Part IV: Your Criteria

We now arrive at the third major area of adoption criteria. These are the criteria that are brought into consideration by you, the adoptive applicants.

The flexibility you bring to adoption as to the type of child you are willing to consider will affect your chances of locating a child either through Sunny Ridge or through any other source. Your criteria includes issues such as: the age of the child; the nationality and/or race of the child; your ability and willingness to travel; your comfort level with openness with a birth family; your ability and willingness to parent a child with prenatal exposure to alcohol, drugs, or tobacco, or a handicap or genetic risk factors; and, finally, cost. 

In the domestic adoption program, your level of openness will also affect your chances of locating a child. Birth parents who don't choose an open relationship will often choose a couple who is willing to have openness, in order to keep their options open.