Why aren't more American children adopted out Internationally?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Putting this here, since I have no idea if there is a factual answer.

The impression I get here on the board, and in other media, is that there is a “surplus” of unwanted children in America, some of whom are even considered “unadoptable” because there are too many children and not enough homes who want children of a particular race/age etc. Also, there seems to be a distinct difference between “inernational adoption” and just adoption in the American language.

In Norway, the adoption of a Norwegian-born child by a non-family member is almost unheard of. There are about 50 non-international adoptions each year, but almost all of these are step-parents adopting step-children, or tragically orphaned children adopted by close family. In the last ten years, there has never been more than 10 children actually put up for adoption by strangers, and most often it is five or less.

So, almost all children adopted in Norway are international adoptees. In fact, the phrase “international adoption” is redundant - adopting a child means bringing home a foreign child. There is a long waiting list for adoptions (I believe 1 to 4 years is typical), and not enough children to go around, basically. I may be mistaken, but probably the situation is much the same in the rest of Scandinavia, and probably parts of the rest of Europe.

Given this, why aren’t American children “on the market” for adoption by foreigners? Why isn’t America an adoptee-producing country? Is it considered better for a child to grow up in foster care, but still be American, than to grow up in a foreign, but just as advanced western nation?

I tried googling, but the only thing I could find was something vague about a handfull of African-American infants being adopted in France (which atleast seems to indicate it does happen sometimes). Maybe my google-fu isn’t working, but I can’t find any solid information about American children being adopted out to foreign countries (or not). Maybe they are, in large numbers, and I have just failed to hear about any. Is there any information on this?

I’m not being snarky, or saying that there is anything wrong with the American way of doing things. I’m honestly wondering why, if there really is such a glut of children in need of homes in America, these children aren’t sent abroad.

Am I just misinformed about the “surplus” of childen in America, or is there some law I don’t know about? Or is it just not the done thing?

(If I’m just being stupid, please ignore. I really don’t mean to offend anybody.)

2

I suspect it’s partly bureaucracy. There’s a reason Americans themselves find it easier to adopt children from abroad than here at home.

3

I think one factor is that most adopting people prefer to adopt infants…you know, the whole “blank slate” thing. Infants placed for adoption voluntarily by their birthmom are in high demand and find homes easily. Unfortunately, the majority of kids in the US foster care system that can’t find permanent homes are older kids who were initially raised by their birth parents but then taken away from the birth parents because of abuse/neglect. For that reason alone, many people won’t consider adopting them - the fears of the baggage that comes from the kid spending early years in a bad environment.

It is also my personal opinion that race issues play a role. Many kids in the US foster care system are black, bi-racial, or hispanic. While surely not everyone who goes to Russia to adopt a child is doing so because of a preference for a white kid, it would not surprise me if sometimes that was a factor. It seems that in many locales, Asian and white children are widely perceived as the most desirable to adopt. Furthermore, for many years it was considered acceptable for agencies to keep white parents from adopting black kids because of concerns (from the adoption agencies and from some people within the black community) about how it would affect a black child to be raised by white parents, although the barriers to transracial adoption now seem to be less than they used to be.

4

Because where are the celebrities to adopt them? Most of the biggest ones are all in America.

5

It just so happens that, at the adoption agency my wife and I worked with to get our son, there ARE a substantial number of European clients, especially from Britain.

When I’ve tried to explain this before, some people have misunderstood. But I’ll try again.

Most Western European nations have BOTH more liberal attitudes toward abortion than the United States AND more generous welfare systems. Hence, if a European girl gets pregnant, she has no reason to consider giving the child up for adoption. If she wants to keep the baby, generous welfare programs will make it easy for her do do so. If she wants to get rid of it, easy access to abortion will enable her to do so.

6

I think when many people think about “adoption” they think of orphans or of infants who have been given up by their mothers. Most children in foster homes and state institutions have been removed from their homes as older children by Child Welfare of some sort; they’re likely to have been in very bad, abusive situations and may have disabilities or behavior problems. I doubt those nice Norwegian people are looking to adopt violent male teenagers, for example. (I’m sure that some of them are, of course, but clicking through my state’s “available children” pages one night left me utterly in tears, because there is no way in hell any of those kids were ever going to get adopted, ever.)

7

That’s what I was thinking, but I wasn’t sure… I didn’t want to make a WAG on such a sensitive subject.

8

Huh? You do realize that celebrities only comprise a small amount of total adoptions, right?

9

I believe that was a joke. (Pretty funny one too, Rigamarole.)

10

It occurs to me that one reason may be that someone who is thinking in terms of rescuing a child from a bad situation overseas will probably look towards the worst countries. The most impoverished, worst governed, most war torn etc. While I’ve never hesitated to criticize America, it’s hardly that bad.

11

There isn’t a surplus of healthy white infants, no. Those get snapped up. What there is a surplus of is kids who are considered “special needs.” Kids who have birth defects or chronic health conditions, disabilities. Kids who are older and/or have been taken out of bad situations. Kids who just ain’t the right color. Kids who have siblings and need to be kept together. There’s just not a lot of demand for those kids, in any country.

12

Adoption stats.

Bottom line is that the vast majority of unadopted American kids are either special needs, older or black/hispanic all of which puts them (demand wise) at the bottom of the pile.

13

All of this does make sense, than you all for taking the time to answer me.

Hm, I guess this was the bit of information I did not have. In Norway, there are also more such children then homes willing to take them. The difference is, such children are never available for adoption - the bio parents are still the legal parents, the children are placed in “foster homes”, but the foster parents are only (in addition to the relevant government agency, I forget the name) the legal guardians. There is no way for the government to forcibly let a child be adopted against the parents wishes - the only case I can think of where a foster child was adopted, it happened after the foster child reached 18 years of age.

The funny thing about your example is that I know a particular foster family very well, and the children they have fostered while I have known then were, indeed, two violent teenage males. One of whom is today a healthy, non-violent adult, and the other one (who was considered mentally ill, and on a list of medications longer than my arm) is a straight A and B student, and medication free. Not that this anecdote is indicative of anything, I just thought that sometimes, such children do beat the ods.

The part I don’t get is that black children are so hard to place. Is this a particular American issue? I just looked a list of statistics for Norwegian international addoptions in 2008. While China was the most popular country to adopt from, #2 was Colombia, #4 was Etiopia and #5 was South Africa. I have a hard time believing that Norway is so statistically different from other Scandinavian or even European countries. The country of origin seems to be limited more by supply than by choice.

BTW what does this statistic look like for America?

14

I had a very similar experience. Before my marriage fell apart, we were considering fostering with a view towards eventually adopting. I would have taken an African American male or a someone with a minor disability or needing some help dealing with past abuse. But I felt entirely inadequate as a first time mother to take on one of the many teenagers who would need 24 hour care for the rest of their lives, or the boy who was marked as violent and needing a home without any other children or pets.

15

I’m not for certain, but I’ve heard talk that one reason is that many public adoption agencies are race-matchers. They often won’t consider adopting a child to “racially-different” parents, possibly out of a fear of being criticized for “putting our race in their hands” or some such nonsense. I believe such criticism has actually happened in the past. Since many urban blacks are less well-off, they probably can’t adopt as easily, so…

16

For some reason, people are perfectly happy adopting children of another race internationally but not locally. Partly I suspect because of the advantages of international adoption - non-involved parents, little chance of having a mother change her mind, less drug use, etc. People who go internationally don’t seem to care about race as much as they care about getting a few-strings-attached healthy child and getting one sooner than they would here.

ETA - I recently read an article about black American children adopted by white Canadian couples - it was very interesting.

17

The Supreme Court made this illegal about 20 years ago - the exception is Native American children due to tribal sovereignty. But you cannot do racial preference placement of Africian American children with Black parents over White parents - vice versa.

The unfortunate truth is the America is still a racially charged place - and while we might be perfectly fine working with “them” or being friends with “them” there are still a whole lot of people who wouldn’t date “them,” marry “them” or parent “them.” Them is in quotes - the hardest kids to place are Africian American, but Asian and Hispanic kids are also more difficult to place than White kids. And honestly, as the white mom of an Asian kid - it isn’t necessarily negatively motivated. Being a multi racial family means taking on certain burdens in our society - and they are greater for white parents of black kids. Not everyone is cut out for handling the identity issues a minority kid raised by white people is likely to face - and it is important that parents are willing and able to face those issues - cute babies become emotionally charged teenagers.

18

Actually, healthy babies have few issues in the U.S. getting adopted regardless of race - although they might have to go out of state to find parents. The problem with our system is that relatively few healthy babies enter it - which makes for long waits and an uncertain process. We’d have happily adopted domestically - if there was a good chance of us getting a placement in a reasonable amount of time. But there were zero guarentees of EVER getting a placement of a child of any race in domestic adoption. With the international system, you get in line, and when your number comes up, they match you.

19

I don’t know what the stats are like these days, and it varies by area, but it took my parents four years to receive a healthy black infant from foster care. She’s sixteen now, so it’s not all that recent, but at that point, there wasn’t a surplus of available healthy black babies just sitting around waiting for someone to be approved to take them.

20

Aha, so the biggest real difference is that children removed from unfit parents are put up for adoption in America, while here, they are not. That makes more sense, I guess.