The Top 8 Things Successful Adoptive Parents Have in Common

Part 7

Today, we’re sharing part 7 in Lifetime Adoption’s new blog series, How to Be Successful in Domestic Infant Adoption. With this series, we hope to help you in learn how you can successfully adopt a baby with a shorter adoption wait!

If you’ve just started looking into infant adoption, you might be curious what it involves. Or, maybe you’re waiting for a birth mother to choose you and would like to speed things up. In either case, this blog series is for you! 

Here are the top 8 things that successful adoptive parents have in common:

1. Their home study is current
2. Profile has been completed
3. Adoption preferences are open
4. Don’t turn down an adoption opportunity which is inside their preferences
5. Have created an adoption video
6. Prioritize their adoption
7. Open to adopting a baby or child of either gender
8. Attend Lifetime’s webinars 

If you missed it, our last installment in this blog series was about the importance of prioritizing your adoption plans. Today, we’re sharing about item #7, why it’s beneficial to be open to adopting a baby or child of either gender.

Lifetime has experienced a number of birth mothers react negatively when they learn that an adoptive couple is only hoping to adopt a certain gender. They say things like, “You’re not able to pick the gender when you’re pregnant, so why should you if you’re adopting?”

Choosing the gender of your baby, deciding “girl only” or “boy only,” really lowers the amount of adoption situations you’re presented to. Many birth mothers don’t want to find out the gender of the baby they’re carrying.

Let’s look at an example: let’s say that half of the birth mothers Lifetime is talking to know what gender they’re having. Half don’t. Of half that know, 50% of those are having boys and the other 50% are having girls. Now, we’re down to 25% of the total adoption situations. You also have to take into account other adoption preferences, and whether or not these 25% would fit the additional preferences that you have (e.g. substance use, future contact, and race.) To sum it up, if an adoptive family is gender-specific, it could mean they’re only shown to fewer than 25% of Lifetime’s birth mothers!

Here’s the bottom line: it’s so important to ensure that your gender preferences are open enough for an adoption to be possible. 

Stay tuned for the final installment of this blog series How to Be Successful in Domestic Infant Adoption! We’ll be telling you about why it’s essential to attend Lifetime’s free adoption webinars.