Why Vietnam?

As promised, we are going to try to explain what has led us to our decision to adopt from Vietnam. One question that I have heard quite a bit is "Why Vietnam? Aren't there children in the United States that need homes?"

There are actually a lot of factors that contributed to our decison. After a lot of resaerch it was clear to us that there were big differences between domestic and international adoption processes. Different aspects of the different programs are both appealing and unappealing and there is no process that is clearly the best. However, ultimately the factors below are the ones that we gave the most weight to.

First, we know people that have had wonderful experiences with international adoptions. So, we naturally thought of international adoption as an exciting option.

While it is true that there are children in the U.S. that also need homes, the processes for domestic adoption are very different from the processes for international adoption. From what we have read, domestic adoption typically is done through (i) participation in the foster care process as foster parents, (ii) through a domestic agency process (which involves working with an agency to create a profile that birth mothers can look at to find the couple they choose to parent their child), or (iii) independent adoption (which is not legal in all states, and involves prospective parents activly finding a birth mother by placing ads or rely on networks of friends or others to find a birth mother). While we have heard some great stories of successful domestic adoptions, we have also heard many stories of situations that did not work out. Many birth mothers change their minds within the legal time frames allowed, and many of the laws dealing with foster care seem to favor reunification with biological parents. (see How to Adopt Internationally by Jean Nelson Erichsen and Heino R. Erichsen for stats) According to our research, many of these legal issues are not common in the international adoption process. In addition, couples do not have to worry about being chosen by a birth mother that may be looking for certain qualities. Instead, prospective parents go through a intense process to prove to the government that they are fit to parent, but once they show that fitness they are often entered into a queue of qualified parents and matched with children as they become available for adoption.

There are many international adoption programs. We researched China, Korea, Guatemala, Russia... However, each country has its own requirements and there are many programs that we do not qualify for. For example, Korea requires a longer marriage than 2 years and China requires that we both be 30 (Martine is still 29).

We are fascinated with Vietnam, its culture and traditions! We feel that we will be able to give a Vietnamese child a home and family, share our traditions with that child and also promote education and participation in Vietnamese culture. TheVietnamese babies are adorable, and babies have been adopted from Vietnam at younger ages than in some other countries.

The Vietnamese program was recently reopened (when the U.S. goverment and the Vietnamese goverment signed an agreement in 2005) after years of being closed for reform. Due to the fact that the reformed process is so new, we have a lot of uncertainties about timelines and issues we may encounter. From what we have read, babies in Vietnam are often given up for adoption, because of stigma associated with single motherhood in Vietnam or due to economic pressures. We have spent a lot of time thinking about how our decision to adopt fits into a more global context and wondering how Vietnamese people view adoption by foreigners (a topic for a future post).

The decision to adopt from Vietnam was not one that we took lightly. We read a lot of books and asked a lot of questions. Ultimately, different adoption options will appeal to different people, and Vietnam appealed to us. We are excited about our choice!