adopting a child from overseas

[toni]

Hi, Is there any british people living here in France, who have adopted a child from overseas?

I would love to hear about the experiences you had.

[LEO]

[quote user="toni"]

Hi, Is there any british people living here in France, who have adopted a child from overseas?

I would love to hear about the experiences you had.

[/quote]

Surely, this topic is inappropriate to discuss on an open internet forum with complete strangers!

Leo

[Russethouse]

Why ?

The road to adoption is long and fraught, why do you think discussion is inappropriate here?

[Patf]

Our son and his wife are in the process of adopting in India. But they live and work there. It's a very lengthy procedure, especially if you want to get british passports for them. The daughter of a cousin of mine did the same thing. They are Canadian citizens and after about 8 years managed to get passports to return to Canada. If you want more info you can pm me. Pat.

[Maureen Clark]

Hello Patf, I actually answered (sort of)your post in another thread concerning this, but please feel free to email me if you'd like any help. I am at present living in India (where I believe your son is trying to adopt from) and may be able to help with some information.

[Will]

This site gives the French legal position (in English)

http://www.notaires.fr/notaires/notaires.nsf/V_TC_PUB/ENGLISH-ADOPTION

[Tony F Dordogne]

Why adopt from abroad when there are plenty of children needings adoption in the UK and France?

[woolybanana (ex tag)]

My answer is going to be cruel and nasty and will get me assassinated on a dark night. But having seen a bit of adoption from the so called Third World, I think that people don't attempt to adopt closer to home because it is somehow less worthy.

(I will now retire to an underground as the bullets start to fly)

[Maureen Clark]

[:)] Oh I dont think youwill have to retire underground woolybanana, it's an opinion and a worthy one.  In my heart, after working for many years in India, I think people turn to third world countries because adoptions are made so very difficult and very lengthy for them in their home countries -at  least that's the opinion I've got from a few people.  I dont think it's a good idea anyways to adopt from a third world country out of feeling sorry for the children there - not a great idea, as feelings change.  The only reason I feel for anyone to adopt a child is if they want a child to make their lives whole, believe in their hearts that they think they will REALLY be able to love another's child and not resent them and inform them it's because they are not your own, for something they have done, in the future (Oh god, that one happens a lot)  and understand what having someone else's child formpart of their family really means.  It's no easy task and things can turn out very badly unless you are adopting for the right reasons - perhaps that's why the procedures are so lengthy in western countries - and so many are eventually refused out of not being suitable (though those words are not used when would be adoptive parents are informed)...perhaps after psychological tests are performed with the full medical they have to undergo.  So many adoptions turn out to be terrible decisions and the child is the one that suffers for the rest of it's life...being rejected twice is something!

 

p.s. if you find a nice dark place underground, please let me have the address, I may want to rent it from you in the future when my own bullets start to fly![;-)]

[Tony F Dordogne]

Maureen, that is one of the saddest messages I've seen for a long time.

People adopting children from developing countries because it's easier to do so, less beaurocratic and because the potential adoptive parents can somehow circumvent the more stringent rules applied in their country of domicile if they want to adopt?  To me, if people do that, the adoption case should be made the subject of the same investigations & tests when the child from the developed world returns with the adoptive parents, perhaps that's one of the reasons the various checks and balances are in place in the UK and France, to stop children being rejected twice. 

If avoidance/ease of adoption is the case, I think that I can see why they weren't allowed to adopt in the first place, I often get the feeling - from seeing these cases on the tele - that this procedure is about what the adults, rather than the children, want. There is no God given right to either conceive a child or to adopt one, it's not life threatening not to have children and whilst I understand the psychological drive for women to have kids, why should the State fund IVF and similar treatments when there are so many life threatening conditions where the research is so grossly underfunded?

I've never understood why people get so obsessed with having children, though I do understand the emotional drive for women to do so but when you see their husbands swept up in this need to conceive, it really makes me feel uneasy.  And as for children making a life whole, I just can't understand that idea at all, for me that's a mental construct used by people to justify their actions about conception and adoption.

By the way, I've got three of my own and two step children! 

Move over woolyb, think I need to join you. 

[woolybanana (ex tag)]

Nobody seems to have mentioned the little boy in this case either, just, apparently, politicians warming up their knives over his body.

His name is DAVID and you could destroy him you fools.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=473370&in_page_id=1773