It can be extremely overwhelming to get started on the process of adopting a child internationally. The hardest part of the process (aside from the wait!) is often just that... knowing where to start.

The first thing that one should do in starting the international adoption process is determine which country they would like to adopt from. Many parents already feel an innate calling to a specific country, perhaps because of their own heritage, or maybe because their community offers a lot of resources specific to that culture. If however you do not have an idea, a good place to begin is the Department of State. At the link below you can see the eligibility requirements for international adoption for each country, and a general idea of the process involved. In the vast majority of cases, it makes preferable to go with a country that has a clear-cut and well-established adoption program. The top 10 countries with the highest rate of successful adoptions by U.S. families are China, Guatemala, Russia, Ethiopia, South Korea, Vietnam, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, India, and Liberia. So it makes sense to begin by looking at those countries.

http://www.travel.state.gov/family/adoption/country/country_369.html

When looking at the countries for adoption purposes the first thing you want to look at is your eligibility. Countries can have very tight regulations severely eliminating who is eligible to adopt from them. Such requirements can include if one is married, length of marriage, age, how many children are already in the family, ages or sex of children in the family, religion, heritage, etc. These requirements will likely whittle the list down quite a bit. In my own adoption journey, it was surprising for us to find out how many countries a couple married for 8 years, ages 29 and 35 with both a son and daughter already in the family could NOT adopt from!

Once you know which countries you meet the general eligibility requirements for you there are still a number of things to consider. For practical purposes you will want to know if the country has a residency requirement, what the costs and adoption timeline are, and what the process is.

Residency Requirement refers to the length of time one has to be in-country to complete an adoption. In some cases, such as Korea and Ethiopia an adoption can be completed completely from the United States, and the child escorted to you. In other places, it will be required to travel to the country and remain for a certain period of time to complete the final portion of the adoption. This time can range from a few days to months, or longer in rare cases. However some countries with longer requirements have broken up the residency requirement allowing the adopting parent(s) to make 2 trips, rather than stay for the entire length of time required.

Adoption timeline and cost will vary greatly depending on the country you chose. For some countries timeline and cost will be consistent and for others it will depend on the agency (more on that below). But at this point you should be able to see the range of time and dollars that you are looking at committing to the process for any of the countries on your list.

Aside from the practical factors to consider there are a number of personal ones that you will want to take into account in making this decision. Is the countries culture one you are fully prepared to embrace? Do you feel equipped to take on the challenge of parenting a child with a different cultural background or racial identity? How much information is it important for you to be able to give your child regarding their first family? What medical issues are prevalent in children adopted from that region?

It is beyond important to ensure that you are choosing to adopt from a country with a culture that your family can embrace. This does not have to mean that you support all the morals or views prevalent within that society. What it does mean is that you should be able to provide your child a love and sense of pride for their homeland. Your child's homeland will always be an innate part of who they are. If the child feels negative about where they came from, this can often transfer onto how they feel about themselves. In the same way, if you feel negativity towards your child's homeland this will often pass to your child. A few good ways to establish your adopted child's birth culture within the family are through food, music, history, second language, and of course travel to the country. Consider from your list of countries, which of them has the ones which best fit your family. Is there one you have great travel memories of, where always drawn towards learning about in school? Another great way is through the local community. Use this decision making process to examine your local community. Does it have a population of people who would share your child's culture? Does it offer the chance to share the culture with your child through any of the above-mentioned ways?

Now is also a good time to be honest with yourself about your issues, those of your family and within your community, involving race. It can be a tremendous challenge and a tremendous blessing to raise a trans-racially adopted child. The temptation is to believe that if we are colorblind, that race will not matter or impact our children. However, studies and writings from adult-adoptees show that this is not from the case. From personal experience, I can tell you that as the white mother of a black child that you will be changed and impacted mightily by the decision to raise a child outside your race. In this process, you may find that while you are prepared to raise of a different race that your family is extremely opposed to the idea. Or you may find that you're your local community has prejudices that you had never before seen, or perhaps had just not been impacted by previously. You may be also pleasantly surprised to find just the opposite. But either way these are things that need to be looked at in-depth and you need to decide how you are going to deal with them before the child is involved.

A big myth about international adoption is that the child will not feel the same drive to connect with their first family as a domestically adopted one. Most adopted children whether adopted domestically or internationally will have a natural curiosity about their first family, their early life, and practical things like medical history. In the past very little of this information was given to internationally adopted children. However, more and more countries are choosing to provide as much of this information as possible. Some, such as Ethiopia are now even making it possible to have contact with your adopted child's first family. A good thing to do is to imagine what you will tell your child when they ask about their first family. Is it important for you to have as many answers as possible? Are you okay with helping your child work through many unknowns? This is a deeply personal decision as there are implications for your family either way. But weigh this decision heavily as it is one that your child will grapple with for the rest of their life.

Examining which medical issues your family believes they can take on is a good thing to do at this point as well. While any child from any place can experience a health issue, certain medical issues are more prevalent in certain countries. For example, children adopted from Russia have a much higher statistical probability of experiencing Fetal Alcohol Syndrome than children adopted for Kazakhstan. There are health benefits and drawbacks to many different programs, such as children from Ethiopia are statistically more likely to have suffered malnutrition but also generally spend the least amount of time in institutionalized care (a factor in development), so it is important to look at the whole and make an informed decision as to what your family can handle.

So by now, you've:

• Determined which counties you where eligible to adopt from.
• Examined the costs, timelines and residency requirements for each of those countries.
• Made a determination as which of the cultures many personal factors are the best fit for your family.

Hopefully this has helped you narrow your choices down to a specific country, or at least to a very short list.

From here I would suggest joining a Yahoo! Group at groups.yahoo.com that is specific to adoption from that country. There you will get excellent info from those who have "been there, done that" on things like agency selection and getting started.