Adoption can be divided into two major categories based on the origin of the child being adopted: domestic and international. The two are different in many regards. Domestic adoption has a wait time of 1 to 12 months. Budget, substance usage, medical background, contact with birth parents, and the child’s race become factors affecting the period of wait time. A family’s adoption plan becomes a determining factor when it comes to international adoption, in addition to the country of origin. While adopting from Russia takes less than a year or so, adopting from China could take more than 4 years.
In terms of the number of the children available for adoption, domestic adoption expands continuously over the year. International domestic, on the other hand, drops quite significantly. Internationally adopted children usually come with minimal medical records. This is in contrast with domestic adoption, in which families are provided with complete medical records of the child as well as the birth parents’ social history make it possible for adoptive parents to decide whether to accept or deny the match by making all of the information available. But arguably the most important factor when it comes to the matter of choosing to adopt internationally or domestically is legal concerns.
Full and thorough research is required for hopeful parents to succeed in adopting internationally. Each country has its own set of legal mandates everyone wishing to adopt from its territory must meet. People would think that domestic adoption bears risks in the form of birth parents coming back and revoking their adoption consent. For this reason, many think that international adoption is much safer as it’s impossible for the birth parents to do anything. In actuality, however, once adoption is legalized and finalized, it is protected by the laws and the adoptive parents become the child’s family legally.