Adoption Process from the Adoptive Parent’s Perspective
If you’re considering adoption, we know you might have read through dozens of articles about what to expect about the adoption process. People talk about paperwork, adoption plans, and everything else involved with preparing for adoption. However, you might be wondering what it’s like from the other side of things. After all, it takes two families to make an adoption happen. As a birth mother, we’d like you to understand every aspect of the process and explain the adoption process from an adoptive parent’s perspective. Adoption Choices of Arizona works with adoptive families and birth mothers to bring the best possible adoption experience.
If you need adoption help now, please call or text us at 1-480-900-5520 or visit us at Adoption Choices of Arizona.
Deciding to Choose Adoption
The first part is, naturally, choosing to adopt a child. Many families have many different reasons for adopting. For LGBTQ+ couples, they might be choosing adoption because they can’t have biological children. Many heterosexual couples also choose adoption if they’re unable to conceive a child. Another possibility is that the parents don’t want their child to inherit particularly difficult or painful genetic disorders. Other families choose adoption just to help out another family. These parents may even have other children, but want to help another child who needs a home. Adopted children also commonly choose to adopt once they become parents because of their positive experience with the process.
But no matter who, all adoptive parents want to adopt a child. An advantage of adoptive parents is that they’re totally sure they want to raise a child. Once they’re sure they want to adopt a child, they can head on over to any of our adoption agencies in Phoenix and throughout Arizona.
Completing a Home Study
In order to make sure that adoptive families are fully prepared to adopt a child, the state of Arizona requires each family to undergo a home study. A home study is a set of interviews and requirements conducted by a licensed home study agency. Much of the home study is dedicated to making sure the family has their paperwork in order. Families need proof of income, tax returns, a marriage license if they have one, birth certificates, and other important documents. The family also must have health insurance for themselves and their soon-to-be child. Home studies also tend to ask for letters of recommendation from friends and families of the adoptive parents. Finally, the family also provides an autobiography that will be read by the home study organization.
In the second part of the home study, they interview the parents to make sure they are adopting for the right reasons and are prepared to parent. Home study organizations also provide resources to give parents practical advice for raising an adoptive child and children in general. Once the home study is complete, it’s valid for a full year before it needs to be renewed. The renewal is a shorter version of the home study that just includes some paperwork and another home visit to make sure everything is going smoothly. It’s a bit of a process, but from the perspective of an adoptive family, it’s totally worth it for the chance to adopt a child.
An Adoptive Parent’s Perspective When Creating an Adoption Biography and Choosing a Type of Adoption
With Adoption Choices of Arizona, every family creates a little biography and picture set to put up on our website. This way we can better match adoptive parents with birth mothers putting their child up for adoption. These feature pictures and the stories of the parents’ relationships and lives. It’s a simple thing, but it goes far to help you get to know the families. The families also can choose a preferred adoption type. Open adoptions and semi-open adoptions both feature some level of communication between you and the adoptive family. In a closed adoption, communication happens through a third party such as our adoption agency in Arizona. We recommend semi-open or open adoptions for most adoptive families and birth mothers.
Getting Matched with a Child
Finally, the adoptive family gets matched with a mother and child pair just like you. With a semi-open or open adoption, you’ll get a chance to interview the adoptive family and learn some more about them. If they seem like the family for you, then they’ll be the ones taking your child home once the day arrives. Although the day may be bittersweet for you, you’ll also see how thrilled the adoptive family is with a new child.
An Adoptive Parent’s Perspective on Building Arizona Families with Adoption Choices of Arizona
The adoption process is a little more complicated for adoptive families than it is for birth mothers. The home study requires a bunch of detail to make sure the families are prepared. It’s hard for a family to get through the entire process and not be totally sure that this is what they want. Think you’re ready to start the adoption process? Come visit Adoption Choices of Arizona!
For adoption resources or to begin your adoption journey, birth parents can visit us at Adoption Choices of Arizona or call or text us at 1-480-900-5520. If you are a prospective adoptive family hoping to adopt a baby, please instead, visit us here!
Meet the author: Joshua Boulet is an aspiring journalist and writer with a particular fondness for research and social sciences. He loves music, writing, reading, video games and most art, and anything creative he can get his hands on. Boulet believes that there’s too much good stuff out there and not enough time to see it all. He grew up on video games: the classic Sonic the Hedgehog games, Mario Kart, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and Legend of Zelda. The music of rhythm games led him to an interest in that, and the investigative journalism of Jason Schreier inspired him to discover the importance of journalism as an industry. That interest in developers’ lives led him to an interest in social justice and how the world could maybe be made into a better place. “All this to say, there is certainly a line I can draw between me obsessively playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and me interviewing my sociology professor about how to read academic articles. Those surprising through lines fascinate me all the same. At my best, I’m a person who gets to be constantly fascinated by the lives and work of other people.”
His favorite quote is from his favorite jazz musician:
“A genius is the one most like himself” – Thelonious Monk.
