Adopting.com - "The largest adoption
resources index on the Internet." Huge volume of resources for adoptive parents
and adoption professionals. Extensive listings of adoption agencies and
adoption-related organizations.
LDS Adoptions - "Is a Website where LDS
Parents, Children awaiting adoption, and information on adoption are avalible.
Adoptions and Aid International -
Texas and California adoption agency. Provides Russian, Kazakhstan, Ukrainian,
Georgian, and Armenian adoption programs throughout the US. Also provides
homestudies throughout the state of Texas and delivers humanitarian aid to
orphanages.
Partners for Adoption -
California adoption agency providing domestic and international adoption
homestudies throughout the state of California. They do homestudies for
Kazakhstan, Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, and Armenian, China, Korea, Ethiopia,
and Guatemals adoption.
Adoption is the legal act of permanently placing a child with a parent
or parents other than the birth parents. Adoption results in the severing of the
parental responsibilities and rights of
the biological parents and the placing of those responsibilities and rights onto
the adoptive parents. After the finalization of an adoption, there is little or
no legal difference between biological and adopted children.
Different jurisdictions have varying laws on adoption and post-adoption. Some
practice confidential or closed adoption, preventing further contact
between the adopted person and the biological parents, while others have varying
degrees of open
adoption, which may allow such contact. However, an underreported fact is that
open adoptions are not legally enforceable agreements in many jurisdictions.
I.e., an open adoption may be closed at any time for any reason.
Reasons for adoption
Adoptions occur for many reasons. Many children are placed for adoption as a
result of the biological parents' decision that they are unable to adequately
care for a child. In some countries, where single motherhood may be considered
scandalous and unacceptable, some women in this situation make an adoption plan
for their infants. In some cases, they abandon their children at or near an orphanage, so that they can be
adopted.
Some biological parents involuntarily lose their parental rights. This
usually occurs when the children are placed in foster care because they were abused, neglected or
abandoned. Eventually, if the parents cannot resolve the problems that caused or
contributed to the harm caused to their children (such as alcohol or drug abuse), a court may
terminate their parental rights and the children may then be adopted.
Only a small percentage of adopted children are those orphaned because of the death of their biological
parents.
In some cases, parents' rights have been terminated when their ethnic or
cultural group has been deemed unfit by the controlling government. Aboriginal Peoples
in Australia were affected by such
policies, as were Native Americans in the
United States and Canada. Moreover, unwed mothers in many
countries still are often pressured or forced by families, religious bodies or
governments into relinquishing their children for adoption. These practices of
the past have become emotionally-charged social and political issues in recent
years.
The main reason for adopting varies from one country to the next, depending
largely on social and legal structures. The inability to reproduce biologically
is a common reason. The most prevalent obstacle to producing a biological child
is infertility. Another
obstacle is the lack of a partner of the opposite sex or a lack of desire to use
a surrogate or sperm donor. Single people and
same-sex couples often adopt for this reason. In many Western countries, step-parent adoption is the most
common form of adoption as people choose to cement a new family following divorce or death of one parent.
Some couples or individuals adopt children even though they are fertile. Some
may choose to do this in order to avoid contributing to perceived overpopulation, or out of
the belief that it is more responsible to care for otherwise parent-less
children than to reproduce. Others may do so to avoid passing on inheritable
diseases (e.g., Tay-Sachs disease), or out of health concerns
relating to pregnancy and childbirth. Others believe that it is an equally valid
form of family building, neither better than nor worse than biology.
Applying to adopt
Methods of becoming an adoptive parent also vary from one country to another,
and sometimes within a country, depending on region. Many jurisdictions have
varying eligibility criteria, and may specify such things as minimum and maximum
age limits, whether a single person or only a couple can apply, or whether it is
possible or not for a same sex
couple to apply.
In some countries, applications must be made to a state agency or agencies
responsible for adoption. There may also be private, licensed adoption agencies,
who may operate either on a commercial or non-profit basis. Agencies may operate
only domestically, or may offer international adoptions, or may
facilitate both. Some jurisdictions allow lawyers to arrange private adoptions,
and some allow private facilitators to operate.
On applying to adopt, the potential adoptive parent(s) will generally be
assessed for suitability. This can take the form of a home study, interviews,
and financial, medical and criminal record checks. In some jurisdictions, such
studies must be carried out by an independent or state authority, while in
others, they can be carried out by the adoption agency itself. A pre-adoption
course may also be required.
Infants are more commonly sought
than toddlers or older children, and
many adoptive parents seek to adopt children of the same race. As a result,
governments, as well as agencies, actively seek families who are interested in
adopting older children and children with special needs.
Cost of adoption
Adoption costs and assistance vary between countries. In many countries, it
is illegal to charge for an adoption, while in others, adoptions must be
facilitated on a non-profit basis. On the other hand many adoption programmes
will give financial assistance to adopters, especially with their expenses. Some
jurisdictions offer tax
credits to offset the cost of adoption.
Where there are charges for adoption there is often controversy, even in the
case of non-profit agencies. Regulations may also specify to whom payments may
or may not be made, e.g., in some jurisdictions, no money may be paid to a birth
mother above her medical expenses.
Adoption agencies can range from government-funded agencies that place
children at little cost, to lawyers who arrange private
adoptions, to international commercial and non-profit agencies. Adoptive
parents can pay from nothing to US$40,000 for an adoption.
International adoptions tend to be more expensive and often incur additional
costs, as the adoptive parent(s) may be required to travel to the source
country. Translation fees will also apply to legal documents.
Adoption Statistics in the U.S.
In fiscal year 2001, 50,703 foster children were adopted in the United
States, many by their foster parents or relatives of their biological
parents. The enactment of the Adoption
and Safe Families Act in 1997 has approximately doubled the number of
children adopted from foster care in the United States.
Roughly 100 million Americans have adoption in their immediate family. This means that
one in three Americans is intimately connected to adoption. In addition,
adoption touches many millions more occasionally or indirectly: the doctors,
social workers, lawyers and teachers who deal with adoptive families; the
friends, neighbors, colleagues, and classmates of them. It may not be an
exaggeration to say that adoption touches just about everybody.
And while adoption obviously is changing the way people form families, it’s
also affecting the way society perceives basic concepts of life like nature and
nurture, the importance of blood ties, how families are created, what they look
like. Because of changes in adoption over the last few decades – changes that
include open adoption,
gay adoption, greatly increased numbers of international adoptions and trans-racial
adoptions, and a focus on moving children out of the foster care system into adoptive families – the
impact of adoption on the basic unit of society, the family, has been enormous.
As
adoption expert Adam Pertman has said,
“Suddenly there are Jews holding Chinese cultural festivals at synagogues, there
are Irish people with their African American kids at St Patty's Day. This
affects whole communities, and as a consequence our sense of who we are, what we
look like, as a people, as individual peoples. These are profound lessons that
adoption is teaching us.”
Adoption reform
In the United States, it has not been until recently that various concepts
relating to adoption have been put into question. Two important influences on
"adoption reform" are Nancy
Verrier and Florence Fischer . Although adoptees make
up only 2 to 3 percent of the population, statistics consistently indicate that
30 to 40 percent of the children found in special schools, juvenile hall and residential
treatment centres are adopted.
Verrier describes the "primal wound" as the "devastation which the infant
feels because of separation from its natural mother. It is the deep and
consequential feeling of abandonment which the baby adoptee feels after the
adoption and which continues for the rest of his life."
Reunification
Many adopted people and natural parents who were separated by adoption have a
desire to reunite. In countries which practice confidential adoption, this
desire has led to efforts to open sealed records (for example, see Adoption reunion registry) and
efforts to establish the right of adoptees to access their sealed records (for
example, see Bastard
Nation).
Issues surrounding adoption
The number of children available for adoption inside Western nations has
dropped considerably in recent years, partly because of the legalization of abortions, and partly because of the
increased acceptance of single parenthood.
Preserving an adopted child's heritage has become a central issue in adoption
over the last fifteen years. It is often assumed that adopting babies at a very
young age (1-2 months) bears no emotional consequences for the child. In the
past, many adoption professionals believed that because most people have no
recollection of their own birth, an adopted baby would not have a childhood any
different than if he or she were raised by natural parents. However, while some
adoptees do not feel that adoption has raised any special problems or
difficulties for them, others report that adoption has posed certain challenges.
Some adoptees report that that they were made to feel - consciously or not - as
if they should forever 'be grateful' to have been 'chosen'. Others report that
they were told they were "special," but soon came to realize that people are not
motivated to adopt by any perception that adopted children are preferable to
biological children. Still others report being told that "your mother gave you
to us because she loved you", but soon became aware that in closed adoptions,
the adoptive parents and the legal system both assume that the birth parents no
longer wish to see the child. This leads some adopted people to wonder whether
their biological parents ever loved them, or whether their adoptive parents can
be trusted to tell the truth. This kind of ambiguity in adoption, along with the
strongly emotionally charged nature of the subject, can make it difficult for
adoptees to feel free to discuss their own issues honestly, for fear of being
ungrateful, hurting their adoptive parents' feelings, raising subjects they
sense are taboo (such as the adoptive
parents' true reasons for adopting, especially if this involves infertility) or
incurring rejection.
Recent work on openness in adoption has attempted to address these issues.
Researchers such as Joyce Maguire Pavao and others have advised all three sides
of the adoption triad (birthparents, adoptive parents, and adoptees) on how to
establish healthy relationships, and make it easier for adopted people to
discuss their feelings and maintain meaningful contact with both genetic and
adoptive families. These efforts are relatively recent, and full openness, while
on the upswing, is still not the norm in adoption.
International adoptees face additional challenges. It has been argued that
children adopted through international adoptions are best served
when adoptive families commit to integrating the child's birth nation cultures, traditions, stories, languages and relationships. Some countries now require
adoptive parents to keep the birth names of their adoptive children, and many
adoptive parents choose to do this as it makes sense in helping their child
develop a strong sense of self. This
can be very difficult to do in a meaningful way, especially for adoptive
families who are not themselves experienced cross-culturally.
Another issue for prospective adoptive parents to be aware of is reactive attachment disorder
(RAD). Many children, especially those beyond infancy in system care (e.g.
foster, orphanage), domestic or foreign, develop this disorder due to the early
trauma of loss, and/or lack of a primary
caregiver.
For all adopted people in adoptions where information about the family of
origin is withheld, secrecy may disrupt the process of forming an identity. Family concerns
regarding genealogy can be a
source of confusion.
Adoption is problematic for some birthparents. When a parent chooses to place
the child with adoptive parents, the process of separation can be difficult for
all parties. Those emotional difficulties may carry on for many years past the
date of the adoption, with families of origin missing and longing for the
children they have placed.
Adoption may also pose lifelong difficulties for adoptive parents. Charting a
course among the various schools of thought about openness, maintaining a
child's connection to his or her family of origin, answering a child's difficult
questions, and helping a child deal with birthparents who may not maintain
regular contact are all issues that adoptive families may struggle with. For
anyone involved in adoption--birthparent, adoptive parent or adoptee--there are
no hard and fast rules about how to build appropriate relationships that are in
the child's best interest.
Adoption in the schools
Adoption rights organizations have long focused on issues such as
the adoptee’s right to access his or her birth information, including names of
birth parents and birth family medical information. They also focus on improving classroom
sensitivity to adoption issues. Familiar lessons like "draw your family tree" or "trace your eye
color back through your parents and grandparents to see where your genes come
from" can be hurtful to children who are adopted and do not know this biological
information. New lesson plans can be substituted easily, that focus on "family
orchards" or steer away from personal medical histories. Discussions about these
sensitive topics, advocates argue, are the same as those we’ve conducted around
issues of disability, race, and gender, and foster respect for differences in the same
way as these earlier national conversations.
Adoption in the media
Adoption experts complain that too much of the media coverage of adoption
goes to one extreme or the other. Much of the coverage of adoption presents
stories of failed adoptions and troubled children, adoption scandals, even "baby
buying"; on the other side are saccharine stories of “perfect” children and
families. Only a very few programs have treated the subject in a serious way and
in its full breadth. Even when stories are balanced, ignorance about adoption
leads to negative
presentations including the widespread representation of children in foster care as being so
troubled that it would be impossible to adopt them and create “normal” families.
The result is that many children who would thrive in a loving family instead
wait years in foster care, and even “age out” of the system at 18 without a
family. A 2004 report from the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care has
shown that the number of children waiting in foster care doubled since the 1980s
and now remains steady at about a half-million a year."
Adoption in the wake of disasters
While adoption is often the best way to provide stable, loving families for
children in need, adoption in the immediate aftermath of trauma or upheaval may
not be the best option. Disasters like hurricanes, tsunamis, and wars teach us
the importance of knowledge about adoption. In these situations there is often
an outpouring of offers to adoption agencies from adults who want to give homes
to the children left in need. However, new
research suggests that once we understand the needs of children and families
we look at adoption in the wake of disaster differently. Traumatized children
need time to adjust, in the most familiar environments available, before they
should be placed. Moving them too quickly into new adoptive homes among
strangers may be a mistake: with time, it may turn out that the parents have
survived but simply been unable to find the children, or there may be a relative
or neighbor who can offer shelter and homes. Safety and emotional support may be
better provided in those situations than relocation to a new adoptive
family.
International adoption
International adoption refers to
adopting a child from a foreign country. American citizens represent the
majority of international adoptive parents, followed by Europeans and those from other more developed nations.
The laws of different countries vary in their willingness to allow international
adoptions. Some countries, such as China
and Vietnam, have relatively
well-established rules and procedures for foreign adopters to follow, while
others, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for example,
expressly forbid it.
International adoption is becoming more
popular with more young healthy children available than in most adoptive
countries. China is the leading country
for international adoptions by Americans.
Another reason international adoption has become popular with U.S. citizens
is the American adopting parents are fearful of American birth parents
changing their mind about adoption. In addition, many U.S. adoption agencies
encourage open adoptions, in
which some adoptive parents do not wish to participate. Few international
adoptions are open adoptions.
One problem with international adoptions is that unethical people see an
opportunity to make a relatively high profit, in part because the costs of
living are much lower than the adoptive parents' country. There are no firm
numbers on illegal or unethical adoptions, as adoptive families are reluctant to
publicize unethical adoptions, but several countries have closed following high
profile trafficking and corruption
cases, such as Romania and Cambodia.
Trans-racial Adoption
The desire for parents to adopt children of the same race is the cause of
some controversy within the United States, especially in the African-American
community. There are more Caucasian families seeking to adopt than there are
minority families; conversely, there are more minority children available for
adoption. This disparity often results in a lower cost to adopt children from
ethnic minorities - usually through special adoption grants rather than price
discrimination. Critics claim this cost disparity implies that minority babies
are worth less than white ones. This situation is morally difficult because the
adoptive families and government agencies see adoption as a great benefit to
trans-racially adopted children, while some African-Americans see it as an
assault on their culture.
Note: IOH Founder Lahle, successfully adopted two of her much-loved children transracially.
Adoptism
Adoptism is a prejudice against adoption defined by several
beliefs:
The belief that adoption is not a legitimate way to build a family
The belief that birthing children is always preferable to adopting
The belief that making an adoption plan is never a preferable option for
birth mothers who are unable or choose not to raise their children
Facilitators
There are individuals who act on their own and attempt to match waiting
children, both domestically and abroad, with prospective parents, and in foreign
countries provide additional services such as translation and local transport. They are commonly referred to as facilitators. Since in many jurisdictions their legal
status is uncertain (and in some U.S. states they are banned outright), they
operate in a legal gray area.
Where the law does not specifically allow them to, all they can do is make an
introduction, leaving the details of the placement to those legally qualified to
do so. But in practice, their role as gatekeepers can give them a great deal of
power to direct a particular child to a particular client, or not, and some have
been accused of using this power to defraud prospective adoptive parents.
Variations in adoption
Adoption need not always entail assuming the title of "mother" and/or
"father" to an orphaned child. Traditionally in Arab cultures if a child is adopted he or she does not
become a “son” or “daughter,” but rather a ward of the adopting caretaker(s). The child’s
family name is not changed to that of the adopting parent(s) and his or her “guardians” are publicly known as
such. Legally, this is close to other nations' foster caring but often with closer parental
feelings.
In Korean culture, adoption almost
always occurs when another family member (sibling or cousin) gives a male child
to the first-born male heir of the family.
Adoptions outside the family are rare. This is also true to varying degrees in
other Asian societies.
On the other hand, in many African cultures, children are regularly exchanged
among families for the purpose of adoption. By placing a child in another
family's home, the birth family seeks to create enduring ties with the family
that is now rearing the child. The placing family may receive another child from
that family, or from another. Like the reciprocal transfer of brides from one
family to another, these adoptive placements are meant to create enduring
connections and social solidarity among families and lineages.
Reasons for adoption