What Are Adoption Profiles?

Adoption profiles are a great way for expectant mothers to connect with hopeful adoptive parents.

Think about how important a first impression can be. When you care about someone’s opinion, you are going to put your best foot forward, highlight your strengths, and be genuine. Now, imagine that the person you are aiming to make a good impression with is holding the missing piece to your forever family. Adoption profiles, better known as parent profiles, are often the first way that expectant or birth mothers and hopeful adoptive parents are connected. A parent profile allows hopeful adoptive parents a platform to show their best selves to potential birth mothers. On this platform, an expectant mother can find answers to the concerns she’s gathered regarding her child’s future. With parent profiles, she doesn’t have to wonder anymore, she will know that her child is being placed in a loving home with strong values. An expectant mother can find a collection of parent profiles through Adoption.com or her adoption agency. 

Why Are Parent Profiles Important?

In a process that already demands so many decisions to be made by an expectant mother, it is nice to have just a little guidance in the decision-making process. Choosing to place your child is already a huge decision. But choosing whom to place your child with can be even more daunting. Your child will face a lifetime of challenges—whether he or she is placed for adoption or not. As a parent, you wish for the very best in giving your children the tools to succeed such as loving parents who can provide a nurturing home for the child. 

Hopeful adoptive parents are usually screened and go through extensive background checks and home studies to determine whether or not the couple is fit for parenthood. An expectant mother should never let the concern about her child’s safety cause her alarm in the parent profile screening process. Parent profiles are a safe and ethical way for hopeful adoptive parents to get information to potential birth mothers in a quick and efficient way. 

Before you can make that decision, consider the following questions as you begin searching parent profiles. Think about who your hopeful adoptive parents are, the couple’s values, aspirations, background, the life this family can offer your child, and your personal connection to the couple. Think about where the connection would be in the family’s position. Consider the trials the hopeful adoptive parents have faced and how those trials have prepared this couple for parenthood. These are just a few baseline categories that an expectant mother will consider in finding a match through a parent profile. 

Who Are the Hopeful Adoptive Parents? 

It is hard to understand who someone fully is without ever meeting the person. This is why many hopeful adoptive parents spend hours upon hours with counsel from agencies and experts to create genuine and accurate profiles that will best represent who they are. Remember that these parents have most likely experienced tremendous hardship. These couples may have experienced problems with infertility, multiple miscarriages, years of treatment, or simply inability to expand a family in the way the couples have dreamt of. Before you even begin searching parent profiles, picture who you dream your child being raised by. 

So, how will the hopeful adoptive couples communicate who they are? This is one of the first questions hopeful adoptive parents will answer in the parent profile. Think about the people you picture placing your child with. When someone asks you who you are, what are your first thoughts? How do these thoughts reflect who you truly are? You probably identify qualities that you feel best to reflect your character. You highlight strengths that others have helped you recognize in yourself. Take that knowledge and understanding into account when searching for parent profiles. Who are the parents behind the picture? 

Think about what a profile says about a parent by how it is approached. Does the couple address you personally? Does the family tell a story? What can you learn about a potential parent by what is not written on the profile? How does the couple show who the family is without telling you who the family is? 

What Does the Couple Value?

Family values can shape one’s childhood and potentially a future. Think about what your family valued and how that shaped your decisions growing up, the paths you took, and how you set your goals. While a birth mother may choose to place her child in homes similar to the one she grew up in, another may have a different vision altogether for her child’s future. 

Religion is often a major factor that an expectant mother considers in determining whether or not she’d place her child with a family. When religion is that important to a mother, she may choose a Christian adoption agency to help find a match. Christian adoption agencies have larger collections of parent profiles of individuals from faith-centered homes. From these parent profiles, expectant mothers can be confident that her child will be raised by a couple who values God and high moral standards. 

Expectant mothers may also seek out homes that value service and giving to charity. If a mother wants her child to grow up with ample opportunities to show love and compassion to others through service-oriented acts and giving, she will seek out parents who highlight these characteristics in the parent profile. 

Other values that expectant mothers look for in searching parent profiles are homes that value strong families, high morals, clean living, and political justice. While these values are more easily recognized than described in a short online profile, these qualities are often mentioned if high standards mean a great deal to a hopeful adoptive family. 

What Type of Lifestyle Does the Family Have?

A parent profile may include a section for hopeful adoptive parents to highlight what the couple pictures for a forever family. The couple may include a list of hobbies the family enjoys, activities the couple engages in with the current children or plans the couple has for the future family. Again, an expectant mother’s upbringing will influence what she envisions for her child in this area. 

How a potential match chooses to spend time can say a lot about what your child’s future will look like. For a family that enjoys hiking, camping, traveling, and athletics, you can infer that your child will be involved in an active lifestyle—if not directly, the child will more likely be greatly influenced by it. Other families that value the arts and entertainment by spending time attending plays, dancing, painting, and engaging in the community’s art festivals will also influence a child.  

Expectant mothers should take into account when reading about a hopeful adoptive couple’s interests whether or not the couple already has children. The way that a couple chooses to spend time before and after the arrival of the first child will vary greatly. A new baby will most likely cause a couple to slow down and find new ways to spend time and resources as a family. This isn’t a bad thing. Rather, it will give the family opportunities to grow together in new experiences. 

For a family that already has children, you can expect the lifestyle to look similar before and after placement. The family will most likely have routines set in place, and the couple will have a better idea of how a new baby will change the dynamics of schedules and plans. 

What Would Your Child’s Life Look Like under the Couple’s Care?

Often, parent profiles will give hopeful adoptive parents an opportunity to express hopes and aspirations for forever families. Whether a couple or individual is a first-time parent or already parenting, the hopeful adoptive parents will also have a vision for a future family. A parent profile can be a great way to determine whether or not your visions align for a match. 

A parent profile can be a place to express aspirations for lifestyle, family-centered activities, and values, but it can also be a place to discuss a couple’s desires for an open, semi-open, or closed adoption. While open adoptions are often more beneficial for an adoptee and his or her upbringing, an adoptive family may prefer to have a semi-open or closed adoption. These are logistical views that may be challenged or revised in a future adoption plan. 

Adoptive parents may also choose to include a desire for a relationship with a birth mother beyond adoption finalization in the parent profile. Some adoptive parents wish to keep the child’s birth mother close and involved in the child’s major milestones in life. Other adoptive parents will want to keep a respectable relationship with a birth mother with limited contact throughout the child’s infancy. In other cases, adoptive parents may prefer to keep an adoption completely closed until a child is old enough (usually 18) to choose whether or not the child would like to reintroduce a relationship with a birth mother into his or her life. 

Do You Feel a Personal Connection?

A common thread in several birth mother testimonials is the experience of seeing a parent profile for the first time and knowing immediately that she was looking at her child’s forever family. Not every birth mother will experience this moment, but when it happens, it is undeniable. 

There is something about looking into the eyes of your child’s future forever family that makes you feel peace in knowing you are making the right decision for your child. You feel confident that your child’s future will be bright, safe, and happy. You feel calm. At that point, your apprehensions about placing your child begin to melt. 

Having a personal connection to a family isn’t always as simple as seeing a picture and having a physical reaction of a peaceful feeling. Sometimes, an expectant mother will have one specific characteristic that she is looking for in a family. For one mother, she may want her baby girl to have a big brother to look up to. Another mother may want her child placed in a home with at least one full-time parent. For some mothers, it is as simple as seeing a photograph of hopeful adoptive parents with a beloved pet for them to feel a personal connection to another family. It is different for everyone. That small connection to an adoptive family can be the determining factor of finding a match. 

Is the Couple You Are Considering Already Working with an Adoption Agency?

If you find a prospective match to place your child through an online portal like adoption.com, the couple is probably already working with an adoption agency. Take this into account when making a decision about continuing forward in the process with this couple. Research the chosen adoption agency, and determine whether or not it will cater to you and your child’s needs appropriately. 

Learn more about ethical adoption agencies and what you can be offered as an expectant mother. If you do run into a hiccup in this process but are still determined to work with a certain couple, you may have to question your options and communicate with the couple you’ve chosen about continuing forward together. 

You are a mother who wants the very best for her child. That’s why you’re here. Put yourself in your child’s shoes. As an adoptee in the world you live in, your child will need a firm foundation of values in a strong home. Your child will need role models, hands to hold, shoulders to cry on, and arms to wrap them up when they have even the worst boo-boos. A commitment to that kind of love is not always possibly communicated through a few short paragraphs on your computer screen. Use your motherly instincts and the love for your child that brought you to choose adoption in the first place. As you search each profile, consider these questions and others that you find essential to your personal circumstance in your search. 

Start searching for an adoption match today using parent profiles. Whether it is through your adoption agency or adoption.com, parent profiles can open your eyes to the many options available for the placement of your child. Approach each profile you find with a vision of your child’s future and an open heart. You never know when you could be opening the door to your child’s forever family.