Prospective adoptive parents

Personality
Transracial adoption means that your family becomes “public” because your differences are readily apparent to others. Do you feel sick at the thought of the lady in the grocery store who asks inappropriate questions about your child, or do you relish the thought of learning how to help your child develop the strength and capacity to cope with racial bias?  As a parent, you will be “on display.” You will need to seek help from adult mentors of colour who understand firsthand your children’s experiences in ways that you can’t.

Having directed both foster care and adoption programs that place teenagers into permanent families, and then having founded an agency that places teenagers into permanent families, I often get asked, “What kind of people will offer their home permanently to a teenager?” My answer is always the same, “Any and all kinds of people who, after a good preparation experience, are willing to unconditionally commit themselves to a child no matter what behavior that child might ultimately exhibit.” Teenagers need, first and foremost, at least one adult who will unconditionally commit to and claim th

Adoptive father Grant Withers is an interesting man. He appears entirely unhampered by generally accepted concepts of the "male" or "father" role.

Adoptive father Andrew Melton, 42, did everything the adoption text books suggest prior to adopting his child. He and his partner, Claire, attended an adoptive parents support group for over two years. He participated enthusiastically in the MCFD education program and in the home study process, and he took parental leave when two-year-old Greg joined the family this summer. Despite all this, he wasn’t prepared for what was to come.

David Murphy of Abbotsford, is brimming with family pride. There’s him, his wife Nikki, two-year-old Cody, the dog and two cats. Children were always going to be part of the Murphy family—there was no doubt about it. David recalls that on their honeymoon Nikki talked about starting a family. "I wanted to wait a year or so. But five years later we had still been unable to conceive a child."

On November 19, 2004, Lauryn Galindo, a Seattle intercountry adoption facilitator, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for the child trafficking of hundreds of Cambodian children.

We are planning to adopt a baby and have heard stories about birth fathers coming forward at the last minute, to disrupt adoptions. What is the situation if this happens?
As with all questions involving the law, an accurate answer begins with, “it depends.” The first thing it depends on is where the child (and birth father) reside. Different countries, and even different provinces or states, have differing laws and procedures. For the purpose of this response, I will assume all parties live in BC.

When we adopted our children, it was important to me that they not miss out on breastfeeding. There are proven scientific benefits for children who receive breast milk. Despite improvements in formulas and anecdotal experience, human milk is still the best food for human babies.

However, many adoptive parents of newborns either don’t know nursing is possible, or that there are many ways it can be done.

Though they are rare, and most adoptions go through seamlessly, revocations by birth parents happen.

In BC, birth parents have 30 days from the time their child is born to change their minds and decide to parent their child.

Usually those 30 days pass by, albeit slowly, and the parents can breathe a sigh of relief. For others, it’s not quite so simple.

Attachment theory and children in care