Singapore Expats

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapo ... sf-4610961

It's been 13 years since I completed an adoption of an SC.

It has become much more difficult.

Foreign Embassies will most often no longer support you (a letter is needed for Singapore Family Court) and countries with declining birth rates are closing doors.

My wife knows a couple. Aussie husband, Korean wife on EP. They managed to adopt a boy from Malaysia just about 2 years ago. If I recall correctly, they were told that they had "just" managed to sneak in. Because a couple of months later they tightened the legislation to prevent non citizens/non PRs from adopting children in Singapore.

Yes there are many more barriers.

While we were starting our adoption journey, there was one Singaporean "agent" we spoke to. He used to help "specialise" in babies from Indonesia. So he showed us a particular baby's photos. Then a few days later, he sent us the "same" baby's video. The baby in the photo and the video were obviously different. If I recall correctly, even the gender was different. So looked completely shady. There ended the discussion.

smoulder wrote: ↑

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 7:16 pm

While we were starting our adoption journey, there was one Singaporean "agent" we spoke to. He used to help "specialise" in babies from Indonesia. So he showed us a particular baby's photos. Then a few days later, he sent us the "same" baby's video. The baby in the photo and the video were obviously different. If I recall correctly, even the gender was different. So looked completely shady. There ended the discussion.

That's shady..There seems to be some illegal smuggling of babies going on from Indonesia to Singapore...

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/in ... on-5238996

I read the /singapore subreddit on the topic. It's full of so much disinformation and urban legends and old wives tales that it's only good for TP.

If you're going to adopt, you need to do serious research and not listen to a lot of advice that's given with good intention but poor background. Resources for the best advice for me were;

1. An adoption lawyer (he's probably passed away by now or retired).
2. MCYS (or whatever they are now).
3. The American club was running sessions on this - they may still be.
4. Private adoption agents (we used one but I would avoid the ones that cater purely to Singaporeans as they won't understand the nuances of an expat adoption).
5. A friend who used to run a teen pregnancy counselling charity.

One thing you absolutely must work out is if your home country will allow you to bring the child back (under an adoption visa for example). Without that you are dead in the water (with one exception and that is adopting a SC baby as a PR here and intending to stay). Right now this is a big, big issue for Australians and Brits I believe.

Personally I would recommend adopting a Singapore citizen child if you can. It resolves so many issues and the chances of getting scammed by a baby farm are almost zero.

Singapore a pro Adoption country (unlike Australia) so do not be discouraged. They want their orphans and abandoned kids out of the foster system.

Avoid Muslim children unless you are Muslim.

The hardest part will be finding a baby that is available for adoption. Don't be fussy - you're not shopping. Take the first one you can find regardless of gender or race (I can understand if you cannot tahan adopting a handicap).

Tell anyone who tells you "Oh just adopt, it's so easy" to go jump in the lake.

If they didn't abort 10,000 kids a year Singapore would have a good TFR.

From experience, the typical demographic of adopting parents is Chinese Singaporean. Their preference is inevitably for Chinese ethnicity girls.

Sad part is that there are some who do this because either they feel shy to reveal to the child or they just don't want "weird" stares from nosy strangers or family members. I believe for most of the rest of us, we just have to live with weird stares of parents and child looking different and is a part of what we have to accept before deciding to adopt.

We get this all the time - mother, father and child all look different. When we go through Singapore immigration, we get a few probing questions thrown at us, most likely to test that we aren't kidnapping or something. Meanwhile, we've not seen the same issue with families where all three races are the same - example 1, family of Singaporean Chinese mum and dad and Chinese child, example 2, Singaporean Malay mum and dad and Malay child.

I'm white Aussie, wife is white American and our doter is Indian Singaporean. The only racism I've encountered is in the US and the only time I've had passport issues was in the UK which was specifically as you say over the issue of child smuggling. I've had nothing but support from local Singaporeans. To the point of embarrassment. The Indian community has been particularly keen to help us.

The Chinese have this weird thing about "the child's family will blackmail us" or "we cannot accept another race". That's on THEM, not the surrounding community. Even my local GP (Chinese Singaporean from a long established family here) did not adopt when his wife was found to be infertile over that concern (to be fair, this was probably 50 or 40 years back - but on the other hand there were MANY orphans available then too).

Oh for sure. Never faced racism. It's more like curious stares because mum, dad and child all look different from each other. People in Asia have a hard time fitting it into their mental model. This is just normal people. The immigration guys on the other hand are just doing their jobs.

The number of kids who ask "why is she that colour and you are white?" amazes me.

We've been dealing with those sort of comments for over 40 years now (my daughter is 41 & my son is 36). I'm Caucasian and the wife is Tamil.