ADOPTION
Adoption has been practiced in many societies through the centuries, usually in situations where the birth parents are unable to raise a child or where natural reproduction has failed to provide some desired fertility outcome. This entry focuses on adoption in modern, low-fertility societies.
Adoption is a legal procedure involving the permanent transfer of parental rights and duties in respect to a child from the birth parent(s) to another person. Legal adoption has been introduced in most industrialized societies over the past 150 years (in Massachusetts, legal adoption was introduced in 1851; in England and Wales, in 1926; in Ireland, in 1952). It involves at least three key parties: the adopted child(ren); the birth parent(s); and the adoptive parent(s) (sometimes termed the adoption triangle). Adoption provides a new family for children whose parent(s) are unable or unwilling to care for them, and it also meets the needs of childless adults.
Traditional Baby Adoption
Rising rates of non-marital fertility after World War II led to many unmarried mothers relinquishing their babies for adoption. In England and Wales in 1968, there were 24,831 adoptions–of which 14,461 (58%) involved "illegitimate" children adopted by non-relatives: more than one in five babies born outside marriage were adopted in the 1960s. By 1984 the number of such adoptions had fallen to 2,910. The widespread availability of reliable contraception, the legalization of abortion, and an increased acceptance of single parenthood resulted in few single mothers relinquishing their babies.
In other European countries, within-country adoption of non-relative children had virtually ceased by the end of the twentieth century: in the Netherlands, numbers fell from 747 in 1970 to 54 in 1995; in Norway, from 411 to 90. In Sweden in 1995, there were only 34 non-relative adoptions of Swedish children.
Special Needs Adoption and Permanency
In-country adoption continues in the United Kingdom and the United States, and it has expanded in the cases of older children in the public care system and those with serious physical, intellectual, or emotional problems. In the United States, the term permanency planning was widely used in the early 1970s in reference to this kind of adoption. The practice was formalized in the 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. In 1998 some 36,000 children were adopted from the public care system, and 86 percent of adopters received public subsidies. Adoption allowances were also introduced in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. In both countries, government policy is to increase the number of such adoptions, and this has been accompanied by a rise in contested adoptions where courts have, in some instances, dispensed with the consent of birth parents.
Stepparent Adoption
The increase in divorce rates in many Western countries during the late twentieth century led to a rise in second marriages where stepparents (usually step-fathers) sought to adopt their partner's birth children. In England and Wales, the number of stepparent adoptions peaked in 1974 when there were 14,805 adoptions of children where one partner in the adopting couple was a parent of the adoptee. New legislation (the 1975 Children Act) sought to discourage such adoptions; the Houghton Committee Report, on which much of the act is based, argued that stepparent adoption should not be used as it often involved the birth mother adopting her own legitimate child, removing all parental rights from the birth father. By 1984 the number of stepparent adoptions had fallen to 2,650. Two decades after the 1975 Children Act, stepparent adoptions still accounted for about half of the 5,000 adoptions recorded each year in England and Wales. In the United States in 1982, stepparent adoptions made up 42 percent of the 127,441 adoptions.
Adoption Criteria
In most countries legal adoption is only permitted for married couples, but in the United Kingdom, the Adoption and Children Bill debated in Parliament in 2002 has been amended to allow unmarried couples in a stable union to adopt jointly; this would extend to gay and lesbian couples. Adoption by a single person is becoming more common and, in practice, this has allowed one of a cohabitating couple to adopt with the understanding that a partner would become a caregiver, albeit without (adoptive) parental rights. Prospective adopters must be of a minimum age, and an upper age limit (often as young as 40) is often imposed for those wishing to adopt an infant. Older couples have often turned to intercountry adoption if they did not want an older or handicapped child. Most agencies also have criteria in relation to income and housing conditions.
Transracial Adoption
Transracial adoption (TRA) in the United States and United Kingdom has almost always meant the adoption
TABLE 1
of an African-American or West Indian, Asian, Native American, or non-white Hispanic child by a white family. TRA became common in the United States in the 1960s as fewer white babies were available for adoption, but from the mid-1970s opposition to the practice mounted. Adoption of Native American children was subsequently restricted by legislation. Transracial adoption of black children has remained controversial in the United States and the United Kingdom, with both strong supporters and strong opponents of the view that black children should only be adopted by black parents, even if there is a lack of available black adopters and the alternative to being placed with white adopters is to remain in an institution. In the United States, the 1994 Multiethnic Placement Act made consideration of race in adoptive placements impermissible.
Intercountry Adoption
Intercountry adoption, which can be seen as a form of migratory behavior, originated in American philanthropy toward devastated countries after World War II. Later the Korean and Vietnam Wars resulted in many adoptions to the United States, Sweden, and other countries. The decline in infants available for domestic adoption made intercountry adoption an attractive option for childless couples; in Northern Europe, it was often the only option. Reports of child trafficking and large payments for newborn babies led to international concern, culminating in The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, which was concluded and signed by 63 states in May 1993. By 2002 the Convention had been ratified by 37 countries. However, scandals continued–including accusations of child-trafficking in Guatemala and of profiteering by officials in Romania. At the end of the twentieth century, the incidence of intercountry adoption was highest in mainland Europe, although the number of such adoptions was greatest in the United States (see Table 1).
Global numbers of intercountry adoption reached some 20,000 a year in the late 1980s and then began to decline. The fall of the Ceausescu regime in 1989 led to many adoptions from Romania in 1990–1991, and in the mid- and late 1990s a growing number of very young children were adopted from China (almost all of them girls) and Russia. By the end of the century, the total intercountry adoption movement was approaching 35,000 a year. The number of foreign children adopted in the United States rose further from 15,774 in 1998 to 19,327 in 2001. Table 2 shows the major sources of children (a large majority of them infants) in the 1980s and 1998.
Low Fertility Countries as States of Origin
Although intercountry adoption often is characterized as the movement of children from poor, over-populated countries, some states of origin have had low fertility levels (e.g., Germany after World War II). In the late 1990s, three of the four most important sources of children–Russia, China, and South Korea–had fertility below replacement level, as did Romania, and had fertility rates lower than some states receiving children from these countries. Many other Eastern European countries such as Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, which became major providers of infants for the United States from 1998, also have low fertility rates.
In Search of Origins
In most low-fertility countries, legal adoption has been marked by secrecy and stigma. Before the last quarter of the twentieth century, most countries refused adopted persons access to information about their origins. The United States has a long tradition of sealed records, and even in 2000 a majority of its states did not allow the adoptee access to identifying information.
In England and Wales, the 1975 Children Act gave the right of access to their original birth records to all adopted persons over the age of 18. This right
TABLE 2
has been exercised widely, and it is estimated that a majority of those adopted by non-parents will seek information about their origins over their lifetime. In 1991 an Adoption Contact Register was established, enabling adopted persons and birth relatives to indicate an interest in meeting each other.
In New Zealand, the 1985 Adult Adoption Information Act gave adopted persons the right to their original birth certificate at age 20. Birth parents also have a right to ask for information about their children, although either party can veto the transmission of information.
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, adoption was much more open. In the United States, adoption of infants increasingly involves birth mothers meeting with (and even choosing) their child's adoptive parents. Research by Harold Grotevant and Ruth McRoy indicates that contact between birth parents and adoptees may continue after placement, and appears to have no detrimental effect.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Altstein, Howard, and Rita Simon, eds. 1991. Intercountry Adoption: A Multinational Perspective. New York: Praeger.
Avery, Rosemary, ed. 1997. Adoption Policy and Special Needs Children. Westport, CT: Auburn House.
Grotevant, Harold, and Ruth McRoy. 1998. Openness in Adoption: Exploring Family Connections. London: Sage.
Howe, David, and Julia Feast. 2000. Adoption, Search, and Reunion: The Long Term Experience of Adopted Adults. London: The Children's Society.
Kane, Saralee. 1993. "The Movement of Children for International Adoption: An Epidemiological Perspective." The Social Science Journal 30(4):323–339.
Kirton, Derek. 2000. "Race," Ethnicity and Adoption. London: Open University.
Mueller, Ulrich, and Barbara Perry. 2001. "Adopted Persons' Search for and Contact with their Birth Parents." Adoption Quarterly 4(3): 5–62.
Selman, Peter, ed. 2000. Intercountry Adoption: Developments, Trends, and Perspectives. London: BAAF.
——. 2002. "Intercountry Adoption in the New Millennium: The Silent Migration Revisited." In Population Research and Policy Review 21: 205–225.
Simon, Rita J., Howard Altstein, and Marygold Melli. 1994. The Case for Transracial Adoption. Washington, D.C.: American University Press.
Triseliotis, John. 1973. In Search of Origins. London: Routledge.
Triseliotis, John, Joan Shireman, and Marian Hundleby. 1997. Adoption: Theory, Policy and Practice. London: Cassell.
INTERNET RESOURCES.
Hague Conference. 2002. <http://www.hch.net/e/conventions/menu33e.html>.
National Adoption Information Clearinghouse (NAIC). 2002. "Adoption: Numbers and Trends: Adoption from Foster Care." <http://www.calib.com/naic/index.htm>.
Selman, Peter. 1999. "In Search of Origins: Estimating Lifetime Take-up of Access to Birth Records in England and Wales." Minneapolis: International Conference on Adoption Research. <http://fsos.che.umn.edu/mtarp/Papers.htm>.
