I hope you have been enjoying my 6-part series on different avenues of adoption. This week in Part 3, I talk about the most common form of adoption, private adoption.
Over the last two weeks, we have covered agency adoptions and consultant adoption. While these are wonderful options for safely adopting a child, they can come with some restrictions. Private adoption is a little more flexible as you are working directly with the expecting mother, so some of those agency-applied limitations won’t be involved.
Removing the middleman and working directly with an expecting mother definitely has its pros and cons. Some of those pros can be no agency restrictions such as marriage or age, no additional costly agency fees, flexibility for gender and race preferences, and you will have the option for an open adoption which gives you more access to the child’s medical history. Cons of doing a private adoption can include unknown processing time and you will have to do some self-networking to find an expecting mother who feels you are an appropriate fit.
Every avenue of adoption has its own complications. While the unknown time frame of private adoption can be a challenge, the freedom to work with any expecting mother can open a lot of doors. Often, parent(s) seeking to adopt have told their close friends and family and sometimes a connection can be made to an expecting mother through their own circle which can streamline the process and speed it up.
Choosing which avenue of adoption is best for you and your family can be tricky. There are a lot of factors to consider. If you would like to learn more about private adoption, be sure to check out my most recent video. Join me next week as we dive into Part 4 of this series: embryo adoption.