[Editor's note: According to the New York Times: "A judge has rejected Madonna's request to adopt a second child from Malawi because of a requirement that prospective parents live in the southern African nation for at least 18 months, another judge and a lawyer said Friday."]
by Carmen Van Kerckhove, originally published at CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 blog
Madonna’s present attempt to adopt a second child from the African nation of Malawi has reopened a discussion on the question of why so many Americans choose to adopt internationally instead of domestically.
Unfortunately, this conversation rarely gets beyond complaints about the red tape invol
ved in domestic adoption on the one hand, and sweeping statements about how international adoptive parents are saving the lives of helpless children in impoverished countries on the other.
What’s missing from the discussion is a clear-eyed look at how race impacts the adoption and child welfare system in America.
Here’s one sobering fact: Adopting a black child can cost half the amount of adopting a white child. And although every state has its own rules and regulations regarding adoption, many adoption agencies have separate programs that provide fee reductions for parents willing to adopt children with special needs or those of African descent.
Anyone who has taken a basic economics course can draw conclusions about what this price structure reveals regarding the relative supply and demand of black children versus white ones, as distasteful as it is to think about the lives of children in terms of market dynamics.
And it’s no secret that black children are over-represented in the child welfare system. For example, 21.4% of the children in foster care in the state of Minnesota in 2003 were African-American — even though African-American children made up only 5% of Minnesota’s overall population at that time.
Right-wing pundits enamored with the idea of “welfare queens” and “crack babies” may blame the over-representation on some flavor of inherent dysfunction among blacks, but the reality is that racial bias greatly influences the ways in which child welfare laws are interpreted and enforced.
Contrary to popular belief, most children who end up in the foster care system are put there due to neglect, not abuse by their parents, according to adoption expert Jae Ran Kim:
Neglect covers a wide berth of issues including a lack of or inadequate shelter, supervision, nutrition, and education. The standards for these differ from state to state. In Minnesota, for example, a child 12 or over is considered responsible enough to get themselves to school. A child who misses 25 days of school in a semester would be considered truant if the child is 12, but the parents would be charged with educational neglect if the child is 11.
Racial discrepancies in the ways cases are handled suggest that social workers are far more likely to place children of color in foster care than they are white children:
A 1997 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study found that social workers were more likely to place African American and American Indian children in foster care [rather than] in-home services when compared to white children with the same family issues. Once in foster care, African American children typically stay there twice the length of white children. Often this is a result of bias all the way from the social worker to the judge.
We’ll never be able to carry on a rational, honest conversation about adoption — its challenges and solutions — until we take a hard look at how it is impacted by race.
I left this comment (with more typos) at the Anderson Cooper blog as well:
The assumption that “most parents adopt internationally because there is too much ‘red tape’ for domestic adoptions” is totally false.
It’s only true if you substitute “white upper middle class adoptive parents” for “adoptive parents”.
In reality, adoptive parents come in all incomes and colors. And here’s how the real statistics break down:
http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/s_adopted/s_adopted.cfm
* In 2000 and 2001, about 127,000 children were adopted annually in the United States. Since 1987, the number of adoptions annually has remained relatively constant, ranging from 118,000 to 127,000.
* The source of adoptions is no longer dominated by kinship adoptions and private agency adoptions. Public agency and intercountry adoptions now account for more than half of all adoptions.
* Adoptions through publicly funded child welfare agencies accounted for two-fifths of all adoptions. More than 50,000 public agency adoptions in each year (2000 and 2001) accounted for about 40 percent of adoptions, up from 18 percent in 1992 for those 36 States that reported public agency adoptions in 1992 (Flango & Flango, 1995).
* Intercountry adoptions accounted for more than 15 percent of all adoptions. Intercountry adoptions increased from 5 percent to 15 percent of adoptions in the United States between 1992 and 2001 (U.S. Department of State, n.d.).
* The other two-fifths of adoptions are primarily private agency, kinship, or tribal adoptions. With the available data, it is not possible to separate figures within this group, although the percentages of all adoptions in that group as a whole have decreased. In 1992, for example, stepparent adoptions (a form of kinship adoption) alone accounted for two-fifths (42 percent) of all adoptions.
Intercountry adoptions are only 15% of all adoptions in 2001, compared to foster care adoptions at 40%!
The face of adoption is not just white parents adopting children of color from other countries. It could also be, for example, a working-class single black woman adopting her niece. The hyperfocus on a certain slice of adoptive parents is often distracting, reductive and insulting.
To clarify, I’m not attacking the intent of this post, just reframing it.
I think one of the huge problems with adoption discussions when they involve race is that they seem to be automatically center around the needs and issues of white adoptive parents. That’s taken to be the starting point.
Part of this decentering should be moving the focus to other people affected by adoption besides the parents. Another decentering: realizing that not all adoptive parents are white, upper middle class and look upon international adoption as the default. That this is actually the minority.
“We’ll never be able to carry on a rational, honest conversation about adoption — its challenges and solutions — until we take a hard look at how it is impacted by race.”
I think this is absolutely true.
It is worth mentioning, in connection with your comment about the relative demand for African-American and white children from potential adoptive parents, that white resistance to cross-racial adoption is not the only force in play. There are still substantial forces within the child welfare community that regard transracial adoption — at least of African-Americans by whites — as inappropriate, and it is really not that long since NABSW classified it as “cultural genocide.”
Thank you both for pointing out the assumptions that the adoption “debates” always hinge on.
My black grandparents adopted 6 of the dozens of children that they fostered over the course of 30 years. Theirs are the faces I see when I think of adoptive parents, but rarely do I see the challenges that they faced addressed in these kinds of public discourses.
I wonder sometimes about adoptions from Ethiopia versus domestic adoptions of black children. Is this due to a comfort with African rather than African-American children? Or is it precisely out of fear of the original post — that some children placed for adoption in the US who are black are placed due to flaws in our society, and wouldn’t be available for adoption otherwise?
Our daughter was adopted domestically and is African-American/Dominican. As a white mom I think it’s strange to imagine a family *only* wanting a white child to adopt but I also don’t think it’s right to minimize the differences between parenting a child who is of the same race as you and parenting a child who looks very different. I don’t think we do kids any favors if they are adopted by clueless white folks.
I hardly consider myself the perfect white adoptive mom but I’ve seen far worse than me. One little girl with dry skin and a shaved head nearly broke my heart.
I’ve found that when discussions about domestic vs. international adoption come up, many Americans use the “us vs. them mentality”. As the father of a child adopted internationally, the most common question I received during the adoption process was “why would you adopt a child from another country when there are plenty of kids in need here in the US?!” At what point will “the international program worked better for our needs” be a sufficient answer? People need to mind their own business.
Rachel – I am in the process of adopting from Ethiopia, and I can tell you some of why I went that route. I’m single and felt that I would not be able to handle an infant by myself, logistically or financially or otherwise, so I never even looked into domestic adoption of a newborn. I briefly looked into adopting from the foster care system, but most of the children I saw who were available for adoption this way were older than I felt I could handle as a first-time parent. Ethiopia had the right combination of being open to adoptions by single women, the right age range (I am waiting for a toddler, two to three years old), and a manageable process in terms of travel. I am already thinking that I may want to adopt a second child, and will look more seriously at foster kids at that point when I’ve had some parenting experience and might feel better prepared to adopt an older child.
Here’s one sobering fact: Adopting a black child can cost half the amount of adopting a white child.
Maybe because they came up much more costly later?
I definitely think that when writing about adoption, being specific about the type of adoption you mean is critical. Kinship adoption versus adoption from the public child welfare system versus adopting an infant via a private agency are all very different issues. Race impacts all of them, of course, no arguing that point.
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Kids in foster care tend to be older and they may well have multiple issues due to neglect, abuse, have been born to drug or alcohol addicted parents, exhibit mental or physical or emotional disabilities. Plus adopting parents have the prospect of having to navigate already existing relationships with birth parents, siblings, other relatives, former foster parents and possibly court-mandated visits even after the adoption. That isn’t always the case, but kids usually don’t end up in foster care if there aren’t significant problems in their home environments.
Some people may not feel equipped to deal with kids who are going to require that level of care, perhaps into adulthood, or who may have great difficulty in attaching to new adoptive parents.
International adoption, if people can afford it, has some of the same risks, but people may see it as a more attractive option if the kids are seen as more likely to have been surrendered for adoption due to poverty and not abuse or neglect. The geographic distance certainly makes it less likely that the adoptive family will have to maintain regular face to face contact with biological relatives, even if that contact is in many cases good for the kids.
Ethiopia appears to be one of the only countries that still allows single parent adoptions and has an adoption system set up, unlike some of the countries like Malawi. From the perspective of race, I also wonder if some parents may be attracted by the culture and looks of the kids, which tends to be a bit more Caucasian in feature than some of the kids from other African countries. Ethiopia is interesting because it was apparently one of the first countries to embrace Christianity and has a large percentage of Orthodox Christians. Some of its people still show the Arab/Mediterranean influence along with the sub-Saharan African when it comes to appearance. DNA studies have confirmed that there is a measurable gene flow from Greece and some of the Arab countries in Ethiopia and vice versa in Greece and Arabia. They’re very distant cousins of the Greeks. Maybe prospective adoptive parents find all that kind of interesting and feel some connection to Ethiopia as well?
Though it does make the question of how you raise an Ethiopian child in the United States a little more difficult, since the Ethiopian adoptees will probably be seen by Americans as American Black and maybe that heritage should also be emphasized to help the children feel good about themselves.
Race definitely impacts the popularity of domestic adoption (among white middle-class people anyway), especially regarding stereotypes of the “birth mother.” For instance, check out what Dr. Jane Aronson has to say about domestic adoption here: http://babble.com/content/articles/columns/infantindustry/Jane-Aronson/. I mean, she says, “[domestically born] babies up for adoption are exposed commonly to smoking, alcohol, drugs.” And she’s supposedly an adoption expert! At my agency, we learned that birth mothers come from ALL walks of life, and that there was NO predicting why a woman would choose adoption for her child.
The prospect of open adoption, of building and continuing a relationship with the birth mother, compounds these fears and stereotypes. I know I certainly had a lot of assumptions going into domestic adoption, and I’ve had to work on confronting a lot of unwelcome truths about myself and where I come from. Some days, as the white mother of a black child, it feels like I’m battling the entirety of western civilization, but it also feels like an essential battle!
Maybe it side-steps the issue of the post, but there does seem to be an underlying…feeling in it that those of us who adopt internationally have done something wrong.
While it may be more expensive than foster-to-adopt, international adoption is NOT more expensive than private domestic adoption (other than in-family adoptions). Those of us adopting on limited funds do look at these costs. International adoption does not equal “deep pockets.”
Why we chose to adopt internationally had a lot to do with the child we all ready have, and how we function as a family. And also what we learned about how and why in-country adoptions are very rare in S. Korea.
We also PERSONALLY know a woman who adopted and then had the birth parents “change their minds” after 3 months.
I understand the need for looking after the rights off the birth-parents but I have a 4-year-old and good grief, YES, that is too big a risk to put on HIM. To have someone take his baby brother away??? No no no. The desire of APs to not take that risk does not always mean what it’s implied to mean….many of us all ready have children, and guess what, we don’t want to see their hearts broken.
I have a young, single, cousin who became pregnant when all the domestic agencies were turning me down, and the first question I asked her was “Are you happy about this?” Had she answered “no” I would have offered *on the spot* to adopt her baby, whose father is Black. But she told me she was thrilled about becoming a mom, so those words did not cross my lips.
I desperately wanted a BABY – and a baby who needed me, not one who would be just fine without an AP. Thinking about “color” came later.
In the end, after a heck of a lot of research, and after a heck of a lot of being turned away from domestic agencies, and after looking at foster-to-adopt and deciding that the risks to the child I ALL READY had were too great, we went with S. Korea (as noted above).
And I started reading this blog, because though I am not technically white, I have a lot to learn about how this child might feel and how I can honor his feelings.
I just….something about the “under-current” of this post feels hurtful to me.
There are a LOT of assumptions built in that may or may not be true.
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“I understand the need for looking after the rights off the birth-parents but I have a 4-year-old and good grief, YES, that is too big a risk to put on HIM. To have someone take his baby brother away??? No no no.”
You’re implying that foster parents and foster-care adoptive parents are just fine with risking terrible emotional harm to their children, and that’s really insulting.
It’s a complicated issue and one most foster parents have to work through. There is a great explanation here at this blog: “On Children Who Foster.”
But it really bothers me that parents defending international adoption so often feel the need to put down foster parents. “I could NEVER do that” can sound an awful lot like “I’m TOO GOOD for that” unless you phrase it with a bit of sensitivity and humility.
There are still substantial forces within the child welfare community that regard transracial adoption — at least of African-Americans by whites — as inappropriate, and it is really not that long since NABSW classified it as “cultural genocide.”
I wish more people who quote the NABSW would read their entire statement, along with the context of their concerns. It is amazing that the myth persists that there ever was a huge demand by White parents for US-born Black children to adopt. This is not the case.
Looking to “blame” Black social workers for Black children in foster care is inaccurate–as the statistics in this post easily reveal–as well as disrespectful to the professional opinions of this group of child advocates.
On topic in the Sunday times by the ethicist (Randy Cohen).
http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/?hp
atlasien,
“You’re implying that foster parents and foster-care adoptive parents are just fine with risking terrible emotional harm to their children, and that’s really insulting.”
That is not what I meant at all. And I am sorry that my words struck you this way. I was trying to express that the decision to adopt internationally isn’t one taken only from the POV indicated in the post.
“It’s a complicated issue and one most foster parents have to work through. There is a great explanation here at this blog: “On Children Who Foster.” ”
This is a complicated issue all around.
“But it really bothers me that parents defending international adoption so often feel the need to put down foster parents. “I could NEVER do that” can sound an awful lot like “I’m TOO GOOD for that” unless you phrase it with a bit of sensitivity and humility.”
Again, I didn’t mean it this way, and I am sorry that I offended you. I will admit that am not sure how you got that from what I said – I am not sure how I am putting down foster parents when I say it’s too big a risk for my kid (I suppose it read like I meant any kid, and I can see that – I am sorry).
In another situation, I would have opted to foster, but even though it might work for ME, it would not work for every member of my family for reasons that are pretty private.
However, I am not defending anything about who and how I am adopting, and I don’t feel I should have to. Nor should you.
If international APs do their research, ensure what they are doing is ethical and ensure that these kids will really be without familes and community if not adopted, then OK. I did this, and I am little tired of it being implied that I did that because I’m too selfish to adopt domestically.
I know foster-parents and foster-to-adopt parents have a lot to navigate too.
Personally, I’d stand by both decisions, and assume that a family made the best choice they could for THEM.
Some of us who chose not to take the risks that foster-to-adopt represent have all ready suffered grievous losses, and while that is, no doubt, true for foster parents as well, I’d say it’s important for us to know just how resilient we (and our chidren) are. My kid has all ready dealt with many things that kids shouldn’t have to and having a sibling who didn’t stay would break him. I know this. I also know there are no guarantees in life, but like ALL PARENTS, I try to do best by the kids I know best – my own.
I do apologize that all my emotions around that sounded like something I did not intend.
atlasien,
I went to the blog you posted. This:
“Don’t do it unless you think your children are ready to be told the truth about why other children are in foster care. This is not to say that you give them all the ugly details (or even most of the ugly details). Realize though that you will be teaching your children that terrible things happen to children in this world, and that there are good people who open their homes to help. It is a powerful lesson.”
My son is ready to be a big brother. He is not ready for this. And because our extended family is packed with adoptees from various situations (all domestic until now), I think he will learn the good part of this lesson without me doing something I am pretty sure he’s not ready for.
If you are fostering, that is wonderful. I am not, but it doesn’t make me out to be what the post makes me out to be. And that was my whole point.
Again, apologies for the poor wording of that section.
People who adopt domestically or internationally want children – to love, care for, raise, teach, cherish. There are children in the U.S. and internationally who need parents – to love, to raise them, to teach them, to care for them. Whether domestic or international adoption is the right choice for the parent, there is a child out there who needs that parent. Regardless of where a child is born – they deserve to have capable, loving parents.
As the parent of an African-American girl we adopted domestically the idea that her birth parents could reclaim her is terrifying. But the idea that there might have been the type of misconduct/coercion/baby stealing that has been reported for some international adoptions is equally horrible. I love my daughter very much, but if adoption systems are designed (as international adoption often seems to be) to make it impossible, or nearly impossible to challenge these practices as the first mother/birth mother then they are also designed to facilitate abuse. The comparatively few instances where the “birthmother changed her mind” are a check on those within the U.S. domestic adoption system who would take advantage of women unsure of what to do about their pregnancies. Its not pretty, but neither are the abuses that have been happening with some international adoptions.
That said not all who choose international adoption due so to avoid birthparents or so they don’t have to adopt African-American babies, but some do. Whenever someone tries to deny this is real I think about my first “informational” meeting with the adoption agency. There were about 10-15 other couples there and the agency put up a chart about wait times to adopt infants from different countries, white infants from the U.S. and African-American infants. So we were already in a discussion just about infants, a fairly small and elite segment of the adoption world. The average wait time (after your home study) for international adoptions was 18 months to 2.5 years depending on country, for white domestic infants it was 12 months, for African American infants it was 4 months. At the end of this meeting we divided into groups based on interest, there were 3 couples interested in domestic adoption, and one (us) interested in the African-American program. I was amazed. I knew it would be this way, but I couldn’t believe after hearing the average wait times alone (not to mention the cost differences) that so many still chose differently than we did. Obviously it is not this simple, but I can’t help but believe that race was a factor for some of those who chose to wait, chose to wait years longer than we did to avoid adopting an African American baby.
“Don’t do it unless you think your children are ready to be told the truth about why other children are in foster care. This is not to say that you give them all the ugly details (or even most of the ugly details). Realize though that you will be teaching your children that terrible things happen to children in this world, and that there are good people who open their homes to help. It is a powerful lesson.”
i don’t think i agree with this. my son is almost 3 and adopted from foster care. although he won’t consciously remember his experience before coming to us at 14 months, we have told him through his lifebook in an age appropriate way about his history. he already knows there’s bad in this world. he lived it. as do many other children, bio or otherwise. children experience many types of loss before they are emotionally ready to handle it. it’s just the way the world is. there is nothing fair about it but there’s also sometimes nothing we can do about it either.
we are planning to build our family entirely through our state foster-to-adopt program and yes, there are risks that go with that. but there are also risks with getting pregnant. you could lose the baby that way too. a sibling would have to deal with it in the same way. my goal as a parent isn’t to shelter my children, but to teach them how to deal with the imperfections they encounter. that includes the risk of fostering a child we may have to “give back”. some children are raised their entire lives with parents that foster kids. they get used to it. it’s a way of life for them. my son will probably think for a long time that babies come from social workers. eventually he will know better, but there are lots of different lifestyles people choose to lead and kids adapt.
the problem i have with international adoption is when it becomes a fad. and i have friends that have adopted internationally and universally, i think it’s wonderful. for me, the cost was too great. plus, there are many perks that come with adopting from foster care. but i’ve also seen people who have unrealistic expectations about adopting internationally and think that it’s a “cool” way to give back to the world and expect to raise the child the same as any bio child without putting any extra thought or research into it. this is what i have a problem with. if you want to do something nice for the world and don’t have the time to dedicate into thorough research, go work in a soup kitchen or something. not directed at anyone here of course.
Sometimes this whole discussion of adoptiong US vs. international kids strikes me as a bit xenophobic. Should we just be happy that orphans in ANY country are being adopted from institutions into families? I don’t understand the need to criticize either choice. Perhaps the criticism would be better spent on those who are doing absolutely nothing to care for children in need, here or around the globe.
Adoption is always a hard road. I have respect for all parents who build their family this way. We adopted our first son from fostercare, and what was supposed to be a simple adoption became a 3-year DCFS nightmare, where we nearly lost him a number of times. To say it was emotionally traumatic for my family would be an understatement. His adoption was finalized when he was almost 4.
We felt we couldn’t go through that upheaval again and lost a lot of faith in our state’s system, so we went international for our second adoption. We have now been waiting for our Haitian son to come home for almost 2 years. It has been a painful wait.
And yet, I would still encourage people to adopt from fostercare OR from another country.
All that to say, adoption is difficult, no matter what route you choose. I think there needs to be more mutal respect for the choices people make, and less judgement for why each family comes to their own conclusions about what they can or can’t handle.
I am sorry but Americans are very racist when it comes to adoption. Most of them choose foreigners as a result of their twisted thinking that it is easier to not only adopt but raise a foreign child. However, that is ok, because Europe has caught on and there are many Black/mixed race American children being adopted by Italian, German, and British families. I see more and more of them everyday as an expat.
“Though it does make the question of how you raise an Ethiopian child in the United States a little more difficult, since the Ethiopian adoptees will probably be seen by Americans as American Black and maybe that heritage should also be emphasized to help the children feel good about themselves.”
If you decide to raise ANY child from another culture, you educate that child on HIS/HER culture. When people talk about cultural genocide, to this they are referring. I am an American with two multiracial children. One looks German with blue eyes and blond hair and one looks Albanian. Since they look like these two cultures, should I raise them based on what others may assume based on their looks or educate them on all aspects of their cultures? That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life!
Regarding birth parents reclaiming their children, it is important to distinguish between birth parents reclaiming parental rights before the parental rights are official terminated and reclaiming parental rights after an adoption is finalized. They are two very different things.
From an adoption ethics perspective it is essential that parents only place a child for adoption on their own volition, rather than being coerced. As a prospective adoptive parent it is important to educate oneself on the adoption laws in the state in which you are considering adoption. Doing so can set one’s mind at ease in regards to birth parents reclaiming parental rights.
Reclaiming at any time is potentially the same for the rest of the adoptive family. I don’t assume that comment was for me, but as to setting one’s mind at ease, as I stated above, I personally know a family who had a child reclaimed at the end of the first 3 months of the baby’s life (this is when parental rights are terminated in my state). It may be rare, but we know this person and know OF several others.
Additionally, my husband was adopted and was very firm in his belief that any interaction with a birth parent be determined and directed by the adopted child at a certain age or older…and that the child we adopt be younger than our son, who was 3 when we started the process and 2 when we started the search for an agency. As I was not adopted, I respected his feelings as we searched.
We started with domestic “charitable” agencies, who did not want me because I am over 40, have a bio-child, and do not have a diagnosis of infertility or secondary infertility. We had lost a pregnancy a year or so before we started the process, but had all ready started discussing adoption, as I had always wanted to grow my family this way, but before I married my husband, I was often too poor to feed myself and couldn’t do it in any form.
Seeking treatment for fertility issues, which we still don’t know if we have, was not the right path for US.
This thread seems to have run it’s course, and I don’t seem to be able to say what I mean clearly, but I do still want to say a few things, because there have been some things stated here that are inaccurate. And while an honest discussion of race in adoption is hugely important, it needs to be done not as an attack on international AP, nor, as atlasien stated in the 1st comment, should it assume a face of domestic adoption that excludes many, if not most, adoptive families.
I know people who think ANY adoption or foster is “saving” a child – however, I know of absolutely NO adoptive families who feel this way. Not one. We are grateful and honored to parent our children.
International adoption is NOT always more expensive than domestic adoption, and people who chose it are not always rich. Madonna not withstanding (entitlement issues there go way beyond anything I can deconstruct).
Many people, who feel international adoption is right for them, choose S. Korea and Ethiopia because of the transparency, ethics, and high standard of care for orphans and surrendered children in these countries. Children in S. Korea, particularly boys, are unlikely to be adopted for cultural reasons and in Ethiopia, the children have usually lost their parents. Haiti is also home to many orphans and has a fairly transparant system. To say we chose these countries to avoid parenting a non-white child is obviously incorrect.
And though some non-adoptive parents may think a foreign child will be easier, again, I know of not one AP who feels this way. Each child comes with a personality, not fully determined by the parents regardless of HOW one grows one’s family.
While many of us do choose international adoption to avoid certain risks, it’s important not to assume that you know what the reasons for that are. Nor should one dismiss these reasons as selfish, not knowing them, as they may simply be too personal for open discussion.
I don’t know of any international APs that “look down” on foster parents or foster-adoptions. Clearly the poster I offended above has had a different experience, and again, I am sorry for that, as I support her decision and assume it was right for her and her family.
We are all on this blog to learn and share, and to assume one knows the motives, thoughts, and feelings of people who have made choices other than our own seems antithetical to why we are here.
I was researching this issue due to a slight arguement on facebook. I continues to amaze me how many people have an opinion that have never any stepped foot into an adoption agency. And yes, I have 2 daughters adopted from China.
My husband I were older wanna be parents who were not “chosen” by anyone through our local Catholic Social Services adoption agency. Thus, we went international after waiting a grueling 3 -4 years to adopt domestically. We adopted our wonderful daughter internationally 1 year later. We consider ourselves extremely lucky.