California must help make adoption more affordable

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OPINION –  In California, where tech wealth and extreme income inequality coexist, the idea that only the financially privileged can adopt should be deeply unsettling.

When my parents adopted me from China in the 1990s, my father saved money from snow plowing driveways for months in order to adopt. As a single-income household, money was always tight — and I remember praying over the snowfall as a child, so that we could meet the income threshold required by China at the time to adopt my little sister.

Adoption was expensive then — and in places like California, where the cost of living already stretches family budgets, it remains prohibitively so. According to a recent study, 97% of prospective parents cited costs as a barrier to adoption, with 48% referencing it as “an extreme barrier.” Average adoption costs of $25,000 to $60,000 mark a stark contrast to the 2023 median U.S. household income of $80,610.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) introduced earlier this month at the federal level is a great step in the right direction, providing partial refundability of up to $5,000 even if there is zero tax liability, thereby directly benefiting low-income families across foster care, private domestic, and intercountry adoptions.

However, California must also act. The state’s $2,500 adoption tax credit is a fraction of the cost of most adoptions and currently offers little help to families with low tax liability. Expanding and fully refunding this credit — as other states have done — would make a significant difference for families here. Bills like AB 12, which addresses foster care transitions, show that there is legislative appetite to strengthen permanency. But California has yet to address the financial barriers that block many middle- and lower-income families from adopting.

The cost of adoption is climbing for several reasons. For one, the number of intercountry adoptions has dropped 95% from 2004 to 2023. This increases the financial burden on adoption agencies, which have to cover operating costs with fewer clients. Last year’s Department of State ruling on intercountry adoption also imposed more fees on agencies to comply with new standards, costs that were often passed on to prospective families.

Additionally, many baby brokers — or unlicensed intermediaries — prey on parents looking to adopt, particularly through online search. Although their practices are illegal in many states like California, the U.S. has no standalone statute explicitly prohibiting these middlemen. These intermediaries drive up the cost of adoptions by adding exorbitant “matching” fees, passing along high advertising and marketing costs to appear at the top of search engines, and bypassing regulatory oversight. A federal and state-level crackdown on these unethical practices could curb these abuses.

On behalf of families looking to adopt, I am calling on the current administration and the State of California to continue pushing toward openness, accessibility, and affordability in adoption. This includes making the federal adoption tax credit (up to $17,280 per child in 2025) fully refundable; expanding and fully refunding California’s adoption tax credit beyond $2,500; passing legislation to regulate and penalize unlicensed baby brokers; and reducing unnecessary administrative burdens on Hague-accredited agencies.

I also want more collaborative action to support adoption coming from the communities in which potential parents live and serve. Californian companies can follow the example of Cisco, Salesforce, and Genentech, which already offer paid adoption leave and reimbursement for adoption expenses. Nonprofits can rally together to offer post-adoption resources to parents and children, like support groups, mental health counseling, and trauma training.

Over 8,000 children are legally free for adoption in the California foster care system, and globally thousands of others are seeking permanent homes due to special needs, humanitarian crises, or other reasons that prevent them from finding domestic placements.

Given the huge need, adoption should not be a privilege for the wealthy, but an option afforded to every American who has the desire and ability to love and raise a child.

The adoption provisions in the OBBBA represent important initial progress, but California now has the opportunity — and responsibility — to build on this momentum.

Leah Sutterlin is an adult adoptee and mother from Cupertino, California. She works for the National Council For Adoption and the Christian Alliance for Orphans.