Adoption

There are over 500,000 children in foster care every year but only about a quarter of these children are available for adoption. About 120,000 children are adopted in the United States every year but many of those children are infants or newborns. Older children tend to end up in foster care and wait for years to get adopted because they are less desirable than babies.

In 2009 12,753 foreign children were adopted by American families. Over the past 15 years 200,000 foreign children have been adopted by American families. I don't think there is anything wrong with foreign adoption but it seems silly to travel half way around the world and spend your life savings on a toddler from China when they there are literally thousands of American children waiting for homes.

All of these celebrities adopting "ethnic babies" frustrates me. At least Sandra Bullock adopted a baby from New Orleans. I'm talking to you Madonna, Angelina Jolie, you ladies who have made your little foreign babies the newest fashion accessory. Its great that you want to help out 3rd world countries by bringing their unwanted children to the US for a completely spoiled life but why not look a little closer to home. We have plenty of problems right here that you could help with.

Some people are upset that Sandra Bullock's baby is black but lets be realistic: there are more black children available for adoption than there are black families to adopt them. 26% of all black children adopted in the US are adopted by non-black families. I think its much more important for a child to live in a home with people that love him/her than for that child, regardless of whether or not they look like their adopted family, to never have a permanent home. It's definitely better than staying in the foster care system until an appropriate black couple comes along (which may not ever happen).

About 30,000 children age out of the foster care system every year. 25% of these children will become homeless. 56% will be unemployed. 27% of the males will end up in jail. Another 30,000 children are dropped by the foster care system every year because they run away and the government can no longer track them. That means half of the children who are available for adoption will have a very sad ending.

Should the government do more to support those children who age out of the system to make them more successful? Should there be more incentives for American families to adopt American children? Well of course but that's not enough. No matter how many specials that PBS and HBO put together showing how fantastic it is to adopt an older child there will always be those people who must have a baby. They say they won't be able to bond with an older child or that they aren't prepared to deal with the issues that an older child might bring.

When people have children naturally there is always the risk of a number of diseases and disabilities. Some parents put these children up for adoption because it is too much to handle but most of them accept that this is their responsibility. That it must have been part of some divine plan for them and they make the most of it. Why can't it be part of some divine plan for you to take home a 7 year old with ADD? If you don't give him a chance, no one else might either.

Adoption Diaries

I have always had a fascination with adoption. While I don't want to have children, I have always felt that if I did I would adopt. I'm guessing that whatever it is inside me that drives me to rescue animals that other people have cast aside and deemed "less desirable" than other animals is what would drive me to adopt a child.

I have seen every episode of a An Adoption Story on Discovery Channel Health at least twice. Unfortunately they stopped making new episodes several years ago. So I was very excited when I heard that the Women's Entertainment (WE) was reviving the show. I have watched two episodes and don't plan on watching any more. The new show only focuses on open adoptions of newborns and doesn't even present the other types of adoptions that are out there.

I can understand the appeal of open adoption to a young mother who doesn't feel that she can raise the child but doesn't want to lose all communication with the child. And I guess if you really want to have a newborn baby then open adoption would appeal to prospective adoptive parents as well. Personally, if I carried a child to term, that would be my baby. I would find a way to make that child fit into my life. After being pregnant for 9 months and going through labor and all the emotional highs and lows that accompany the miracle that is childbirth I would be emotionally destroyed if I gave up that child. My husband had a vasectomy. We knew we didn't want children so we did the responsible thing rather than deal with an unwanted and unplanned pregnancy. But if we were in the <1% of people who find themselves pregnant after surgical sterilization then we would make it work. I am a strong believer that everything happens for a reason. Whether you want to call it religion or spirituality, I would not fight the universe if it were so determined to give my husband and I a child. I would accept that there were forces much greater than us plotting our future and not question it.

Millions of people do it every day but I just can't get past the adoptive parents having to share their child with the birth mom forever. The obligation to keep the birth mom in the child's life would just be too big a price to pay for me as an adoptive parent. The best part of the old show on Discovery Channel Health was that it focused on all different types of adoptions. There were open adoptions but there were also adoptions of older children domestically and abroad, the adoption of babies and infants domestically and abroad and the adoption of children by foster parents. By showing all of the different types of adoptions and how successful and happy the families were in the end it opened people's minds to the other options that were out there if you couldn't or didn't want to have a child naturally.

There is no shortage of parents looking to adopt newborn babies in this country. On the flip side, there are plenty of children that age out of foster care every year. Meaning that they live in a group home or foster families until they reach 18 years old and then are thrown out into the world to make a life for themselves. Can you imagine waiting for parents year after year after being abandoned by your birth parents? I can't imagine the psychological damage that this does to a person. The movie Antwone Fisher, starring Denzel Washington, tells the true story of someone who went through the experience of aging out of foster care and how it affected his life. The movie received mixed reviews but the message from the story is undeniable: growing up without a solid family structure prevents you from having a fully developing emotionally as a healthy adult. Note that a solid family structure can exist in a home with a single parent, grandparents/aunts/siblings and from a gay couple and an unstable homelife can come from a two parent household.

I think open adoption is a great option for people who insist on having a newborn child and I think it is a much more reasonable option than fertility treatments that lead to litters of children and present a greater health risk to both the other and the child. But I think that by only focusing on the segment of adoption that doesn't need any promotion, WE is doing quite a disservice to the general public and the unadopted children of this country.