Research
So I’m doing preliminary research on the adoption issue. Here's what I've found so far:
This is a really good website. They have links for each country they work with and they explain the process thoroughly: http://www.cwa.org/guatemala-adoption.htm
I noticed that:
~ The Ukraine allows adoption of siblings when they are available, but they don't allow adoption of two unrelated children. There's a lot of travel time involved.
~ China seems to have the easiest adoption process and shortest travel time.
~ Russia has some of the most desperate sounding conditions, but they primarily only adopt out children 36 months of age to young teens. Two short trips are required. (Mockingbird39, I'd love to hear more of your stories!)
~ Kazakhstan requires extensive travel time. Either two trips, or one 45+ day trip.
~ Guatemala has more boys than girls available. Mostly infants and newborns. One site I looked at indicated it was a 2-year process, but this site indicated a lot less time. (6+ months??)
~ Ethiopia is the other country that seems to have terrible conditions. Adoptions are cheaper than the other countries, faster, and the children are infants and toddlers.
I have a real attachment to hispanic kids because of my time growing up in Central America while my parents were missionaries. So that's part of why Guatemala would appeal to me so much. We want to adopt two kids younger than Ethan (age 11) and Helena (age 3). So by the time we do this in a year or two, that means we'd want children preschool age and younger, preferably under age 4. Also, because we have two other kids, we can't do travel that involves staying somewhere for a month or more like some of these countries require.
So at the moment, all of those things put together would seem to put Guatemala, China and Ethiopia as our best options. We're kind of leaning towards Guatemala at the moment due to my background, plus I look almost hispanic myself (at least to white people!). Our situation and preferences could change, of course, by the time we go forward with this. Has anyone seen any good stories talking about the conditions in the orphanages or foster homes for kids in those countries?
Also, I've heard that while there's a high demand on white babies in the U.S., there are a lot of hispanic children available. Since, again, our goal is to be stepping in where there's a real need vs. joining a long line of parents hoping to adopt, I'll have to check into that domestic situation to see if there's as urgent of a need for adoptive parents.