In Adoptive Parent Profiles: Sharing Your Life, I talked about how sharing details about your life can be an important step toward establishing trust with a placing mother. What kinds of details should you share? Of course, there are the obvious things, such as your name, profession, and general information about your extended family, but that information does not really tell the placing mother who you are. For a placing... more

When I put together my first adoptive parent profile, the subjects I focused on were our jobs, our house, and basic security-driven issues. When my friends redesigned my profile for me, they went a completely different direction. Here are the types of information they included:

Our Childhoods

It never would have occurred to me to include childhood pictures of my husband and me, but starting off with pictures of our childhood really set a wonderful tone for our profile.... more

As I mentioned when I introduced this series in Adoptive Parent Profile Series, my first attempt at an adoptive parent profile scrapbook was not good. I was very guarded, which communicated that I was not willing to open up my life to a placing mother. Placing mothers reacted to this by matching with other hopeful adoptive couples who were presumably more emotionally open.

I do not know if most placing mothers would... more

When I put together my first adoptive parent profile, I made the mistake of seeing our connection with the placing mother as more of a “business arrangement.” She had a baby who needed a home, and I had a home that needed a baby. I would show the placing mother that our home was ready for a baby, and that would be all that was needed for her to match with us. I was baffled when a year passed with no interest shown by any placing mother.

What I failed to see was that this relationship was not... more

In my post, Adoptive Parent Profiles: What to Communicate, I quoted Patricia Dischler*, author of Because I Loved You: A Birthmother’s View Of Open Adoption, as saying that placing mothers know that hopeful adoptive parents are emotionally and financially ready to raise a child.... more

In my last post, Adoptive Parent Profiles: What to Communicate, I quoted Patricia Dischler*, author of Because I Loved You: A Birthmother’s View Of Open Adoption, as saying that placing mothers know that hopeful adoptive parents are emotionally and financially ready to raise a child. The big question is whether or not... more

When you are looking at a blank sheet of paper or computer screen, it can be difficult to know how to start describing your family. How do you tell a complete stranger about your life? What things should you share, and what parts should you keep private? What does a placing mother need to know about you before choosing you to parent her child?

When I was the one looking at a blank computer screen, I thought about the things that a placing mother might be looking for. I thought about this from a logical... more

If you are adopting by matching with a placing mother, then your agency, attorney, or facilitator will probably ask you to put together an adoptive parent profile. Your profile will be shown to placing mothers, along with profiles created by other hopeful adoptive parents, so that the placing mother can choose the best adoptive family for her child. Since this profile is your introduction to the placing mother, you want... more

When choosing an agency in the United States, you need to decide whether you want to work with a local adoption agency or with an agency in another state. There are several reasons why you might choose to work with an agency in another state. The agency might have a wonderful reputation or more reasonable fees. You might be in the process of moving from one state to another and want to affiliate with an agency in the location where you will be moving.

The agency might be located in a state with more “favorable”... more

Adoption agencies set up their fee schedules in a variety of ways. Be sure to review the fee schedule and specifically ask what happens if an adoption falls through. In our agency, we paid for the application fee and the home study when each was completed. We did not pay the bulk of the fees until after the birthmother’s parental rights terminated, even though we had custody of Nicholas (as foster parents) during the ten-day period in which his birthmother had already signed the relinquishment papers but still... more