On my post, Facing Parenting a Child with a Special Need, a reader left the following comment:

Can anyone suggest an objective criteria for choosing a child and/or birthmother? I should be approved to adopt (open-adoption) in Feb 2008. I'll be a first-time father. Naturally, there is the healthy / problematic-baby choice, and the prenatal care / no prenatal cared-mother choice, but is that the only criteria I should be using? I'm expecting to adopt a Black child, and I've been informally told that I have to expect health-problems. I need a better objective criteria than what my wife and I have at present, which is that the child be "reasonably healthy" and look "similarly" to us. I can not find this topic on the site.

Making decisions about health risks was one of the hardest parts of the home study process for my husband and me. We wanted to adopt a healthy baby. If we had become pregnant, I would have done everything I could to ensure having a healthy baby. Of course, there are variables beyond anyone's control, but I would have done everything in my power to increase the odds of giving birth to a healthy baby.

When you choose to adopt, you lose this power. You have no control over whether the expecting mother seeks out prenatal care, eats well, or puts harmful substances into her body. I had one adoption agency tell me to expect that any baby I adopt to have been exposed to prenatal alcohol. That was a disturbing comment, and I do not agree that it is necessarily true. There are women who do not drink at all, and just because a woman plans to place her baby for adoption does not mean that she is going to disregard her unborn baby's health completely.

When you adopt, you are considering all health risks versus an educated guess about the health risks of a baby conceived with your DNA. That can be overwhelming. For this reason, I wrote a long series on assessing health risks that provides basic information about the most common health risks that you might be asked to assess. I cover the risks involved when either the expecting mother or the child has a particular health issue or an increased risk of one. I also provide links to where I found the information so you can research each health risk in more detail.

I am not a health professional, but I am a good "Googler," so I found the best resources I could for each possible health risk. I then answered the following questions for each one:

• What Is It?


• What Causes It?


• What Are the Symptoms/Risks?


• Is it Hereditary?


• Diagnosable at Birth or Latent?


• What Else Do I Need to Know?


• What’s the Bottom Line?

I hope that you will find that series useful in assessing the health risks in adopting your child.

Related Topics:

Health Risks category

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt