Black and brown children are not there to help you atone for some misplaced guilt about what your great grandfather may or may not have done in India.[/quote]
I’m sorry my language and sentiment offended you. It honestly was not meant to.

I completely get what you are saying. But for the record we would not care what age the child was.

I’m going to stop here, as I don’t want to offend you any further. Thank you for your comments and time.

What children need is to be claimed, and have the best family for them, given the circumstances. Often, that will be a family that best reflects their own heritage. The reason there are more children from ethnic minorities waiting, is not because 'white' families don't 'want' them, it's because it may not be best for the child to be adopted into a 'white' family. 'White' families coming forward and misunderstand the issues won't help that, wider recruitment from minorities, and adopter diversity, will help that.

It's important adopters go in to adoption aware of themselves, and what they can offer a child, so not 'we don't mind what the child is like', but 'I can offer xyz, which would be useful for a child in this situation.' You're not a blank canvas, you come with strengths, and weaknesses, and cannot possibly be the best parent for any child, thinking you could parent any child perfectly is quite conceited. "We would not care what age the child was"- what do you know about attachment, and adoption at different ages? What about your skills makes you think you could meet a child's needs being adopted at any age, given the uncertainty and needs of adopting a child age 1 and a child age 9 will be very different?

Going back to the OP, you only need one match to be the best for you and the child, so the number of children of the 'right' background doesn't matter, if it's the 'right' match, so I'd suggest don't write off domestic adoption. It would be very sad if a child of your background wasn't represented, and didn't get a parent who reflects their heritage, because you felt put off! We need diverse adopters. SWs can't be quite reductive in their approach though, matching skin tone rather than background (we reflect the skin tone of our AC, but not ethnicity- I expected SWs to worry about this, but they only appeared to consider colour!) There is more to ethnicity and culture than colour, but I suppose colour is easiest to see. I think this is a weakness in the system.

Children generally want to see themselves reflected in their parents.
@Doomsdayiscoming. I am an adopted child, not inter-racial, but I'll give you some additional perspective on this.

It wasn't until I got to university that someone asked me why I didn't look like my parents. It had never occurred to me. I felt self-conscious about my adoption, and how our family might have appeared to others looking in on us, for the first time.

Ted's point that matching the children with parents of the same ethnicity as a means of preserving the child's privacy is also an excellent way to describe the situation.

I think you're well-meaning, I really do. And I also think that today there is such a concern over appearing 'racist' that in some cases people aren't thinking clearly about the logic of certain situations. This is one of them.

We are foster carers and adopters. We have fostered children from all different cultural backgrounds.

Every single child that we care for is immersed as part of our family.

We had one long term foster child who they found culturally matched adopters for (unexpectedly). We had been parenting this child for years and had expected them to stay with us so we seriously considered adopting them ourselves. Then we thought about it from their perspective... we are both white, our other AS is also white. This wouldn’t bother us in the slightest but I feel that adoption is the child’s story to tell, when you become an adopter you quickly become aware that people are nosy and see nothing wrong with asking very personal questions. We didn’t feel it was fair to subject this child to these intrusive questions for the remainder of their childhood when another family who were a cultural match had come forward.

It absolutely broke us saying goodbye, we never expected to and are lucky enough to have kept in close contact but I 100% think we made the right decision for that LO. At the end of the day it had to be about what was best for them, not us.

We would take into account their ethnicity, culture, learn their native language (if appropriate), possible religion, and we would mould ourselves to them, rather than the other way around.

I can understand your thinking here however, there are challenges in interracial adoption which have been outlined well by posters with that experience.

In any event there are things you can’t mould yourself to in all adoption. My children have had experiences that I haven’t, there are things about them that I can seek to understand and that can inform my care of them but I’m me and they are their own person. For me to mould myself to them would be unfair and inappropriate in a single race adoption, never mind an interracial one.

You will never experience racism and discrimination in the way that they will, as a white male you won’t experience structural inequality in the way that a black child will - you can’t mould yourself to that part of your child.

You may want to be very open about adoption at the start of your journey, that may well change as the process is pretty exposing and I know for me at least there was a point I just wanted to live our life as a family. Adoption is openly spoken about in our family and our children are proud of being adopted (that may change too), but it is their personal story, not mine. A child may not want the question of heritage and adoption to come up every time someone new meets their parents, to be the poster child for mixed race families etc etc. By actively only considering a black child you remove their choice in favour of your own.

You can be happy to make adoption your first choice, for any children to know they weren’t “plan b” without the very obvious marker of skin colour. There’s no awkwardness when people talk about my children looking like me or having my mannerisms, they’re my children I dearly hope there are family resemblances developing.

If your desire is to care for, love and nurture a child, to help them reach their potential, you have a lot to offer any child, you need to carefully consider why you think you could only offer that to a black child though because what you’ve said about the reasons for wanting an interracial adoption would raise questions with any social worker worth their salt.

@Doomsdayiscoming

we don’t want people to think we have adopted to “hide” infertility, or that our child is biologically ours. I couldn’t imagine the awkwardness for the child or parent when someone says “Oh my gosh, they look just like you”. This way everyone is on the same page.

My son looks like me. I don't think anyone from the school playground to my neighbours, let alone your average person in the street would ever stop and consider whether or not I had carried him in my uterus. For us this is actually the opposite of awkward. We are not trying to hide infertility, nor are we 'pretending' to be a biological family. We are just another family, getting on with being a family. And if my son wants to talk to his friends about being adopted that will be his story to tell, in his own time and on his terms.

As others have said, adopters do need to be child-centred, and children are placed in families that are a good fit for them, which is not to say they must be the same race or skin colour, although these do play a part. Your position is coming from what adoption would be to you, so you will need to adjust your positioning to be taken seriously. The saviour narrative is particularly grating and that's why you have provoked some strong reactions.

Some really good points have been made on this thread already. Prospective adopters do change their perception of what it means to be an adopter and what you can offer a child over the period of time that they research and are assessed to become adopters. I think you are probably coming from a good place. You have had some good advice, even if it isn't what you wanted to hear. I just think you need to take a step back and find out a bit more about what adoption is. Especially what adoption means for the adopted child.

@Doomsdayiscoming We are transracial adopters too. I think you have been given very good advise. You really need to see this from the child's perspective. Why would a child not want to belong to their family in every possible respect?

We once came across a transracial family in the streets. My children pointed them out to me, because they are always thrilled when they see another transracial family. The family's little boy felt uncomfortable and complained to his parents that he was being stared at yet again. He was right. His parents response was to tell him that it was nonsense, no one was staring at him and that it was all in his head.

That is a situation many transracial adoptees can relate to. As a white parent you will never have the same experiences as your child. I have seen blatant racism towards my children and even though I have called the racists out, my children are the victims not me. Our experiences, even those of the same situation, massively differ and my ability to support them is limited by my ethnicity.

Anything that is different between you and your child is an extra challenge to overcome. Anything that is similar will give you common ground, will make it easier for you to understand your child and help them get through it and for your child to feel understood.

I am clearly not saying nobody should adopt transracially, but you really need to think it through and have very good, child-centred reasons.

Have a look at these short videos, they raise good questions.

@Doomsdayiscoming respectfully there has been a lot of problematic comments which you have made thus far.

However what I have liked is that you have spoken about your naivety about 'non white adopters or children's perspective'. More and more society is slowly accepting that the experience of ethnic minorities (not BAME) has been oppression and misunderstanding resulting in barriers to help seeking behaviours.

I would recommend that as you may be inclined to adopt a child of mixed heritage it may be a good idea to really get an understanding of the intersectionality which they may face from their perspective rather than what has been written in books.

As an ex adoption and current safeguarding social worker I would be very alarmed and even shut down the dialogue if I was to have met the current perspective which you have. That's not to be offensive but like everyone else it's more to advise that a bit more education and broaden of the mind may be the way forward.