If you adopt a child, would you be willing to follow through with the promises you make to the birth family? At first blush, this might seem like an obvious “DOH!” Why wouldn’t you?

Not every adoptive couple follows through with its promises after adopting a child, but not all couples do so with fraudulent intent. Many couples simply do not think through the issues ahead of time and then find themselves in some very difficult positions after the adoption is finalized.

On Adoption.com’s Self-Assessment... more

My next several posts will be an Adoption 101 series. I am writing these posts for people who are just starting out the adoption process. Those of us who have been part of the adoption world for a while can forget that we did not always know what to call an adopted child’s biological parents or what a home study is. This series will also be helpful for friends and family of those who are adopting.

It is hard to follow any discussion if you are not familiar with the basic terminology, so I will begin... more

In the comments on my post How to Determine if an Adoption Agency is Ethical, davidk posted a link to a website called The Adoption Agency Checklist. I checked out the site to determine if it was legitimate, and I found quite the treasure trove of advice for avoiding adoption fraud, particularly for international adoptions.

The owner of the website is a man named David, who... more

Throughout my Protecting Adopted Child’s Privacy Series, I have been talking about the reasons why it is important to keep your child’s adoption information private. After reading that series, you might be struggling with what you should or should not tell others about your child’s adoption information. This post is to provide you with some tools for making this decision.

Is the information an emotional time bomb?

When... more

From Protecting Adopted Child’s Privacy Series:

10. Maintaining your adopted child's privacy shows that you respect that it is the child’s story to tell.

The bottom line for why you should maintain your adopted child’s privacy is out of respect for your child. The child’s history is his – not yours, your friends’, or your family’s. Your adopted child should be the one to decide who knows this very... more

From Protecting Adopted Child’s Privacy Series:

9. Your child should not be the only person “out of the loop.”

It is human nature not to want to be left out, particularly from information about ourselves. When I was in high school, I took an IQ test, but I was not allowed to find out the results. It really bothered me that school personnel knew something that I did not know about myself.... more

From Protecting Adopted Child’s Privacy Series:

8. Privacy reserves the opportunity to tell the history in a better way.

If you tell others about your child’s history, then they have the power to present that history to your child with their own spin on the story. Maintaining your child’s privacy enables you to share the truth in a much more positive and comforting light.

Let’s... more

From Protecting Adopted Child’s Privacy Series:

7. Privacy maintains the ability to reveal information in stages.

Some of your child’s history might be sensitive information, so you will want to control what he is told when. There may be aspects about his history that you do not want him to know until he is an adult, if ever. If you tell other people any of this information, then you... more

From Protecting Adopted Child’s Privacy Series:

6. Revealed history plants emotional time bombs.

No child is ready to hear all of the truths about life from the day he is born. For example, we do not talk to six-year-old children about birth control. As parents, we wait for the right time to discuss different life issues with our children. Children are ready to learn about different aspects of life... more

From Protecting Adopted Child’s Privacy Series:

5. Shared information can influence how others view the birthfamily, which can influence the child’s feelings.

Unfortunately, friends and family of hopeful adoptive couples do not go through the home study process along with the couple. While the hopeful adoptive couple is becoming educated about how adoption affects the birthfamily, their family and... more