Why Does Adoption Take So Long?

I get asked this question a lot. My friend, Maria, shared a blog post with me that gives a great, summarized answer.

Why does adoption take so long? It’s a question I ask myself every day and the one I am asked most often by others.

It’s hard to reconcile how families could be stuck waiting to matched with a child (or wait so long to bring their children home once they have been matched) when there are hundreds of millions of orphans, desperate for families. At first glance, it doesn’t make much sense.

However, adoption is more complicated than simply connecting children in need of families with those willing to open their hearts to an orphan.

ORPHAN STATUS MUST BE VERIFIED

Just because a child appears to have been abandoned, or one or both parents have relinquished that child to an orphanage, does not mean that child can or should be adopted.

In order to ascertain what is in the best interest of a child, a government must determine that:

• the child is a true orphan
• there are no other relatives able or willing to care for the child on a permanent basis
• family reunification through sponsorship, mentoring, etc. is impossible
• no indigenous families are willing to adopt the child

Lengthy interviews must take place between government workers, living relatives and attorneys to answer these questions. Relatives can be difficult to locate and lawyers and government officers are often overworked. As a result, this process can be painfully slow. But, it is vital to ensure that every child who is adopted is a true orphan, and not the victim of child trafficking, etc.

FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS GET OVERWHELMED

Very often, a country opens to adoption and is then promptly swamped with parents hoping to adopt available children. This puts an enormous amount of pressure on a government still in the infant stages of building its program. Logistics, legal concerns, coordination with Western Embassies, and the like can pose an incredible challenge.

As more and more Westerners pursue inter-country adoption, corruption or the fear of corruption can make those in power quite nervous, causing them to slow the process down in order to ensure ethics are maintained.

Additionally, countries open to adoption often have periods of politically instability. Wars break out, elections go ary and tensions build. When these things occur, adoption programs can be disrupted for reasons that have nothing to do with adoption itself.

SPIRITUAL RESISTANCE IS A GIVEN

One of the biggest reason adoption takes so long is that the Enemy opposes it. Adoption is the Gospel in action, and a powerful picture of Christ’s love for us. We would be foolish to think Satan would not throw up every road block in his power to discourage us and thwart our attempts to become a loving family to a child without one. We must be on guard, and we must be committed to praying for our children and for their home countries.

I have spoken mostly about international adoption here, because that is what I know. My friends who have adopted domestically tell me the process is equally slow in America, albeit for different reasons in some cases.

Though the wait is lengthy and agonizing, I am convinced we should not be dissuaded from adoption. Our children need us to persevere and to fight for them. If you are waiting, don’t give up and don’t lose heart. It’s worth it.

Why do you think the adoption process takes so long?