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" \u2022 Adoptive Families (adoptivefamilies.com), 646-366-0830. This award-winning magazine has a Website chock-full of resources on adoption and publishes an annual Adoption Guide. \u2022 Adoption Learning Partners (adoptionlearningpartners.org), 800-566-3995. Check out this educational program, sponsored by the respected Illinois agency The Cradle, to find regular online classes on all aspects of adoption. \u2022 Ethica (ethicanet.org), 301-650-0649. This nonprofit organization advocates for ethical adoptions worldwide and provides information on choosing a reputable agency. The group can even help you weigh some of the conflicting information you may hear \u2014 for example, headlines about scandals involving adoption procedures in other countries.  \u2022 Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute (adoptioninstitute.org), 212-925-4089. Turn to this leading adoption research, policy, education, and advocacy organization for a wealth of publications and other resources that can help you learn more about a wide range of issues, from the way different types of prenatal drug and alcohol exposure affect child development to how international adoptees feel about being adopted. \u2022 Joint Council on International Children&amp;#039;s Services (jcics.org), 703-535-8045. This large association represents international adoption agencies, child advocacy groups, parent support groups, and medical clinics. The group provides country-by-country information on adoption policies, guidance on how the international adoption process works, and regular breaking-news updates on the often rapidly changing environment surrounding international adoptions. \u2022 Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today&amp;#039;s Parents, by Deborah D. Gray. Written by an experienced social worker, this detailed guide provides an in-depth look at how families and children adjust to adoption, with information on cross-cultural and interracial adoption, developmental delays, and other issues. \u2022 Does Anybody Else Look Like Me? A Parent&amp;#039;s Guide to Raising Multiracial Children, by Donna Jackson Nakazawa. Based on interviews with more than 60 multiracial families, this book offers real-world strategies for dealing with the situations you&amp;#039;ll confront and the questions you&amp;#039;ll hear as your children grow. \u2022 The Open Adoption Experience: A Complete Guide for Adoptive and Birth Families, by Lois Ruskai Melina. Read this insightful, authoritative book from a leading expert in the field to learn about the realities of open adoption. \u2022 Real Parents, Real Children: Parenting the Adopted Child, by Holly van Gulden and Lisa M. Bartels-Rabb. This book covers everything from early bonding to issues of grief and loss, as well as questions that come up when your child goes to school (such as &amp;quot;draw a family tree&amp;quot;) and adoption issues in adulthood. --Gina Shaw More and more people are looking abroad to build their families: International adoptions by U.S. citizens have more than doubled in recent years. And that includes a number of celebrities, from Angelina Jolie to Madonna to Meg Ryan. Could they be part of the reason behind foreign adoption&amp;#039;s surge in popularity? &amp;quot;Maybe some people adopt children from abroad because they weren&amp;#039;t aware of it as a possibility before, and this is how they learned about it \u2014 and I think that&amp;#039;s a positive, especially as opposed to generations past when people whispered about adoption,&amp;quot; says Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. &amp;quot;Now it&amp;#039;s okay, even something to be proud of.&amp;quot; If international adoption appeals to you, then your first step \u2014 after deciding which country you&amp;#039;d like to adopt from \u2014 is to file a petition for approval to adopt a foreign child. This rigorous process includes getting references, having home visits by a social worker \u2014 even being fingerprinted. You&amp;#039;ll file the petition with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and approval can take anywhere from a few months to more than a year. (To find the USCIS office nearest you, call 800-375-5283.) Once you&amp;#039;ve been approved, you&amp;#039;ll have to satisfy the requirements of the country you want to adopt from; because adoption procedures can change quickly, visit the State Department&amp;#039;s Website (travel.state.gov) for up-to-date news and guidelines for individual countries. In the meantime, here&amp;#039;s a glimpse at what it&amp;#039;s like to adopt from the five countries prospective American parents turn to most. China More than a quarter of all foreign children now adopted by Americans are Chinese, and close to 6,500 became a part of U.S. families in 2006. That said, stricter regulations that took effect in May 2007 will make the process tougher \u2014 and many experts expect adoption from China to drop as a result. For example, adoption is now limited to heterosexual couples who&amp;#039;ve been married at least two years (five years if either applicant has ever been divorced), are between 30 and 50, and have a BMI (body mass index) of less than 40. Following the USCIS petition approval, as well as meeting China&amp;#039;s documentation requirements, experts estimate at least a two-year wait for a child from China. Guatemala In recent years, Guatemala has been the top Central American choice for adopters. And it&amp;#039;s no wonder: Single parents qualify, and 75 percent or more of children adopted there by overseas parents are less than a year old. But while more than 4,000 Guatemalan children came to the U.S. last year, that number is expected to plummet. The reason: Local authorities there don&amp;#039;t meet the standards of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions (the international standard for protecting adopted children from exploitation), so the U.S. government doesn&amp;#039;t currently recommend adoption from Guatemala. As a result, the USCIS has been rejecting new petitions to adopt from that country, and adoptions that are already under way are under additional scrutiny, which is expected to increase their processing time. Russia The fall of the USSR brought with it an openness to outsiders \u2014 including a willingness to let them adopt from its newly independent republics. More than 3,700 Russian children found homes with American parents in 2006, and two other former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, are also popular choices for foreign adoption. As in Guatemala, eligibility criteria, such as marital status, are fairly flexible, but Russia&amp;#039;s entry visa requirements for visiting parents are notoriously complicated, and the Russian Ministry of Education has complex guidelines for selecting children from orphanages and conducting adoption hearings. The average time for the adoption process (after USCIS approval) is six to 12 months. South Korea Since the 1950s, when biracial children of U.S. personnel were placed for adoption during and after the Korean War, more than 200,000 South Korean kids have been matched with families around the world, and Americans adopted close to 1,400 of that country&amp;#039;s children in 2006. As in China, single parents aren&amp;#039;t eligible to adopt, but on the whole, South Korea&amp;#039;s eligibility criteria are more inclusive than those of the now more restrictive Chinese. Following approval of the petition to adopt, the process takes five to six months on average. Ethiopia Home to a rising number of children orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Ethiopia has received a lot of attention from parents-to-be in recent years, partly because adoption time there (after USCIS approval) can take as little as six months. Lenient local authorities may help spur that popularity: The country prefers married, heterosexual couples over the age of 25, but its government has approved applicants who fall outside those parameters. More than 700 children were adopted by U.S. families from Ethiopia last year, up from 441 in 2005 and only 289 in 2004; experts expect the number to increase again this year. --Lauren Oster "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/advice/a2287/adoption-resources/>