Okay before i report these stats i must add that some of the profiles are not viewable unless i was a REAL registered Birth mom but, Since I'm not and I was just doing this out of pure interest here's what the families on IAL.org are ranking in at...
Currently there are 954 approved couples on the site ( viewed as guest)
Of those 954 only 643 are willing to adopt bi-racial african amer./white
and 518 are willing to adopt Hispanic mixed babies
437 of the 954 couples are willing to adopt a child under the age of 2
566 of the 954 are willing to have a SEMI- OPEN adoption
only 350 are willing to have a FULL open Adoption and will explore levels of contact within that relationship
of those 350 FULLY OPEN COUPLES.. only 203 of them will have Stay at Home Moms!
The rest are either part time, work from home or full time working mothers!
So if you are looking for a couple who are open to adopting outside their own race, want an open relationship with birth parents and the Mom will be staying at home after placement- you have about 103 couples to choose from. And i didn't even factor in if the adoptive couples have children already in the home or age of the adoptive parents...
You may now comment or hold your breath and count to ten.
I must say I thought there were going to be more couples who are hoping for OPEN adoptions- to each his own, i guess!
( p.s. I found the front to our pass along cards finally on my desktop:)
3 comments:
Well I'll turn purple if I hold my breath so here are my thoughts :)
As far as the amount of potential families I think the total numbers are much higher than what is listed on any given day. You of course have the families that aren't being seen for whatever reason (like you mentioned) but you'll always have a portion of the total that don't wait long so those could really add up over the course of a year.
I for one am glad people are being honest with themselves and not clicking on every box available if they aren't open to it upfront. Several years ago when our profile was listed online we were comfortable with openness but not necessarily on visits. So under your qualifications I'm sure we wouldn't have made the fully open status. We didn't want to promise the moon to someone when we didn't know the specific situation. But fast forward and we were matched with a wonderful birthmom and have had many wonderful visits. I did a search only including families open to visits after finalization and 541 couples popped up. I figure if your open to visits after finalization your probably open to other types of contact as well. That number was higher than I expected.
When we were with LDSFS I felt a huge push towards very, very open adoptions. I remember them telling us about one family who hired their child's bithmom to be their nanny- I was like WOA! I literally felt like unless we wanted a completely open adoption with multiple visits a month that it wouldn't happen. It was very frustrated at times with that. I've been following more national boards the past year and have realized that many birthmoms are still choosing semi open situations. Like a lot! I didn't realize that having wide open adoptions with visits and the whole shebang were not exactly the national norm like I once thought they were. I do think the trend is towards openness, but not to the extent I once thought.
I am really surprised to see that less than half would be willing to adopt a child under the age of two.
At the end of the day it only takes one though! Good luck in your journey!
you are right - only takes one birth parent and so forth!
Yeah, most adoptions are semi-open to open and all have different degrees of openness. It's really up to the couple & birth mother.
I wasn't too shocked about that- i was actually shocked about the other stats. But, like i said to each his own b/c i agree with you- people need to be honest with themselves instead of clicking all boxes and having resentment about one thing or another in their adoption situation. On the flip side I feel sometimes people have fear of the unknown (race, age, openness) and they tend to ask God for this Miraculous Gift but, ONLY IF IT FITS into these tiny parameters that will suit me and my spouse best! Shouldn't we be more trusting in areas and Let Him decide what we can and can't handle? My opinion completely!
Oh I hear you. I remember I was wishy washy on the age we put down. I think we settled on one year and under. I can't really remember for sure though. I just want to smack my head now. Would it really have mattered if we had been matched with a baby just over that age? Even a two year old? Heck no! Some of my decisions on that preference list I look back shake my head. I do think being a parent has opened up my heart to more options though. Before I wanted the "perfect" situation. Who doesn't? But now I realize that so many more blessings can be given to us if we let them.
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