How to Ace the Adoption Home Study

You need to make sure your paperwork is in order, of course, but on a more personal level it can be helpful to take some time to think about (and be able to talk about) how adopting a child will affect your life.

Lubowich recommends reading about raising adopted children and considering the types of challenges you are prepared to take on in parenting an adopted child. "It's helpful for people to do some self-reflection about their views on parenthood and childrearing, and to think about how and why they have those opinions," she says. "In the case of a couple, it's helpful for them to think about places they might agree or disagree in raising children."

And while it's tempting to clean the house from top to bottom and put on your Sunday best before the social worker comes to call, Wojnilower says that's really not what the study is about. "I try to reassure folks that by the time we get past the very beginning stages they can feel comfortable because the requirements are largely objective," he says. "It's not, 'Do I like the furniture in your house, do I like how you dress, do I like your sense of humor?'"