In this section of my blog I want to explore the world of domestic, private adoption. This is actually an area I don't know that much about, since at our first meeting with a domestic agency the agency director told us to go to Russia...but it's something I'd like to explore for personal as well as professional reasons.

I see great benefits in adopting domestically through a private agency or attorney. The number one benefit I see is the ability to remain in touch with your child's first mother. This is something seriously lacking in the world of international adoption. It's both expensive and difficult to track down birth parents when a child is adopted internationally (although I do think you should do it, if at all possible) and with domestic adoption and the possibility of an open or semi-open situation there is no "tracking down" to take place. It's all set up ahead of time. Parties are in agreement. The child will have the opportunity to know (or at least know about) both sets of parents. This is tremendous.

(A note about terminology. I like "first mother" better than "birth mother," mostly because it sounds less clinical. I titled this entry "Dear birthmother" because that seems to be the more widely used term, but I'll be using them interchangably. For my Russian-adopted son, Little J, we use the term "Russian mother" and "Russian father" to distinguish his first family from ours, but of course in domestic adoption that doesn't fit ;). I don't care for "natural mother," because I think the next leap is the adoptive mother as unnatural, and that ain't me...so I won't be using that in this blog.)

Anyhoo, it's ridiculously difficult to get any real statistics on adoption in this country (there's lots of data about international adoptions but not so much about domestic - feel free to correct me if you can give me a good, current link!) but from what I've heard it breaks down like this:

• About 120,000 children are adopted in the U.S. each year.



• 10-12% of children are adopted internationally



• Of the rest, about half are adopted by relatives or stepparents.



• Of the rest, I don't know. I've heard about 1/3 of children adopted in this country are through foster care...but that overlaps with the relative/stepparent thing. So I'm not sure exactly how many are adopted privately through and agency or with the help of an attorney...but it's a lot.

In fact, I've heard that private, domestic adoption is the most common way children are adopted in the United States today.

So how does private domestic adoption work? How do prospective adoptive mothers and prospective adoptive parents hook up?

Stay tuned to this blog to find out.