Creating Your Adoption Profile

Creating your Adoption Profile is one of the most important decisions you will make in your adoption journey. Birth parents are given a stack of profiles to review when making their selection so it is important that your profile be authentically you.

From my own experience, I know that our birth mom knew we were the couple she was going to choose, before she’d even read our profile, just by looking at the photo of us on the cover. So it is very important that your profile be reflective of you who are as individuals and as a couple.

Here are some tips to bare in mind when creating your profile:

1. Accurately represent yourselves. Include as much information, without being too long winded about who you are as individuals and as a couple. While one birth mother may be drawn to one particular aspect about you, another may be put off by the same aspect. For example, whether this will be your first child or your second child. Whether or not you have pets etc. One birth mom may be drawn to the fact you have pets while another may be put off by it. One birth mom may want her unborn child to go to a childless couple, while another would prefer that her unborn child go to a couple where the child will have a sibling. Avoid trying to play to your audience and
2. Show what you believe makes you interesting. From my own experience, we are a couple who enjoy humor and we bought that into our profile, it was one of the things that our birth mother was immediately drawn to about us.
3. Present as much detail as possible without creating a profile that is filled with pages and pages and pages of writing. You need to represent yourselves as accurately as possible in as short a space as possible.
4. The way your profile is represented should be representative of who you are. We went with a photo book approach, its neat, professional and uncluttered, but our lives are this way too. Other couples have preferred to go with a scrapbook style profile which is representative of them. At the end of the day, different style profiles will appeal to different birth mothers, some will prefer the photo book while others will prefer the scrapbook style. Remember, your profile will not appeal to all birth mothers so make it appealing to yourself.
5. Have someone you trust, but who can be brutally honest and objective, review your profile and give you feedback. I’m also happy to help you with this, please feel free to drop me an email, if you’d like my objective opinion.
6. Once your profile is submitted, ask your Social Worker for feedback on your profile. Sometimes a little tweaking is all that is necessary.
7. Make your profile as personal as possible. Include lots of photo’s so that the birth mother gets a good idea of who you are and what you’re about, not just form what you have told her but from what she can also see.