Adoption options in Canada…
I think it is safe to say that options available to Canadians wanting to adopt have gone through many cycles over the years and decades. It wasn’t all that long ago (less than 20 years) when China allowed no international adoptions at all. On the IA front, programs have opened and closed and sometimes even reopened again. Some programs have faded away quietly and some are growing in popularity. Domestically the number of private adoption opportunities remains small and CAS adoptions present their own unique challenges.
I think right at this instant we are at a point in the cycle where options are more limited than they have been in the past. Certainly there was a period not that long ago where China seemed to offer the perfect situation. Relatively healthy young children, and a smooth, predictable and relatively quick process. Those days are gone, but I still think there are options available to parents with a desire to adopt.
What I also believe is that pursuing an adoption is much harder now and is a journey that should not be embarked upon lightly or without a lot of hard thinking and a true understanding of what the journey could look like. I suppose this is one of the reasons I started writing the thoughts that turned into my “hard thinking series” and ultimately why I started this blog and the accompanying forum.