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A New Look at Adoption Julia C. Jackson Glen Allen High School

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Abstract This paper explores adoption processes today focusing mainly on three countries; United States (US), Ethiopia, and China. This is done by first exploring the cost and system of adoption in each country then comparing all three against one another to determine the best possible system to increase the number of adoptions each year. The most consistent and most negative factor in the adoption process of all three countries that are studied would be cost. However, that is not only negative to be focused on. Different countries have different systems Ethiopia and China are both run through public systems while the US is run through a combination of foster care, adoption agencies, and adoption attorneys. Another large problem with adoption is the lack of awareness. People do not realize how much of a need this world has for loving homes. This is the easiest problem that there is and can be fixed my simply raising awareness. The overall goal is to hopefully one day have a streamlined process for adoption everywhere that will simplify things.

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Today, there are an estimated 153 million orphans, around the world. There are 17,900,000 children living in orphanages or on the streets and lack the care and attention required for healthy development (n.a. 2012). These children are at risk of disease, malnutrition, and death. Along with the obvious physical needs that are lacking these children desperately need a loving and caring home but that is hard to get because adoption is such a complicated process. With every country the process changes, there is no international standard that one must follow to adopt a child. Even just between developing and developed countries there are many differences. According to the U.S. State Department, U.S. families adopted more than 9,000 children in 2011 (n.a. 2012). Last year,

Americans adopted the highest number of children from China followed by Ethiopia. These two countries as well as the US vary significantly considering the United States is domestic adoption, Ethiopia is an international developing country, and China is an international developed country. The most significant differences in international and domestic adoption include the process of adoption, cost, and time. Although, third world adoption is often cheaper there are a lot more risks involved such as traveling to a bad area and having to deal with disease and illness that can affect whether or not families can bring their new child back into the United States. But there is a lot that can be learned from comparing and study each of these countries.

The biggest factor that contributes to whether or not families adopt children is the cost of adoption. No matter the country adoption is expensive that is just a fact. However, when looking at the US comparative to other countries it appears that domestic adoption is cheaper

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with only 19.7% of domestic adoptions costing over $30,000 (n.a. 2012). However, almost all domestic adoptions cost more than $10,000 which is a lot of money for families. Especially considering that this is just the cost of getting the child. These numbers do not include the cost of living and other things associated with raising a child. The cost of adoption depends on several factors. These include: separate legal representation for the adoptive parents and the birth parent(s), a Home Study by a licensed professional, advertising expenses, travel costs (if needed), and any needed expenses for the birth mother; such as counseling or medical expenses. An amount between $20,000 and $25,000 is likely for domestic adoption, but costs can be higher or lower (n.a. 2012). It is, in the US, illegal to pay a birth parent or anyone else to adopt a child.

The United States is unique in its adoption process for many reasons. One being that in this country there is no system of public adoption per se, instead we have the foster care system. Foster Care is defined as 24-hour care for minors placed away from any parents or guardians and for whom the State agency accepts responsibility for. Over the past decade the decline in adoptions in the United States (specifically) has been very significant. Adoptions have fallen over 17 percent in the last decade (McMurry, 2012). This can be attributed to a growth in the foster care system that the country has experienced. While foster care is a good temporary solution to get kids out of bad environments, such as abusive families, or living on the streets. Foster care is not necessarily meant to be a permanent solution. Many foster care homes care for multiple kids at once which does not always provide the most stability and attention that any given child could need to thrive. The average time for a child entering the foster care system and being adopted is now over two

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and a half years (McMurry, 2012). The data shows that each year, over 27,000 youth age out of foster care without the emotional and financial support necessary for life. Over the past decade this number has been steadily rising. Today nearly 40% of kids who have aged out have been homeless, nearly 60% of the young men have been convicted of a crime, and only 48% were employed. While 75% of women receive government benefits only 33% of men receive them. 50% of all youth who aged out have been involved in substance use and 17% of the females were pregnant (n.a. 2012). These statistics are proof that there is clearly a problem with the system. There needs to be a change so that more kids can find a permanent home instead of bouncing from one foster house to another every few years. With foster care being the public adoption option in the United States there is also a private option. This would be through an attorney rather than agencies. The people that are adopting today through private adoption are more likely to be going through an open or at least semi-open adoption, rather than the traditional system of closed adoption. Open adoption means that the birth parent(s) can pick the adoptive family and the child can grow up knowing the birth mother and sometimes even the birth father. There is a healthy relationship between the adoptive family and the birth parent(s) in an open adoption. While a semi-open adoption still allows the birth parents an opportunity to pick the adoptive family as well as keep in touch with them (like an open adoption) its just from more of a distance or through a lawyer (Meechan, 2013). Private adoptions (no matter open or not) have advantages such as a shorter search and wait time. Compared with public adoptions the search times for infants in need of a home are most times shorter for private adoptions. Also, there is more information to be had. Many times in private adoptions it is easier to

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know the background information of a child than in the public system where only limited amounts of information are kept for each child. However, private adoptions are always more expensive. That is the main disadvantage to this system. Overall, US adoptions have been steadily declining over the past decade. There are a few plausible explanations for this negative trend. The first being that Americas social standards are changing. Today it is more socially acceptable to be pregnant and not be in a committed relationship, let alone be married. This was not the case even just 10 years ago. Back then if one was single and pregnant society expected the baby to be given up for adoption but now the population of single parents is growing. Abortions are also on the way to being legalized and many young expecting women see that as a good way out that some believe to be less of a hassle than adoption. Just as the cost is a large factor in the domestic adoption of children in the United States the same can be said for adopting children from Ethiopia. There is a common misconception that because Ethiopia is an international developing country adopting from there will be cheaper however the data shows that is not the case. The average cost of adopting a child from Ethiopia is approximately $28,254 (n.a. 2012). This is just as expensive if not more as adopting from most other places. As stated before that approximate number above only covers the cost of getting the child, nothing more after that, this explains the reason many people shy away from adoption as an option. Even just since the year 2000 there have been over 1,700 children adopted by Americans from Ethiopia (Miller, 2008). All data shows that the number of adoptions from

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Ethiopia is only increasing year by year. This is a good thing because there are a large number of children waiting for a home. The vast number of children in need of a family is the main draw for many Americans to adopt in Ethiopia. The system or process of adopting in Ethiopia is a form of public adoption through agencies. There are multiple agencies that couples can choose to use when adopting but because it is a public system the countrys government sets most of the rules and regulations. However, because Ethiopia is a developing country there are a few disadvantages to adopting there. First, it is expected to take around 20-29 months of waiting for families to get their child after a referral. Second, is sometimes there is little to no information on the health and development of the children being adopted there. HIV, for example, is common in children and adults in many areas in Ethiopia. As a result of all of the health and developmental concerns that come with adopting from this country many Ethiopian babies have uncertain ages, behavioral problems, and developmental delays (Miller, 2008). It is not uncommon for new parents and families will bring the child back into the US after adopting and find that the child is older than the adoption records show. Besides, the fact that there is a large need for children to be adopted many people chose to go through Ethiopia for adoption because they are less strict on some rules. Especially in the sense that the do not go into as much family history detail as an agency would in the US. However, the one thing that Ethiopia is strict on is that the country does not permit adoptions by homosexuals. The unknown factors of adoption in this developing world are a definite disadvantage that is seen when adopting from a developing country. However, Ethiopias adoption rates are continually rising in the most recent years.

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The average estimated cost of adoption from China is $28,623. Although still very high this number is not that much more than the average estimate for adopting in Ethiopia ($28,254). This goes to show that no matter where a child is being adopted from it will be a costly expense. The cost for adopting from China can be broken up into money spend on a homestudy, agency application fees, document preparation and paperwork fees, travel expenses, in-country adoption expenses, and post adoption expenses. The majority of the money however is just spent on traveling to go get the child and bring him/her home. Since the 1990s, China has become a major country from which many Americans adopt overseas. The system for adoption in China is a public adoption system. All applications for adoptions in China must go through The China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA). An advantage of adopting from China is that there is truly a need for homes. Chinas social, economic, and welfare policies have had the most impact on this increase in adoption. The number of child abandonments in China rises each year and more and more families from both the US and England are drawn to adopt from China (Dowling & Brown, 2009). Chinas population policy is the largest cause in this rise in abandonment and adoption numbers. The population of people in China is already so large that it is encouraged to have small families of only one or two children, if a family has more than that the family can be subject to heavy taxes from the government (Dowling & Brown, 2009). There are a few disadvantages to adopting from China. First, Chinese adoptions are known for taking an extremely long amount of time to go through. They say on average that it takes 48 months to adopt from China however, it is not uncommon to find families that applied to adopt from China and never hear back anything for a referral. Even though China has a

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plethora of children available for adoption they are one of the strictest countries on who can come in to adopt their children. All of this shows that there are many differences when looking at adoption from different countries. Different prices, different standards, different policies, different wait times, and not enough success stories. All of these differents are harming the adoption process instead of helping it. If there were a standard it would make the process less complicated for everyone involved, the adoptive families, the birth parents, and the country. It is believed that the less complicated the process the more willing new families would be to look into adoption who were never interested before. However, there is one common theme seen between all three of the before mentioned countries (United States, Ethiopia, and China) that is the expensive cost. The sad reality is that it would be rather difficult to cut that cost much lower than it already is. This is because no country would probably be willing or wanting to give up the revenue that they gain from adoptions. Right now the only plausible way to possibly cut cost would be to eliminate private adoptions altogether because private adoptions are the most expensive due to the number of outside resources such as attorneys that are required for these types of adoptions to happen. This would work fine for countries such as Ethiopia or China where they are already run by public adoptions. However, it would be much more difficult to do this in the US because our adoption system is primarily all based on private adoption agencies and attorneys. The figure below shows the comparison of costs first domestically, showing that private adoption truly is the most expensive. Contributing to the fact that the number of adoptions in the US in only dropping. Then below one can see that all international adoptions run approximately the same amount

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of money. All of the costs are very expensive still but at least consistent among all the other countries. The table also shows the breakdown of what the money goes to. This illustrates how it would be difficult to cut adoption costs by too much because each group involved would have to agree to individually cut their part lower which in reality just will never happen. Figure 1:

However, there is one way to make adoption more streamlined that would not have to deal with money. That option would be to follow after Chinas example and have one agency that all applications for adoption go through one agency. The positive to this system is that it has proven to be a very organized system. On the downside, this system is what

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causes such long wait times for families trying to get referrals in China. To compromise and make this system most effective there should just be one agency for all the adoption applications coming into the country however, this agency needs to be well staffed and well prepared for the large volume of applications that they will receive. There will need to be a process of who looks over what part of the application and a list of what is acceptable and not to streamline the process as much as possible. This ultra-organized system will hopefully allow for more families to be contacted quicker with referrals of children that the agency sees as a good fit for them. This would hopefully speed up the timeline for the adoption process. In addition to creating one agency to handle all the applications the process of adoption both internationally and domestic the number of adoptions per year could be optimized if every country created a system of foster care and seriously pushed adoption of older children out of the system. Foster care is a good option for quick relief for children in bad situations however, as mentioned before; it is only a temporary system. One of the downfalls of the American Foster Care system is the number of kids aging out of the system. This could be prevented if there was more of a push for families to adopt older age children. Another solution to this could be to change how the foster care system works and in the long run make it a more permanent system. This would work if families knew going into the foster care process that if the child fits in their family then they could potentially stay there forever. The down side to this idea is the less people now may opt into being foster care parents or families because they cant make the long term commitment that in the new system they would have to make.

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It is well recognized that in todays world there is no short and easy answer to that would completely fix the adoption process and maximize the number of children that can be adopted each year and any new system that anyone tries will take years to be effective. That is just the harsh reality of trying to reform a system that people have already been using for so long. Nothing will ever happen overnight for adoption reform or any reform for that matter. But even just the smallest things, such as raising awareness as to why this is a big deal and the number of children that have to live without parents, family, and proper support. The hope is that awareness is something any one person can control. Anyone and everyone can control what they themselves talk about so if there is a movement that starts to talk about solving the problems of adoption the hope would be that the more people who know, the more people that will be willing to help. That is the hopefully quick and easiest fix to the problem. However, in the long run it would be ideal if the system could be reformed and streamlined in the ways that have been discussed above.

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Reference List Blomgren, D. C. (2013). A LEGAL ASSISTANCE ATTORNEY'S PRIMER ON ADOPTION LAW. Reporter, 40(1), 36. Dowling, M., & Brown, G. (2009). Globalization and international adoption from China. Child & Family Social Work, 14(3), 352-361. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2206.2008.00607.x Fang, G. (2008). A Special US-China Relationship: American Adoptions of Chinese Children. Washington Journal Of Modern China, 9(1), 73. Inskeep, S. (2013). Modern Family. Newsweek Global, 161(7), 1. McMurry, I. c. (2012). Why Are Adoption Rates Falling?. Vital Speeches Of The Day, 78(4), 107-112. Meehan, M. (2013). Adoption: Where Is Solomon When We Need Him?. Human Life Review, 39(4), 61. Miller, L. (2008). Health of Children Adopted from Ethiopia. Maternal & Child Health Journal, 12(5), 599. doi:10.1007/s10995-007-0274-4 Roby, J. M. (2013). Social Justice and Intercountry Adoptions: The Role of the U.S. Social Work Community. Social Work, 58(4), 295. Webley, K. (2013). The Baby Deficit. Time, 181(2), 34 Winslow, R. (2012). Immigration Law and Improvised Policy in the Making of International Adoption, 19481961. Journal Of Policy History, 24(2), 319. doi:10.1017/S0898030612000061