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Adoption
Doreen Arcus Ph.D., The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology
2nd ed. Gale Group, 2001
A practice in which an adult assumes the role of parent for a child
who is not his or her biological offspring.
An adult assumes the role of parent for a child other than his or
her own biological offspring in the process of adoption. Informal
adoptions occur when a relative or stepparent assumes permanent
parental responsibilities without court involvement. However, legally
recognized adoptions require a court or other government agency
to award permanent custody of a child (or, occasionally, an older
individual) to adoptive parents. Specific requirements for adoption
vary among states and countries. Adoptions can be privately arranged
through individuals or agencies, or arranged through a public agency
such as a state's child protective services. Adoptees may be infants
or older children; they may be adopted singly or as sibling groups;
and they may come from the local area or from other countries. Adoptive
parents may be traditional married couples, but they may also be
single men or women or non-traditional couples. Parents may be childless
or have other children.
Adoption is a practice that dates to ancient times, although there
have been fundamental changes in the process. Ancient Romans, for
example, saw adoption as a way of ensuring male heirs to childless
couples so that family lines and religious traditions could be maintained.
In contrast, modern American adoption laws are written in support
of the best interests of the child, not of the adopter.
Modern American adoption laws evolved during the latter half of
the 19th century, prompted by changes due to the Industrial Revolution,
large numbers of immigrant children who were often in need of care,
and a growing concern for child welfare. Because of the poor health
conditions in the tenements of large cities, many children were
left on their own at early ages. These dependent children were sometimes
placed in almshouses with the mentally ill, and sometimes in foundling
homes plagued by high mortality rates. In the 1850s the Children's
Aid Society of New York City began to move dependent children out
of city institutions. Between 1854 and 1904 orphan trains carried
an estimated 100,000 children to the farms of the Midwest where
they were placed with families and generally expected to help with
farm work in exchange for care.
Massachusetts became the first state to pass legislation mandating
judicial supervision of adoptions in 1851, and by 1929 all states
had passed some type of adoption legislation. During the early part
of the 20th century it was standard practice to conduct adoptions
in secret and with records sealed, in part to protect the parties
involved from the social stigma of illegitimate birth. After WWI
two factors combined to increase interest in the adoption of infants.
The development of formula feeding allowed for the raising of infants
without a ready supply of breast milk, and psychological theory
and research about the relative importance of training and conditioning
in child rearing eased the concerns of childless couples about potential
"bad seeds." Because of the burgeoning interest in infant adoptions,
many states legislated investigations of prospective adoptive parents
and court approval prior to finalization of the adoption.
Until about mid-century the balance of infant supply and parent
demand was roughly equal. However during the 1950s the demand for
healthy white infants began to outweigh the supply. Agencies began
to establish matching criteria in an attempt to provide the best
fit between characteristics of the child or birth parents and the
adoptive parents, matching on items such as appearance, ethnicity,
education, and religious affiliation. By the 1970s it was not uncommon
for parents to wait 3-5 years after their initial application to
a private adoption agency before they had a healthy infant placed
with them. These trends resulted from a decrease in the numbers
of infants surrendered for adoption following the increased availability
of birth control, the legalization of abortion, and the increasingly
common decision of unmarried mothers to keep their infants.
In response to this dearth of healthy, same-race infants, prospective
adoptive parents turned increasingly to international and transracial
adoptions. Children from Japan and Europe began to be placed with
American families by agencies after WWII, and since the 1950s Korea
has been the major source of international adoptions (except in
1991 with the influx of Romanian children). The one child policy
of the Chinese government has provided a new source of infants to
American families, and recently many adoptees have come from Peru,
Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, the Philippines, and India.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s was accompanied by an increase
in the number of transracial adoptions involving black children
and white parents. These adoptions peaked in 1971, and one year
later the National Association of Black Social Workers issued a
statement opposing transracial adoption. They argued that white
families were unable to foster the growth of psychological and cultural
identity in black children. Transracial adoptions now account for
a small percentage of all adoptions, and these most frequently involve
Korean-born children and white American families.
While healthy infants have been much in demand for adoption during
the last 50 years, the number of other children waiting for adoptive
homes has grown. In response, the U.S. Congress passed the federal
Adoption Assistance Child Welfare Act (Public Law 96-272) in 1980,
giving subsidies to families adopting children with special needs
that typically make a child hard to place. Although individual states
may define the specific parameters, these characteristics include
older age, medical disabilities, minority group status, and certain
physical, mental, or emotional needs.
Types of adoption
Adoption arrangements are typically thought of as either closed
or open. Actually, they may involve many varying degrees of openness
about identity and contact between the adoptive family and the birth
family. At one extreme is the closed adoption in which an intermediary
third party is the only one who knows the identity of both the birth
and adoptive parents. The child may be told he or she is adopted,
but will have no information about his or her biological heritage.
When the stigma attached to births out of wedlock was greater, most
adoptions were closed and records permanently sealed; however, a
move to open records has been promoted by groups of both adoptees
and by some birth mothers. Currently about half of the states allow
access to sealed records with the mutual consent of adoptee and
birth parent, and others have search processes through intermediary
parties available. Why search? Some research and clinical observation
suggests that, especially during adolescence, healthy identity formation
depends on full awareness of one's origins (Where do I get my freckles?
Why do I have this musical ability? Why did they give me up?). Other
important medical history may be critical to the adoptee's health
care planning. For birth mothers, sometimes they simply want to
know that their child turned out okay.
The move to open records lead to an increase in open adoptions in
which information is shared from the beginning. Open adoptions may
be completely open, as is the case when the birth parents (usually
the mother) and adoptive parents meet beforehand and agree to maintain
contact while the child is growing up. The child then has full knowledge
of both sets of parents.
Other open adoptions may include less contact, or periodic letters
sent to an intermediary agency, or continued contact with some family
members but not others. It can be a complex issue. In the case of
an older child who is removed from the family by protective services
because of abuse or neglect, the child clearly knows his birth parents
as well as any other siblings. If these siblings are also removed
and placed in different adoptive homes, it may be decided that periodic
visits between the children-once every few months, perhaps-should
be maintained, but that contact with the abusive parents should
be terminated until the child reaches adulthood and may choose to
search. Siblings may know each other's placements, but the birth
parents may have no knowledge of the children's whereabouts. However,
if a child is ultimately adopted by the foster family with whom
he or she was initially placed prior to the termination of parental
rights or visitation, then the birth parents might have knowledge
of the child's placement and whereabouts even though continued contact
may not be deemed in the best interests of the child.
Children removed from families for protective issues are sometimes
reunited with their parents after a stay in temporary foster homes
and after the parents have had the chance to rehabilitate and are
able to care adequately for their children. On the other hand, it
may be decided that reunification is not a feasible objective for
a particular family and a permanent home is then sought. The foster
family then plays a major role in the child's transition to his
or her "forever family." The desire to provide children with permanent
homes and the resulting sense of security and attachment as soon
as possible gives rise to another type of adoption, the legal risk
adoption.
Legal risk adoptions involve placement in the prospective adoptive
home prior to the legal termination of parental rights and subsequent
freeing of the child for adoption. In these cases, child protective
services are generally involved and relatively certain that the
courts will ultimately decide in favor of the adoptive placement.
The legal process can be drawn out if birth parents contest the
agency's petition for termination. Although there is the risk that
the adoption may not be finalized and that the child will be returned
to his or her birth parents, social service agencies generally do
not recommend such placements unless, in their best judgments, the
potential benefits to child and family far outweigh the legal risk.
Whether the child is free for adoption or a legal risk placement,
there is generally a waiting period before the adoption is finalized
or recognized by the courts. Although estimates vary, about 10%
of adoptions disrupt, that is, the child is removed from the family
before finalization. This figure has risen with the increase in
older and special needs children being placed for adoption. The
risk of disruption increases with the age of the child at placement,
a history of multiple placements prior to the adoptive home, and
acting-out behavior problems. Interestingly, many children who have
experienced disruption go on to be successfully adopted, suggesting
that disruption is often a bad fit between parental expectations,
skills, or resources and the child's needs. Many agencies conduct
parent support groups for adoptive families, and some states have
instituted training programs to alert prospective adoptive parents
to the challenges-as well as the rewards-of adopting special needs
children, thereby attempting to minimize the risk of disruption.
Who gets adopted?
Estimating the total number of children adopted in the United States
is difficult because private and independent adoptions are reported
only voluntarily to census centers. According to the National Committee
for Adoption, there were just over 100,000 domestic adoptions in
the U.S. in 1986, roughly an even split between related and unrelated
adoptions. Of unrelated domestic adoptees, about 40% were placed
by public agencies, 30% by private agencies, and 30% by private
individuals. Almost half of these adoptees were under the age of
two, and about one-quarter had special needs. There were also just
over 10,000 international adoptions, the majority of these children
under the age of two and placed by private agencies.
The American Public Welfare Association has collected data through
the Voluntary Cooperative Information System on children in welfare
systems across the U.S. who are somewhere in the process of being
adopted. Of children in the public welfare systems, about one-third
had their adoptions finalized in 1988, one-third were living in
their adoptive home waiting for finalization, and one-third were
awaiting adoptive placements. Key statistics on these adoptions
appear in the accompanying table.
Adoptions may be arranged privately through individuals, or a public
or private agency may be involved. Although adopting parents may
have certain expenses if the adoption is privately arranged, adoptions
are assumed to be a gratuitous exchange by law. No parties may profit
improperly from adoption arrangements and children are not to be
brokered. The objectives of public and private agencies can differ
somewhat. Private agencies generally have prospective adoptive parents
as their clients and the agency works to find a child for them.
Public agencies, on the other hand, have children as their clients
and the procurement of parents as their primary mission.
Outcomes of adoption
There is general agreement that children who are adopted and raised
in families do better than children raised in institutions or raised
with birth parents who are neglectful or abusive. Compared to the
general population, however, the conclusions are less robust and
the interpretation of the statistics is not clear. Adopted adolescents,
for example, receive mental health services more often than their
non-adopted peers, but this may be because adoptive families are
more likely to seek helping services or because once referring physicians
or counselors know that a child is adopted they assume there are
likely to be problems warranting professional attention.
When adjustment problems are manifested by adoptees, they tend to
occur around school age or during adolescence. D. M. Brodzinsky
and his colleagues have conducted a series of studies from which
they conclude that adopted infants and toddlers generally do not
differ from non-adopted youngsters, but greater risks for problems
such as aggression or depression emerge as the 5-7-year-old child
begins to understand the salience and implications of being adopted.
Still, it should be noted that the absolute incidence of adjustment
problems in adoptees is low even though it may be statistically
higher than the corresponding figures for non-adoptees.
In the course of normal development, adolescence is seen as a time
of identity formation and emerging independence. Adopted adolescents
are faced with the challenge of integrating disparate sources of
identity-their biological origins and their family of rearing-as
they establish themselves as individuals. For some this is a difficult
task and may result in rebellious or depressive behavior, risks
for all adolescents. Many adoption experts feel that families who
do not acknowledge the child's birth heritage from the beginning
may increase the likelihood that their child will experience an
especially difficult adolescence.
Problems associated with adoption may not always be the result of
psychological adjustment to adoption status or a reflection of less
than optimal family dynamics. Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD) was found to be more prevalent in adoptees than non-adoptees,
both among children adopted as infants and children removed from
the home at older ages. C. K. Deutsch suggests that ADHD in children
adopted as infants may be genetically inherited from the birth parents
and perhaps reflected in the impulsive behavior that resulted in
the child's birth in the first place. In the case of children who
have been removed from the home because of the trauma of abuse,
the hypervigilance used to cope with a threatening environment may
compromise the child's ability to achieve normal attention regulation.
Many of the studies addressing the outcomes of adoption fail to
consider important factors such as the pre-placement history of
the child, the structure and dynamic of the adopting family, or
the courses of individual children's development. Many studies are
cross-sectional rather than longitudinal by design, meaning that
different groups of children at different ages are studied rather
than the same children being followed over a period of time. It
is also difficult to establish what control or comparison groups
should be used. Should adopted children be compared to other children
in the types of families into which they have been adopted or should
they be compared to children in the types of families from which
they have been surrendered? These are complex issues because adoptees
are a heterogeneous group, and it is as important to understand
their individual differences as it is their commonalities.
Further Reading
For Your Information
- Brodzinsky, D. M., and M. D. Schechter, eds. The Psychology
of Adoption. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
- Brodzinsky, D. M. "Long-Term Outcomes in Adoption." The Future
of Children 3, 1993, pp. 153-66.
- Caplan. L. An Open Adoption. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1990.
- Deutsch, D. K., J. M. Swanson, and J. H. Bruell. "Overrepresentation
of Adoptees in Children with Attention Deficit Disorder." Behavior
Genetics 12, 1982, pp. 231-37.
- Lancaster, K. Keys to Adopting a Child. Hauppauge, NY: Barron's
Educational Series, 1994.
- Melina, L. R. Making Sense of Adoption. New York: Harper & Row,
1989.
- National Committee for Adoption (NCFA). 1989 Adoption Factbook.
Washington, DC: National Committee for Adoption, 1989.
- Stolley, K. S. "Statistics on Adoption in the United States."
The Future of Children 3, pp. 26-42.
- Tatara, T. Characteristics of Children in Substitute and Adoptive
Care: A Statistical Summary of the VCIS National Child Welfare
Base. Washington, DC: American Public Welfare Association, 1992.
Further Information
- AASK (Adopt A Special Kid), 2201 Broadway, Suite 702, Oakland,
CA 94612; Phone:(510) 451-1748
- Adopted Child, P.O. Box 9362, Moscow, ID 83842; Phone:(208)
882-1794; Phone:(208) 883-8035
- Adoptive Families of America, 3333 North Highway 100, Minneapolis,
MN 55422; Fax:(800) 372-3300
- American Adoption Congress, 1000 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite
9, Washington, DC 20036; Toll-free:(202) 483-3399; (Public information
center.)
- Child Welfare League of America, P.O. Box 7816, 300 Raritan
Center Pkwy, Edison, NJ 08818-7816; Phone:(800) 407-6273
- National Adoption Center, 1500 Walnut Street, Philadelphia,
PA 19102; (Provides information especially with regard to special
needs adoption.)
- National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, 11426 Rockville
Pike, Rockville, MD 20852; Toll-free:(202) 842-1919; (Resource
for information and referral. Maintains copies of all state and
federal adoption laws, including Public Law 96-272, The Adoption
Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980.)
- National Council for Single Adoptive Parents, P.O. Box 15084,
Chevy Chase, MD 20825; Phone:(202) 966-6367
Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2nd ed. Gale Group, 2001.
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