International Adoption

Adopting a child is probably available in ANY country of the world, if you have the right team. There are reasons that many adoptions are currently coming from China, Russia, Former Soviet States, Latin America and the like. Most of these systems are highly organized government projects. They are in general addressing a very real social crisis. Some countries that tried to address such a crisis (Romania for one) mishandled the situation. The players now are about as above board as one could expect, however one should investigate countries individually and then base a decision on each once own merits. In each of these situations, economies are in shaky shape or government policy has created the situation. So in such a world of haves and have nots there are the laws of supply and demand at work. Why do so many adoptions come from international sources? First, it’s the availability. Second, the goals.

Is there a plausible reason statistically? Yes, I believe that the lack of availability of Caucasian and infants or toddlers in the U.S. has lead to supply and demand imbalances. Unfortunately, I believe there is every reason that these imbalances will continue to fuel the growth of International adoption.

Let’s say the 100,000 that have applied with an agency is our available pool or parents.

581,000 children in foster care in the US with only 22% available for adoption.

Nearly sixty percent of the 251,000 children who left foster care in 1999 were reunited with birth parents.

We assume that every child is desired and adoptable as well as the assumption that 50% are infants. (Actual figures do not bear out these assumptions) Also we assume for our exercise that 50-50 race goes to Foster Parents and then be really kind and say only 50-50 infant vs.. older children.
Available for adoption- US Children
Black 42% 53,684 Infants 50% 26842
Hispanic 15% 19173 9587
Cauc 32% 40902 20451
Other 10% 14061 7030
Total avail 127,820 63910

Available U.S.Parents 100000

Adopted through Foster care or relative 50,000
Living with Relative 10% 12,782
Other 15% 19173
Total Adopted/leaving etc 81955

Remaining US Parents available 18045

Available US Children Remaining after adoption %
Black 45% adopted 29526 Infants 50% 14763
Hispanic 100% adopted 0 0
Cauc 38% adopted 25359 12679
Other 2% adopted 13780 6890
Totals Available 68665 34332

With these 18,045 parents available can we apply the needs expressed by the majority to this group? I would have expected that any one of our categories remaining could have been satisfied by remaining parents (i.e. parents could have adopted all black infants if they had wanted to). But why are these remaining parents the same parents looking at international adoption? In the survey fully, 82% of person who were considering adoption said that if they were thinking about adopting, a major concern would be making sure that birth parents could not take the child back. And, 89% of children adopted internationally are under 4, I would assume that the same percentage of potential parents want children under four.

So these 18,045 parents would be vying for a predominantly Asiatic, Hispanic or Caucasian or Other infants of which perhaps there are 19,569(Caucasian or other).This statistic is similar to the 19,200 international adoptions completed in 2002. It is plausible that these parents either do not have the pool of children they are seeking or that that children are not adoptable. The first to go to foster care adoption or other methods are the most desirable.

A number of factors have lead to the ten fold increase in international adoption over the last ten years. Certain countries are meeting the needs of the US family. Each of the big two destinations for international adoption have a huge supply and goal inline with the potential parents. In China, which is still #1 in the number of children adopted to the United States, there are reported to be hundreds of thousands of orphans. In this vast country government policies have lead to a considerable number of orphans. Government or cultural biases leave a great number of infant girls available. The figures seem to bear out that Americans are not at all shy about transracial adoption.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the number of adoptions rose from 324 in 1992 to 4279 in 2001. Why is this program popular? Could it be because of racial characteristics? Let’s look at the figures. If there are approximately 251,000The greatest number (two million) of orphans as a percentage of population is located in the Russian Federation. Russia also sufferers from the greatest number of orphans per capita. In the Russian Federation 2/3 of these children without families live on the streets. Claims go as high as about 650,000 orphans in institutions and perhaps another 1,000,000 homeless children living on the street. Contrast this number with the highest level of US children 535,000 for a country of double the population. The social and economic difficulties the Russian Federation has experienced in becoming a free and capitalistic nation are huge. According to a report published in 2002, 60% of all pregnancies in Russia end in abortion, only second in the world behind Romania at a per capita rate. A girl under 18 accounts for 1 in 10 of these abortions. The destruction of the Russian family is seen in an illegitimacy rate that has risen to 20% in 2000. The end result is that Russian women average 2-3 abortions and in 2002 that means of the 3.3 million pregnancies there are over 2 million abortions. Just imagine…this is 53% higher than US estimates in the 30 years since Roe v. Wade. a staggering 61 million abortions for a country of half the population of the US.

The better news is that in fiscal 2002 Russian Federation was the second highest sending country for U.S. adoption with 4,939 adoptions, just a fraction behind China’s 5,053 placements. Russia recently accounted for 22% of international adoptions.

The troubles of these counties are varied; however, the goals are the same. Get the children out of the countries and into loving and secure homes rapidly. Policies are such that children in Russia for instance parent’s rights are removed more rapidly and once that is accomplished children are placed in a government registry for 7 months prior to being permitted to be adopted internationally.