- 1.7 million households report having adopted children under the age of 18 years of age
- 13% of these children were adopted from other countries
- 42,000 families report having adopted children less than one year old (this includes domestic, familial, and international adoption)
According to the National Council for Adoption's analysis in Factbook IV:
- There were 130,269 annual adoptions in the U.S. in 2002
- 76,013 were unrelated adoptions of American children (by people not related to the child)
- 52,136 of the 76,013 were adopted from public agencies, the majority of which were older children and those with special needs
- 22.291 were adoptions of healthy infants (under the age of 2) of all races and ethnic backgrounds
- Domestic unrelated infant adoptions continue to decline from 1996
- 52,256 children were adopted by relatives or stepparents in 2002
- There were 21,495 international adoptions by Americans in 2005 (according to the U.S. State Department)
What are your thoughts on these statistics? Why do you think the number of domestic newborn infant adoptions have declined? Do you think a birth mother faces more barriers to considering adoption today?
In my next blog, I will address some of the barriers to considering adoption.
1 comments:
I would never trust anything the NCFA says, especially since you're an adoptee.
The rate of adoptions are slowly declining, but they're not nearly at a healthy rate. They're still recovering from the Baby Scoop Era. Adoptions should be in the hundreds each year, not in the hundreds of thousands. That is a mark of something terribly terribly wrong in our society and world to be having so many children be separated from their mothers and clans.
Women are parenting more, especially teens. Teens have a much lower surrendering rate than expecting mothers in the 20's in college, but working for an agency, i'm sure you already knew that.
Hopefully it continues to decline and decline. I'll do my best to see that through.
If you care about your rights as an adoptee, you should consider checking out my blog and joining us in protest of our sealed records.
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