Adoption Vs. Surrogacy: Understanding the Difference

When it comes to alternative family planning, no two journeys are ever truly the same. Here at Simple Surrogacy, we understand that better than anyone. At the beginning of that journey, we have found that many couples or Intended Parents-to-Be find themselves questioning which method might work best for them. While that answer is a personal one that can only truly be answered by the Intended Parents in question, we can help to shed a little light on the biggest differences between the big two: adoption and surrogacy. 

Note: All child-parent relationships in alternative family planning are legitimate: a child born from a Surrogate is the child of the Intended Parents, just as an adopted child is the child of their adoptive parents. In other words, genetics do not necessarily dictate family. It is crucial to retain this understanding before embarking on this journey. A child born via adoption is not a “second option” or a fallback any more than a child born via an Egg Donor and/or Surrogate is less legitimate than a natural pregnancy: family is family, and love is love. 

When deciding which method is right for your growing family, something that should be taken into consideration early on is budget. It is not true that either is much more expensive than the other, although Surrogacy does tend to cost more long term. Surrogacy journeys tend to start at around $100,000* and up, while adoptions average between $40,000-$50,000. 

*Simple Surrogacy is located in Texas, which allows us to offer many advantages to our clients – the foremost advantage being cost. Contact us today to learn more. 

Either way, alternative family planning is a significant investment. Surrogacy costs vary due to many reasons: the location of the agency, how long it takes for your Surrogate to become pregnant, and other variables. Simply put, the costs will need to cover the Surrogate’s base compensation as well as other medical fees and expenses related to the pregnancy. 

With adoption (of a newborn), you are still responsible for pregnancy-related costs. In these cases, the financial needs of the expecting mother will determine just how much the process costs, although there are other variables at play as well. Similarly, tax credits and grants can exist for adoption (depending on your location) that do not exist for parents seeking to grow their family through surrogacy. 

The next thing to consider is your timeline. If there is a guaranteed method of family planning, we’ve yet to discover it! Granted, it’s fairly safe to assume that either method will take a minimum of about 9 months, even in a best-case scenario. The reality is, both methods take time. 

On average, most surrogacies take an average of 1-2 years, depending largely on how long it takes for Intended Parents to match with a Surrogate and for that Surrogate to achieve pregnancy. Adoptions can be trickier – while the average wait time is similar to that of Intended Parents choosing surrogacy, it can also take much, much longer from family to family. This is because with adoption, the birth mother must choose the potential family – which is largely about being in the right place at the right time. In both scenarios, delays and disruptions are possible in the event of a failed pregnancy or a disrupted adoption, both of which can add months to the journey.

Another thing to consider is this: how comfortable are you with unknowns? The lack of control that is omnipresent in both adoption and surrogacy can be overwhelming to say the least, and it’s important to be aware of that ahead of time, and to be realistic about what your family can reasonably handle. 

Surrogacy is arguably the option where you have the most “control” of the situation – you and your Surrogate both choose each other, and all parties have been thoroughly screened for various risk factors (genetic and otherwise) ahead of time. You also have significant voice in your Surrogate’s prenatal care and have assurance of her genetic background. You will have access to your Surrogate based on your agreed terms throughout the pregnancy, and possibly afterward. You will also be allowed to be present at the birth, which is not always an option with adoption. 

What you can’t control, however, are factors such as how quickly your Surrogate’s body responds to fertility medications, embryo viability and the like: and of course, there can be no guarantee of how long the process will take or the total costs (which are tied to the length of the process in many ways). 

With adoption, your hands are not on the steering wheel at all as Intended Parents. In these instances, the birth mother calls most of the shots, and fluctuations in this depend on a lot of different things. Adoption is unique from surrogacy because of the two options, only in adoption can the baby already be born – or even conceived – before you and the birth mother find each other. There are cases where a birth mother chooses a family for her baby very early on in her pregnancy, and there are cases where a family is chosen shortly after the child is already born, and everything in between. Of course, there is also the possibility with adoption that the birth mother will ultimately decide to keep the child – a sad occasion for prospective parents to be sure, although we hesitate to ever call a child being wanted an “unfortunate” occurrence. It is simply the way things go sometimes. (With surrogacy, the child-to-be is not the Surrogate’s child either by genetics or by right, so this is not a possible outcome.)

At the end of the day, there is no such thing as a pregnancy journey without unknown elements – even natural biological births contain curveballs and surprises, as any parents will tell you. The most important thing is to make the decision that feels right for you and your family. If you are intrigued by the idea of surrogacy and would like to learn more, please contact the team at Simple Surrogacy today. It would be our honor and privilege to guide you on your journey.