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More Knoxville Magazine - June/July 2009

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It's difficult enough to wait nine months for the arrival of a biological child, but what if you had to wait for two, three, or even four years to finalize the adoption of a foreign-born baby? This is the frustrating position in which many prospective adoptive parents are finding themselves these days. According to a U.S. News posting on November 17, 2008, foreign adoptions by American parents dropped 12 percent last year-to 17,438 in 2008 as compared to a high of 22,884 in 2004. Reasons include delays in referral, escalating expenses, and restrictions whose meaning sometimes seems to have been lost in translation. But that doesn't stop Knoxvillians from pursuing their dreams to add another child to their families.

Harmony Adoptions of Tennessee, Inc., is a home study agency that works with the Chinese Children Adoption Agency (CCAA) and The Great Wall of China Agency to place Chinese children with Tennessee families. Pam Frye, Harmony's Adoption Services Director, says she has several Knoxville families who were approved to adopt Chinese children in December of 2005 and January of 2006 but are still waiting for actual placement because of current restrictions. The wait seems excessive when five years ago, parents faced an average of two years from the time of applications to placement. And as Chinese adoption guidelines become more complicated and restrictive, costs have also risen appreciably.

For example, Frye reports that what CCAA calls the "orphan donation" has risen from $3,000 to $5,000 in the past few years, and the average total cost of a Chinese adoption has jumped from about $17,000 in 2005 to a present total of between $22,000 to $25,000. CCAA's message, Frye says, is that China has more dossiers for adoption than they have "paper-ready" children whose credentials have been documented. And Mary Harmon of the Tennessee Department of Children's Services says that since adoptions have slowed down in China and Russia, costs can be as high as $30,000 to $40,000.

Long before their marriage in 1993, Cindy Whaley, an English teacher at Harriman High School, and her husband, Chris, who is Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Roane State Community College, talked about one day adopting a child who needed a home. Although the couple has a biological son, Christopher, 9, Cindy says she felt that the family was still not quite "complete." So in 2006, the couple started paperwork to adopt a baby girl through Families of Chinese Children. "We decided on China," says Cindy, "because that way, we knew the birth mother would not try to reclaim her child."

Although their paperwork was less complicated than expected because they resided in the Tennessee county in which both were born-thus making records easily available-the Whaleys' application process still took ten months. At that point, they were told that their wait would be six to nine months from the time of approval to the actual referral, but then, their group was one of the first to be affected by the slowdown of placements. "Six to nine months" turned into an agonizing twenty-three-month wait, sustained, says Cindy, by prayer and patience. Cindy also frequently consulted a web site, Chinaadopttalk.com, where a so-called "Rumor Queen" posts unofficial international adoption developments and attracts approximately 9,825 U.S. citizens monthly, most of them women. At last, on January 21, 2008, with son Jonathan and his grandmother watching at home on Skype, the Whaleys met their Chinese daughter, whom they named Tori.

Pam Frye reports a huge increase in the number of families wanting to adopt from China, but the Chinese government cites a decrease in available children as well as an increase in adoptions by Chinese citizens. Other factors could include a sex imbalance resulting from the one-child policy of the 1980s, and more young women who would have been prospective mothers leaving the countryside to live in the cities. In addition, the devastating earthquake that occurred in Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008, killed over 69,000 people, many of them children whose schools collapsed because of faulty construction. As a result, The Center Adoption Policy newsletter for May 2009 reports that many Chinese orphans are being adopted by parents who lost children in the quake.

Political and economic tensions between China and the United States could also account for new restrictions effective May 1, 2009. A CNBC report claims that between 1989 and 2005, 48,504 children were adopted by U.S. parents. In 2004, says Pam Frye, 7,038 Chinese children were adopted by Americans, but that number dropped to 3,911 by 2008.

Why? China is making it harder to adopt its children, even though the Chinese government reports that at least half a million children, and possibly more, live in orphanages there. Although China previously allowed single parents to adopt, that option has been eliminated. So has the equation allowing prospective couples' ages to total 100 years between them regardless of their individual ages. Now, according to Families Thru International Adoption, Inc., couples must each be between the ages of 30-50 and must have been married for at least two years. Furthermore, applicants may not be obese, take medication for psychiatric conditions including depression or anxiety, or-strangest of all-have a severe facial deformity.

New restrictions have also popped up in other countries. Recently, says an NBC news report, Russian adoptions slowed down exponentially when the commission responsible for accrediting adoption agencies was temporarily shuttered during an overhaul of ministries and a report that said Russian officials complained that "Western-funded" agencies were meddling in Russian politics. But when thousands of American families hoping to adopt Russian children took out a newspaper ad appealing to the government, the accreditation process was resumed. However, of the 260,000 children potentially eligible for adoption, only about 15,000 are placed each year. And in Russia, child welfare agencies now offer a stipend to relatives who will take care of abandoned children, a program that, says the Center for Adoption Policy, accounts for more than 2,000 children who might otherwise have ended up in orphanages.

But Knoxvillians Jim and Muffet Buckner, presently waiting for referral on a second Russian adoption, had to jump through their own hoops after being blindsided when Bethany Christian Services, a local home study agency, refused to write the Buckner's home study because of speculative political reasons with Frank Adoption Center, the adoption agency they wanted to use. What's questionable is why Bethany participated in the Buckner's first adoption with Frank. The delay caused an expiration of the Buckner's dossier forcing them to begin at square one. So with the help of Carolyn Kiser of the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, they are now waiting for a referral at any time. "Some people carry their babies for nine months," says Muffet. "I spend nine months or more completeing a very complex dossier of documentation and then months just wondering and waiting when we'll see our child." The couple's first adopted daughter, Brooke, now eight, became a member of their family on a historic date - 9/11/01. "We arrived in Moscow as the World Trade Center twin towers were falling," says Muffet. "This time we are looking to adopt a toddler closer to Brooke's age, probably two or three years old," she says. "I want her to have the sibling experience."

Mary Harmon, Executive Director of Adoption Consultants in Tennessee, cites a number of international changes that will also affect foreign adoption. "Vietnamese, Guatamalan, and Ethiopian adoption is currently closed to Americans because of our government's intention to control child trafficking," says Harmon. "These countries cannot meet the Hague Convention requirements because they are not controlled by central oversight. The Hague Convention was established for the protection of children on "jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition, enforcement and co-operation in respect of parental responsibility and measures for the protection of children." Now, an inter-country adoption is subject to new Hague Convention adoption rules for adoptions occurring on or after April 1, 2008. However, Brazil, which is not signatory to the Hague Convention, has now become a popular adoption source through their churches, which donate labor to build sanitary places for orphans or children whose parents are unable to care for them."

Whether current restrictions will be relaxed or new sources for adoption will be found, Muffet Buckner says,"It's a labor of love and not for the faint of heart. It's a lot of faith and trust because so much is out of your control, but it will happen when it's supposed to happen."