Why Ethiopia?

After my post about the adoption process I was going through I received many emails. Some of the emails had some valid questions that I will address. Some of the emails were rather negative and honestly completely ridiculous and I will not be addressing those. I have emailed back privately to everyone that emailed me. But I'm a firm believer that if one person has a question so do many others so I'm choosing to address the questions here also... Here we go!

Why Ethiopia?

I made the choice to adopt from Ethiopia many years ago. I've always wanted to adopt and Ethiopia was the country that fit best for me. It is important to me to include my child's native culture in their daily life in my home. I felt like I could include the Ethiopian culture in a meaningful way into our lives. I feel a connection to the country, the history, the people. So the question for me was "Why Not Ethiopia"?

Why Don't You Adopt A Kid From Foster Care in The US?

This is a wonderful question and a topic I am passionate about! I work in the child welfare arena. In fact my job involves matching children in foster care with adoptive families and finalizing those adoptions. I am a firm believer that every child deserves a forever family. I encourage people often to adopt from foster care. With that said it is important to me to keep my personal life and my professional life as separate as possible. At this point in my life adopting a child from foster care doesn't fit for me. I would like to adopt an infant and that isn't very likely in foster care. I also know that I could not handle having a child placed with me, bonding with that child, and then having that child returned to a biological parent. I want to parent a child full-time.

Why Don't You Pursue A Domestic Private Adoption?

Again another great question! This is an option that I considered and researched in depth. There are many barriers for me to adopt as a single woman in the US. One barrier is that most children placed for adoption are placed by young single mothers. Those mothers have the right to pick the family their child goes to. When that young mother looks at profiles of a bunch of happily married couples and a profile of me an accomplished, dedicated, stable single woman the couples are gonna win out the majority of the time. I talked with four agencies about this and 3 of the agencies allowed single woman to adopt but had never had a single woman picked by a bio family. The other agency didn't even allow singles to be considered. So no luck there.

How Much Are You Spending To Buy A Baby?

I personally don't like this question. First I'm not buying a baby I'm financing an adoption. Second, children are priceless! And finally if you are that interested in the cost of international adoption I urge you to Google it and low and behold you will find a wealth of information to answer this question. As a side note adopting from Ethiopia is cheaper than adopting domestically.

Don't kids need a dad?

I think fathers are amazing! I'm a big fan of mine. I think that a father is an important part of every child's life and this is an issue I've put much thought and prayer into. As much as a child needs a father they also need love. When I'm prepared to offer a stable loving home environment now should I make a child in need wait until I find a husband. I think not. I think an orphan would rather have a family than not. If I find a husband someday that is great. If not I'm going to do the best I can on my own, have strong male role models in place, and be grateful God gave me the ability to be successful on my own.

Why Don't You Just Have Your Own?

Not a big fan of this question either. I have always had a strong desire to build my family through adoption. I have planned to adopt since I was a teenager and I've also planned to have biological children someday too. However, I have PCOS and that makes pregnancy difficult. As a single person I didn't want to go through all the infertility treatments, in-vitro, etc and still have no guarantee of a baby. The adoption process in Ethiopia in very predictable. I know I will come home with a baby. I don't know that I will through artificial insemination. And as a single woman that values herself enough I don't just have sex with random men. I have yet to find a man that I feel I would want to parent a child with. Therefore I'm not going to take the steps to get pregnant until I find the right person to parent with.

So that's a few of the questions I received. I hope that clears up some questions and provides some legitimate answers. If you have other questions feel free to leave them in the comments. I would encourage all of you to read the book There Is No Me Without You. And of course I would encourage you all to pursue whatever form of becoming a parent is right for you.

Jessie