I told another women thinking about adoption to take her time... do the research. For my first adoption, I researched about a year before deciding to adopt from Ukraine without an agency (indepedently).

There are few protections for adoptive families, which is why the best advise I can give to any family looking to adopt. Read, read and read some more.

For example Yunona in early 2006 had its California offices raided. Their web sites shut down. A civil lawsuit was filed by the Napa County District Attorney’s Office for fraud.

Yunona was also providing referrals/photos for families adopting from Ukraine. If the family would just pay them $5,000 as a down payment they could have their dream child... this cute little blond gerber baby.

They were big fat liars. The SDA (Ukrainian government adoption authority) is the only organization that can refer a child. Anyone who had done their research on Ukrainian adoption would have walked away from Yunona. And many families did.

(Changing the subject....)

I just ran across a description for adoption home studies from 1950s. I had to share....

[Adoptive mothers] would have faced a different sort of intrusion in the 1950s. Caseworkers would have taken notes on her hairstyle and her dress -- were they appropriately feminine? Her obvious compassion for chil-dren would have scored points, as would evidence of her domestic skills -- a quilt she made, covered with hearts, hangs on the wall in her office.

But the caseworkers would have demanded more proof that she was ready to be a mother, requiring her to quit her job even while still waiting for a child, and to provide evidence that biological children were impossible.

As one 1957 adoption manual explained, "No matter how desperately anxious for motherhood a woman claims to be, social workers know that a potentially good mother makes every effort to have her own child before she tries to adopt one."

At the same time, being infertile was itself suspect: The manual also suggested psychological counseling to make sure a woman's infertility was not caused by her subconscious reservations about motherhood. (Thank you, Dr. Freud.)

From: What Makes a Family?