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“We wanted another child, but could we afford it?”

- Melody Warnick

THE DIAGNOSIS WAS UNEXPLAINED INFERTILITY. Tessa and Justin Palmer received this news in 2014 after a year of trying to get pregnant. Still longing to add another child to their family, which included 4-year-old son Owen and 12-year-old Arden (Justin’s daughter from a previous marriage), the couple decided to adopt. After all, like one in 10 Americans, Justin had been adopted, as a newborn.

Following the lead of Tessa’s sister, who had recently brought home a toddler daughter from overseas, the Palmers leaned toward adopting from China — the country that, in 2018, completed 36% of international adoptions. If they considered an older child with medical special needs from China’s “waiting child” list, the wait could drop from five years to two. But could they afford it?

To adopt from China, the Palmers learned, would cost them roughly $40,000. Though they lived modestly in rural Coopersburg, PA, they also had careers with modest earnings. Justin was an emergency room nurse at the local hospital. Tessa, a social worker, had worked weekends for a hospice care provider since Owen was born. The job let her be home with him and available to Arden during the week but limited her income.

So they turned to family. “We would need help with this,” they told their parents and siblings. With everyone on board, Tessa wrote the first $500 check to an adoption agency in June 2014 and crossed her fingers that the rest of the money would come.

What seemed like overnight, Tessa’s inbox exploded with paperwork. She and Justin were required to take 10 hours of parenting classes. For the home study, a social worker visited their house to ask seemingly a thousand questions.