How come adopting a child costs money?

In my country the actual adoption doesn’t cost any money - if done by the official way.

Here you only need to open your home to people from official youth care to inspect everything, make psychology tests on you (whether you are able to educate that child) and you have to prove that you can afford buying everything that child needs. They only allow you to adopt if the adoption is in benefit of the child.

Healthy babies almost find parents. There are more couples who want to adopt a baby than babies who are given up for adoption. But there are a lot of children - children who have been traumatized by abuse and violence or also disabled children - who don’t find homes. Because the people who want to adopt don’t know whether they can deal with a child like that. They want a cute baby, not a hyperactive, traumatized, bed wetting 9 year old.

So here are a lot of wannabe-parents who want a baby, but don’t get one the official way. Then they start to look abroad. They say, “but there are babies in that orphan home in Kiev… and in Phuket… and in Manila. Why can’t I adopt one of those.” And that’s where it becomes expensive. There, people have to pay for the official contacts. The officials of the childes home land need to check with the youth care officials of the parents home country. Then the parents need to travel, paying their own travel cost, and visit by the officials in the childes original country. They need to pay translations and interpreters. And they pay their and the childes trip back home. All that can easily be a large amount of money.