Today, adoption empowers women to make all the decisions surrounding their child’s adoption. When you create an adoption plan with Lifetime, you’re in the driver’s seat, and that includes hand-picking your baby’s adoptive parents.
Some expectant mothers choose to look specifically for African American adoptive parents because they want their children to grow up in a community that reflects their race. Other women have expressed to us that they wish for their children’s parents to recognize the unique obstacles that Black children in America face. Most of the time, birth mothers who are African American themselves desire that their baby grow up in with parents who can better understand their racial identity.
Lifetime Adoption can help you find just the right African American adoptive parents for your baby. Lifetime works with many adoptive couples and single adoptive mothers who are eager to welcome a Black baby into their family.
Adoption Gives You Choices
Lifetime Adoption wants to make the adoption process as simple as possible for you. With today’s adoptions, you can decide everything in your adoption plan, including who your baby’s adoptive parents will be. Some birth parents feel strongly about the race of their child’s adoptive parents. If this is important to you, we can help you find a family that you’re comfortable with.
Recognizing the need to give birth mothers of color a wider choice of adoptive families, my staff uniquely created our sister site, African American Adoptions Online, 23 years ago. The site’s goal is to provide African American birth mothers the opportunity to find adoptive parents of their ethnicity.
Your Adoption Coordinator will answer all your questions and give you any necessary information. However, the decisions about your child’s adoption and future are really up to you. The three main choices you have with open adoption include:
- Your baby’s adoptive parents
- The type and amount of future contact you’d like to keep
- How things go in the hospital when it comes time for you to deliver
Your Baby’s Adoptive Parents
Your values about race are important to Lifetime Adoption. Of course, besides race, there may be some other preferences about the adoptive family you should consider:
- Do you want an adoptive family that lives in your state or your area?
- Do you want a stay-at-home parent for your child?
- Are you hoping to place your baby with a married couple, or are you also open to a single adoptive mother?
- Do you want to place your baby with an adoptive couple who already has a child?
- Are you open to a multi-racial family?
Using our Search Families page, you can effortlessly search for adoptive parents on Lifetime’s website. On this page, you can search based on qualities that are important to you, such as location, race, and family type. With the adoptive family videos on our site, you can really get to know Black couples looking to adopt. In their videos, these adoptive families share who they are, what they’re about, and their lives.
As you look at their websites and videos, consider what is most important to you. When you envision your child growing up with their adoptive parents, what do you see? Maybe you see them with a family pet they love or surrounded by brothers and sisters. You might imagine them playing in a big backyard in the suburbs or on a farm with livestock.
After you see an adoptive family you’re interested in, your Adoption Coordinator will connect you to them with a phone call. You will get the chance to ask them any questions you want. If you feel that they aren’t the right adoptive parents for your baby, that’s fine. Sometimes, it takes a while to find the right family.
Amount of Future Contact
If you choose to have an open adoption, you can decide the amount and type of contact you want to have with your child as they grow. All Lifetime families are ready and eager to have a future contact in an open adoption with you. With Lifetime, you can choose to stay in touch through things like:
- Letters and pictures
- Texting
- In-person visits
- Connecting via social media
- Phone calls
- And more!
Open adoptions are growing in popularity as birth parents want some level of future contact with their children. Researchers have found that birth mothers in an open adoption had lower levels of grief. Being able to see their child happy and thriving helps birth mothers process their grief better.
If you’re unsure about future contact, talk about it with your Adoption Coordinator. Be completely honest about what you want and what you think will be best for your child.
Your Hospital Experience
It’s common for women choosing adoption to worry about how things will go down at the hospital. The more you can prepare and plan, the more confident you will feel. That’s why at Lifetime, we encourage you to create what’s called an “adoption hospital plan.”
Your adoption hospital plan will allow the adoptive family, the hospital staff, and Lifetime to know how you want them to handle things during your hospital stay. Having your plan in place before you go into labor allows everyone (especially you!) to concentrate on the birth of your baby. To get started, you might ask yourself a few questions, like:
- Am I OK with the adoptive family I chose being present in the delivery room? Or should they stay in the waiting room?
- Do I want the adoptive family to take part in the birth process, and if so, how?
- Do I want to be admitted to the hospital confidentially or recover away from the maternity ward?
- Will my other child(ren) be at the hospital?
- Do I want any of my family members, close friends, or other people in my support system to be with me at the hospital?
African American Adoptive Parents – Lifetime Adoption
Choosing adoption is a difficult decision, but it’s a choice you make out of love for your baby. You want them to have the best life possible. No matter the race of your child or the race of their future parents, adoption is a way for you to know they will love, provide for, and cherish your child.
Lifetime Adoption is committed to helping you throughout the process. We’ll help you with every detail of your adoption, especially in the area of your racial preferences. We support your preferences on race and promise to work hard to make your adoption experience successful.
We will help you find the perfect adoptive family who is ready and excited to adopt an African American baby, and you can have peace of mind knowing a loving family is raising your child.
If you have any questions about how to find Black adoptive parents looking to adopt or any part of the adoption process, call or text Lifetime Adoption at 1-800-923-6784 to speak with an Adoption Coordinator. They’re here to help you start on the right path in the adoption process.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on August 27, 2021, and has since been updated.
As Vice President of Lifetime Adoption, Heather Featherston holds an MBA and is passionate about working with those facing adoption, pregnancy, and parenting issues. Heather has conducted training for birth parent advocates, spoken to professional groups, and has appeared on television and radio to discuss the multiple aspects of adoption. She has provided one-on-one support to women and hopeful adoptive parents working through adoption decisions.
Since 2002, she has been helping pregnant women and others in crisis to learn more about adoption. Heather also trains and speaks nationwide to pregnancy clinics to effectively meet the needs of women who want to explore adoption for their child. Today, she continues to address the concerns women have about adoption and supports the needs of women who choose adoption for their child.
As a published author of the book Called to Adoption, Featherston loves to see God’s hand at work every day as she helps children and families come together through adoption.
I would like to learn more about adopting an older African american child.
Hello Jerica,
Thank you for your interest in Lifetime’s adoption programs. We’d love to help you learn more! You can take the first step in your adoption research by calling Lifetime Adoption at 1-800-923-6784 to learn more.
I would like to learn more about adopting an new born or twins African America child.
Hi Tracy,
Thank you for reaching out to learn more about adopting with Lifetime! We encourage you to visit the Hoping to Adopt section of our website to learn more about our program. You can also call Lifetime Adoption at 1-800-923-6784 to speak with one our adoption professionals and get your questions about adopting answered.