Year-long waits, onerous assessments, and disappointment—prospective adopters in developed countries have a lot to deal with when trying to adopt a child. The scarcity of adoptable children and rigor of the adoption processes in developed countries drive prospective adopters abroad in the hope of finding children to join their families. Due to the prevalence of disease, poverty, and abandonment as well as fledgling social safety nets, less developed countries often have many children in state care that are in pressing need of adoption. In the latter half of the 20th century, many of these countries welcomed international adoption. Under that system, children were matched with more affluent parents who could provide better lives for them than could be expected in the state system, and overcrowded state children’s homes were relieved of the difficulty of caring beyond their capacities.
While international adoption is an ideal solution for both the overcrowding of state childcare systems in developing countries and the difficulties of adopting children in developed ones, it’s currently on the decline. Intercountry adoption fell by 64 percent between 2004 and 2013 in the top 10 adopting countries, indicating a seismic shift away from the practice of adopting children abroad. While modest gains in health and income mean fewer children are orphaned and abandoned, these factors alone do not explain the huge shift away from intercountry adoption. Rather, the decline is the result of an international law that tightens the regulatory barriers to intercountry adoption, decreasing its attractiveness to prospective adopters and increasing negative sentiments towards international adoption in countries where it used to be common.
International adoption experienced a huge boom toward the end of the 20th century, growing from about 2,500 adoptions per year in the 1950s to 40,000 in the early 2000s. In the 1990s, China’s one-child policy forced many people to give their babies up for adoption, and the fall of the Soviet Union destroyed Russia’s economy and left many unable to care for their children. Chinese and Russian orphanages were overcrowded, and they became the two leading origin countries for worldwide adoptions. In 2003, foreign parents adopted over 13,000 children from China and over 7,000 from Russia. The 10 main receiving countries (led by the United States, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany) accounted for 90 percent of children adopted by foreign parents. In most cases, the adoptions were a resounding success, placing children in loving homes and reducing the burden on overwhelmed social services.
However, for a minority of children, intercountry adoption was a disguised form of trafficking. Intermediaries could turn a profit by abducting and selling children to adoptive parents. In some circumstances, children were torn from family members who were coerced into giving them up, while others were returned to their home countries by their adoptive parents. For these reasons, intercountry adoption became a traumatic process for many children, and countries began to regulate it through international laws protecting children’s rights.
In 1993, the Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoption created laws that called for oversight from a centralized body and mandate that states thoroughly search for domestic adopters before resorting to adoption abroad. The convention has been signed by 90 countries, and it has effectively put tighter restrictions on all countries involved in international adoptions. For example, although South Korea is not a party to the convention, the US is, meaning that all intercountry adoptions from South Korea to the US must meet the terms of the agreement. This dynamic ultimately decreased the number of successful adoptions from South Korea to the US by 93 percent in 15 years. For top sending countries party to the convention, the agreement has put enormous strain on already overstretched bureaucracies, lengthening wait times and increasing rejection rates.
The result is tragic: Thousands of children who might have found loving parents will never be matched with prospective families, and will instead spend their childhood in foster care and state homes. There is no question that children’s rights must be protected in any adoption process, but policymakers should consider whether the decline in the number of adoptions resulting from the Hague Convention’s regulations necessitate a policy change. Policymakers should aim to create laws that both secure children’s rights and maximize the number of adoptions, internationally and domestically. Given the impossibility of improving domestic adoption systems in all states and the difficulty of finding biological relatives to adopt children, foreign adopters who pass standard background and means checks should be given adoption priority equal to domestic and biological adopters. International law regards children’s best interests as paramount, but the current system leaves everyone underserved.
It hard to adopt children because of the guvanery they don’t care for these children they need love mom or dad or 2 person let these children go home to a happy family love to adopt silbers younger children newborn to 7th I adopt I now how they think and think they don’t care but it not true the country need to stop make people speed more money to adopt it. Cost to much they sale them to the hi binder it should not come to that
And do to cover people should be able to adopt it gets hard to adopt They need it it be expensive and let single women and men are married people
Children need to be love
So how does your theory explain then that the USA is also a sending and receiving country via intercountry adoption? Or that Sth Korea or Taiwan are 1st world economies but still sending countries? Perhaps just perhaps intercountry adoption has declined around the world in spite of The Hague Convention and because sending countries are realising they are giving away / selling their most precious resource. Perhaps it’s because adult intercountry adoptees worldwide are stepping up and speaking out about the realities of their lives growing up in their adopted country. Perhaps intercountry adoption has not been a success for the majority as you claim given there are NO statistics ever captured by governments on the “success” or followup of intercountry adoptions. And how do you claim “success” of an adoption? Seems only via the assumption that we are somehow materially better off?! Perhaps it’s just the values and ethics about a child’s life. Let’s not also forget that EVERY country, whether developed or not, has many vulnerable children in it’s care and there is not ONE solution but we certainly should be stating that children should NEVER be a commodity and yet, that is what the intercountry adoption industry makes us while allowing unregulated amounts of money to exchange hands when trading us. http://www.intercountryadopteevoices.com
Thank you Alexa Clark for seeing things as they are. So refreshing to see an honest picture of the situation as it stands and one that is not sensationalised by negative press. International adoption should be placed in the ‘development camp’ – seeing as a way of supporting countries through profound and meaningful way for their children in need. The numbers are horrific and are being hidden, which means it is the children who suffer and who will never escape the deprivation trap.
The Hague makes adoption extremely difficult to adopt (I know – I have adopted twice – once in 2008 and once in 2015 – and yes it took me another 7 years from the first adoption to adopt the second time).
The Hague, UN and their ilk believe that adoption is cultural rape (their words not mine) and that “rich white people” taking poor children of color from their home land – away from their customs, language, heritage is fundamental wrong. They have encouraged (even insisted) that westerners who want to adopt should adopt these children in name but then the children in their homeland. This means the adoptive parent wouldn’t bring the child home – the adoptive parent would simply be supporting their adopted child abroad. If ever there was a politically correct scheme that made no sense at all and won’t work – this is it. So the kid gets your money (well – in fact a whole bunch of helpers and intermediaries take your/the kid’s money) but in turn the kid gets no home, no parents, no family to speak of. They know that there is some disembodied entity from far far away who sends gifts, cards and money from time to time and maybe even visits. This is not what the child wants or needs. The Hague’s views on adoption and subsequent actions are the primary reason that international adoptions have dropped dramatically over the last 10 years.