My Adoption Agencies

While the majority of people that choose to adopt a baby will do so through an adoption agency that will connect the adoptive parents with a birthmother, there are families that wish to find the birthmother on their own.  These families may desire to take a more active role in the search process or to speed up the process a bit since agencies often have very tightly controlled procedures and processes that must be followed by adoptive families.

There are many ways in which families can locate birthmothers and each has some advantages and disadvantage that must be considered.  These can include:

Websites – in the internet age that we live in, many people who wish to adopt are turning to the web in order to find a birthmother. Some families choose to create their own personal website showing their desire to adopt.  This can be a fairly low cost option, especially for those who get free website space along with their internet service.

However, in order to get the most exposure possible, they often go with a professional, networking site that is already set up.  There are many sites that exist to cover the topic of adoption and to help connect adoptive families and birthmothers.  However, depending on the site, there can be monthly fees charged to adoptive parents in order to have a profile on the site (the sites are usually free for birthmothers).   Two sites that we found in our research that may be helpful to start with include to locate a birthmother specifically include:

• Parent Profiles - this site allows adoptive families to create a personal profile and message that can then be viewed by birthparents that are considering adoption.  This profile can become almost an online scrapbook of the adoptive family, including basic details of the family, pictures, journaling sections from each potential parent, information about the extended family, etc.  This site charges $99 and up per month for the profile depending on listing options chosen.
  
  
• Adoption Networking - this is a site that connects with the ParentsProfile site and allows a family to send email messages to all of their friends, family and contacts informing them of their desire to adopt and asking for their assistance in locating a birthmother that may be considering adoption.  The family can ask all the people that receive the message to also forward it to everyone that they know, so that suddenly hundreds of people may know of the family’s desire to adopt and the network of potential contacts grows quickly.

Families who choose to create their own personal adoption search website or even those who have not taken that step can also just simply send an email message to their friends and family to begin the networking process.  In this case, it would be important to include information that is similar to what would be available on a profile site including a personal message to potential birthmothers, a section about yourselves and your family, your living situation and lifestyle, and include pictures of yourself and any siblings in the home.

• Newspaper Ads – this type of search was once one of the most common ways that adoptive families began their search, but is becoming less common as more people are turning to the internet in order to broaden their search.  However, for adoptive parents that wish to adopt in a particular geographic area or target a specific type of birthmother, newspaper/classified ads can be utilized.  Depending on the publication and length, each ad will generally run a few hundred dollars.
  
• Talking to Others You Know – in addition to networking emails/websites that are described above, families wishing to adopt can also make sure that they talk to everyone that they know or come in contact with to share their desire to adopt.  This can include a priest/pastor, doctors, or other professionals that may come in contact with women that are pregnant and considering adoption.  This option obviously doesn’t cost any money, but can be a more slow way of finding a birthmother and some adoptive families may not be comfortable sharing their desire to adopt with others during the early stages of the search process.
  
• Hiring a Lawyers or Facilitators – families can also choose to engage the services of a professional, such as lawyer or facilitator (an unlicensed person who charges a fee to make connections) that specializes in adoptions and in connecting birthmothers to families.  The lawyer or facilitator can then help in the search process and do screening for the family.  This option will be much more expensive than the internet or personal networking, but may result in a quicker match for families that can afford it.

As you can see there are many options, in addition to an agency, for those families that wish to find their own birthmother and take a more active role in the process.  There are costs, as well as advantages and disadvantages involved with each that an adoptive couple should consider as they begin their journey toward starting or expanding their family.