From International Adoption: How to Choose a Country:

5. Research the history and political climate of each country.

Before you choose a country for your international adoption, be sure to learn all you can about the country’s history, culture, and political climate. Once you adopt a child from that country, your family will be connected to that country. Your child’s roots are from that country, so you should know something about it.

Your child will likely be interested in the country of his birth, so it helps to have some familiarity with the country’s background. You do not need to be able to write a dissertation on the country’s history, but you should be able to provide at least a brief survey of the country’s heritage. Developing a love, or at least respect, for your child’s country can help your child to take pride in his heritage.

Be sure to look into the country’s political climate, especially as it relates to adoption. Our agency told us that international adoption can be unpredictable. Countries that have placed children for adoption internationally for years have been known to shut down their international programs, sometimes without much warning.

We chose Romania because, at the time, adoptions were moving pretty fast, but we got caught in the moratorium and it took a lot longer than expected. – An adoptive mother who adopted from Romania

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You will want to find out how stable the adoption program is in each country as a factor in your decision-making process.

Learn all you can about the people in the countries from which you hope to adopt. If you travel to meet your child, you will be interacting with these people. Even if you choose not to travel, your agency will still be interacting with people from that country as you process the paperwork for the adoption.

Familiarizing yourself with customs from each country can help enable you to ease your child’s adjustment when he comes home. The culture in your country can be very different from the only culture your child has ever known. If you know something about the country’s culture, you can do things to make your home seem more familiar to the child by incorporating customs from the child’s home country.

• All Countries: Culture shock in birth countries



• China: Learning Chinese, Learning in China



• Guatemala: Guatemala - A History



• Haiti: Haitians and Black History Month



• Kazakhstan: Almaty



• Korea: Korean Buddhism



• Russia: Russian Culture: Matryoshka Dolls



• Ukraine: Ukrainian Culture



• Vietnam: Ao Dai - Traditional Dress of Viet Nam

Related Topics:

• How to decide to adopt internationally



• How to evaluate adoption options



• How to Evaluate the Different Types of Adoption



• Choose a Country



• International Adoption blog