Adoption is a complex topic that affects all members of the adoption triad. These blogs offer insight, advice and support for all involved.
A mom through birth and adoption, offers an honest look into all the complicated pieces of raising adopted children. Infused with fun lifestyle and travel posts, readers will fall in love with her natural writing style.
Lifetime Adoption
If you’re considering adoption for your child, it can be helpful to join an adoption support group. However, be careful to avoid groups that advocate illegal adoption practices. You’ll also want to find a group that encourages ethical practices and educates members about legal adoption.
Adoption is a life-changing process that can cause a lot of confusion and anxiety. The best way to get answers to your questions is to talk with a Lifetime coordinator. These women are experts at what they do and will help you understand all of your options.
All Lifetime families go through a thorough investigation called a home study. This includes background checks, medical evaluations, financial assessments, home inspections and more. If you are not sure about the adoptive family’s profile, your coordinator can send you additional information about them and even videos.
Lifetime’s goal is to assist birth parents and adoptive families nationwide in completing positive open adoptions. Their services include counseling and education for both parties, helping with transferring medical records and arranging for a smooth hospital discharge plan. Lifetime also helps with financing by providing referrals to organizations offering adoption loans, grants and scholarships. This is often a much better option than borrowing money from friends and relatives because it involves no interest payments.
Adoption & Beyond
The adoption journey is a long and arduous one for all involved. An expecting mother must make a brave and heart-wrenching decision to trust the well-being of her child with a family she has only just met, while an adoptive family may have been waiting years for their new addition.
Adoption & Beyond is dedicated to building meaningful relationships by educating, guiding and advocating for all touched by adoption. This includes addressing incorrect and dominant adoption narratives by challenging them with truth and encouraging families to educate extended family, friends and those in their circles.
This discussion blog can also help those considering adoption and foster care by providing advice, tips and success stories. For those who are already on the path, this site can serve as a place to discuss adoption challenges and find support from others in similar situations. For example, this blog hosts an adoption discussion group for parents raising kids adopted from foster care. The free monthly support group is facilitated by a Barker staff social worker and is open to adoptive and foster parents.
Ripped Jeans & Bifocals
Jill Robbins writes about adoption, motherhood and midlife on her Ripped Jeans & Bifocals blog. A wannabe wine snob and sometimes runner, she has a degree in social psychology that she uses to try to make sense of her husband and three children. Her dry humor and openness have made her a hit with moms everywhere. She’s been featured on Huffington Post, Blunt Moms Babble and Mamalode. She also was a 2015 cast member of Listen to Your Mother, Austin.
Ripped Jeans & Bifocals is an adoption discussion blog that provides support and inspiration to adoptive families of all shapes and sizes. It covers everything from family travel to navigating life after international adoption. Its uplifting posts will leave you feeling refreshed and ready to tackle your own parenting journey. Other popular adoption discussion blogs include Adoptive Black Mom, by a single professional woman who pursued motherhood alone at age 40 by adopting her tween daughter; and Rage Against the Minivan, by marriage and family therapist Kristen Howerton. Both have great craft ideas, recipes and lifestyle posts that will appeal to parents who want to read more than just a parenting blog. They both have a fresh, friendly style that will keep you coming back for more.
Tiny Green Elephants
If you buy a Green Elephant to represent yourself, your loved ones or someone else, you’ll also help support WWF’s global conservation efforts.
Elephants are essential to our planet’s ecosystems and play a crucial role in maintaining habitat, acting as engineers of biodiversity. Their trunks – a fusion of their nose and upper lip with a single, prehensile finger on the end – contain no bones and are made up of 150,000 tiny muscles, blood and lymph vessels, nerves, little fat, connective tissue, skin and bristles.
As herbivores, elephants require huge quantities of vegetation every day to survive. But as the climate changes, their food sources are becoming scarce. And without adequate nutrition, elephants are less likely to disperse tree seeds — a vicious cycle that can have catastrophic consequences.
Many elephants are harmed by poachers, or killed in retaliation for raiding farmland. We must work together as individuals, support networks and governments to protect elephants from these threats. Preserving natural habitat and wild spaces must be a priority, as well as combatting elephant tourism, which is often associated with animal cruelty.
Rage Against the Minivan
Written by a marriage and family therapist and mom to four kids in under four years through both birth and adoption, Kristen has been writing Rage Against the Minivan since 2006. A longtime contributor to online humor destinations like Quiet Revolution, Pinterest You Are Drunk and the popular instagram account #assholeparents, she doesn’t shy away from sharing her parenting struggles, toddler tantrums, and teen angst.
This blog focuses on the rewarding, challenging and complex elements of adoption, including transracial, foster care and open adoption. The author’s adopted tween daughter also writes posts from an adoptee perspective, so readers will get more than just a mom-centric view of life with children through adoption.
Jill Robbins is a mom through both birth and adoption and shares an honest look at the complicated aspects of her family life on her site. With an infectious sense of humor and authenticity, her stories about life with her two birth children and two adopted children will resonate with readers seeking strength, validation and community. Her writing is infused with fun lifestyle and travel posts, making it more than just an adoption discussion blog.
Tricia Goyer
Tricia Goyer is a USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction and nonfiction books related to marriage, family and parenting. Her stories portray strong women overcoming many challenges and recreate historic wartime periods with accuracy through extensive research. Goyer is also the acclaimed author of several Amish fiction series, including Big Sky and Seven Brides for Seven Bachelors. She has won a Carol Award twice and been nominated for both the ECPA and Christy awards.
In her latest book, Heart Happy, Goyer offers advice for staying centered in God’s love through chaotic circumstances. As a homeschooling mom of ten children and a volunteer in her community, Goyer understands the pressures that come with being pulled in different directions. In this episode, she shares her secrets for coping with the stress and chaos that comes from a busy lifestyle.
Tricia also shares her experience with teen motherhood and how she’s been using her gift of writing to uplift young mothers. If you’re considering adoption or know someone who is, this podcast will encourage you to follow God’s calling. And if you’re not, you can bless a family this Christmas by offering support and prayers. Thanks for listening!
Adoption & Foster Care
Adoption and foster care are a great way to add children to your family and make a difference in the lives of those who need it most. Both involve a lifetime commitment to love and provide for a child who has been through life-changing trauma and loss. Many of the same rules that apply to foster parenting also apply to adoption, but the main difference is that with adoption a child becomes a permanent member of your family, which means they have full legal rights and can’t be returned to their birth parents.
When a child enters foster care, their parental rights are typically managed by the state and remain intact, until they are adopted or otherwise exited the system. With adoption, a child’s legal guardian will become the parent of the child, giving them full rights to make decisions for their care and well-being.
Both adoption and foster care are incredibly rewarding experiences. There are no specific qualifications for anyone who wants to be a foster or adoptive parent, and in most states you don’t need to own your own home, have children already, or be wealthy to be considered. You must pass background checks and complete caregiver/parent trainings. Most states offer financial support to help with the costs of raising a child.