During this time, one girl said, "We hope that Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Johnson would be able to raise the funds to... buy? ... a baby...?" I almost burst out laughing- you could hear the indecision and confusion in her voice, and of course that's not what's happening, but how else would a person phrase it? In the moment, I totally understood why she didn't know what to call it, and I was still unfamiliar with a lot of the jargon, and unsure where exactly all of the money went.
One of the most commonly asked questions is WHY it costs so much- and it always bring me back to this "buy? a? baby?" moment. Here's a rough breakdown and some explanations, for everyone that's curious. This is specifically in regards to international adoption as I'm learning about it- domestic adoption is along the same lines in terms of cost, but the fees can be different.
1. You are not "buying" a child, you're paying for the process. Money is not going to the birth parent in exchange for his/her baby- that's child trafficking. No, no, no.
2. The expenses add up really quickly. In the last few weeks, we have paid for passports, three sets of fingerprints each, processing for FBI, state (both CA and OR), local, and Child Abuse Registry background checks, plus postage for these documents. Just those add up to around $500- and they're not usually included in agency expense breakdowns. There are more coming, too- that's just so far.
3. A lot of time and effort goes into every.single.scrap.of. information. We have been in contact with so many different people at both agencies (our Oregon home study agency and our placing agency, based out of Minnesota) that are invested in one portion of the legal steps for adoption- the $500, $350, $250 bills for application reading, reviewing, and processing are not out of the question. If it took me somewhere around 10 hours (give or take) to write just the personal profile, imagine how much time it takes the people reading that for both me and Paul. Yikes.
4. There are a lot of legal requirements, and they cost money. Post-placement supervision, program coordination, post-placement reports- these are all required by law to ensure that the family is prepared, placed with the right child, and not alone after the child comes home. I haven't gone through this before, but I'm guessing they're laws for a reason- it's a difficult process, and someone needs to help the parents while also ensuring that the child is safe. These are in the thousands-of-dollars range. Each.
5. The US isn't the only country involved. There are in-country fees so their government can process the dossier (your personal profiles) and pay for the care of the child until we come to bring them home. These fees total almost $20k for the Marshall Islands side of this. Part of that pays for our baby's foster care (which we're happy to do because it means they're not languishing in an orphanage, which can often be the case), but the other part is similar to how we (the US) break down our fees- the numbers just look bigger since we send all of the payments at once.
6. Obviously we wish it cost less, but the numbers make sense. I also believe that if more families adopted, the prices of parts of this would go down, because governments would be able to devote more people to adoption-related jobs, thus streamlining the process even more. That's just my guess, though.
That's just a little overview. This isn't meant to be disheartening, only enlightening. There is no cheap way to bring a baby home (as any parent can tell you) and we're excited to see how the funds for each step come in.
Updates:
NEW FUNDRAISERS!!!!
The next blog post will be more in-depth, but two new fundraisers are here that you can participate in NOW!
1- Just Love Coffee Roasters. This is a great organization specifically designed for adopting families to sign up, create a storefront, and then earn a portion of the proceeds from every purchase. For every coffee bag purchase, we earn $5! (And they're only $10 to begin with! Yay!) It's really, really that simple, and the coffee is de-lish. There's also non-coffee related paraphernalia, for those people that aren't into coffee (?). Here's the link for our storefront. If you're comfortable sharing this link, every little bit helps. Thank you!
2- We signed up as Amazon Associates, so if you click the link on our page in order to get to Amazon, we'll get 10% of the purchase price. Seriously, that's it. Go to Amazon through our site, and we get money for it. I'm lookin' at you, Erik. Click here to buy through our associates account. I'm working on making this easier to access without looking terrible.
Other updates- We think we're done with the paperwork (cross those fingers!), and we're working on ed hours. Yay! Thanks for all your love and support.
The next blog post will be more in-depth, but two new fundraisers are here that you can participate in NOW!
1- Just Love Coffee Roasters. This is a great organization specifically designed for adopting families to sign up, create a storefront, and then earn a portion of the proceeds from every purchase. For every coffee bag purchase, we earn $5! (And they're only $10 to begin with! Yay!) It's really, really that simple, and the coffee is de-lish. There's also non-coffee related paraphernalia, for those people that aren't into coffee (?). Here's the link for our storefront. If you're comfortable sharing this link, every little bit helps. Thank you!
2- We signed up as Amazon Associates, so if you click the link on our page in order to get to Amazon, we'll get 10% of the purchase price. Seriously, that's it. Go to Amazon through our site, and we get money for it. I'm lookin' at you, Erik. Click here to buy through our associates account. I'm working on making this easier to access without looking terrible.
Other updates- We think we're done with the paperwork (cross those fingers!), and we're working on ed hours. Yay! Thanks for all your love and support.
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