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I wasn't very involved in my sister's adoption plans and don't recall which countries she mentioned as having these strict age restrictions. I think China was one. The only thing I remember for sure is that they finally settled on adopting a baby from Colombia, which didn't mind the age gap and seemed to have less restrictive regulations than many other countries. They had started the process, when an opportunity arose here in the US to adopt the baby of the daughter of friends of my other sister. Sister and BIL lost the money they had already invested in the Colombia adoption, but in the end a private, domestic adoption was much cheaper and easier.
Thanks for sharing all the information about Eastern European orphanages. I can well imagine that there is some jealousy and false information spread about American adoptive families. But I am also reminded that maybe 15 years ago, some friends adopted a little boy from Ukraine. They wanted a child about 3 or 4 years old, because they felt he would fit best into their existing family. When they went over to pick him up, the orphanage workers urged them to take a small infant that had recently arrived, instead. They expressed that the baby would have less trauma or "baggage" so to speak, than a preschooler who had been institutionalized for several years already, and were surprised when my friends declined. So in this case, it seems they were trying to create a situation that would have the best results for both the baby and the adoptive parents.
Years ago, it wasn't acceptable to have a child out of wedlock. In fact, there was a lot of stigma attached to unwed mothers. When having a child out of wedlock became accepted, women felt no need to relinquish their children for adoption.
A lot of that change in tude is in part due to Western MSM portraying child mothers are cool, and heroic, and strong in their countless TV dramas, and movies.
Coming back to add that it is a shame that some of the foreign countries with a lot of poverty and a lot of unwanted children will not allow them to go to good homes in America.
That's because we, as a nation kind of blew it. Russia stopped letting us adopt their babies when one very young child was put on a plane back to Russia, basically giving him back, with a note pinned to his shirt.
There was the Indian (from India) little girl who was put out of the house for not finishing her dinner, and froze to death...never mind the adoptive parents were also Indian...but India slowed down their adoption processes and started a much more thorough vetting process.
Birth control has become much more effective and available to teens over the past few years. Thanks to the internet they are much better educated about reproduction and how to prevent it, consequences, etc. Teen pregnancy rates are way down as is the birth rate in general.
I think your explanation is likely the correct reason for there being less teen pregnancies and a decrease in birth rates in general. At least in western type developed countries anyway, I don't know about non-developed countries but I hope the same thing is happening in those countries too. I think it should be considered good news that more girls and young women are getting better at self-education through internet, smartening up and taking control of their own lives and fates to the extent there are less babies available for adoption. I've never been keen on the whole idea of adoptive infants being considered a more desirable 'commodity' than older orphaned children who are just as deserving of good parents.
People who want to adopt because they really want children to nurture and look after can still foster children who are already in the system and that's including the children who are disabled. Or they can adopt the children who are illegal immigrants/refugees whose own birth parents delivered them to human smugglers (coyotes) who brought them to the border then abandoned them on the other side of the border.
People who want to adopt because they really want children to nurture and look after can still foster children who are already in the system and that's including the children who are disabled.
That's a little like saying that people who want children to nurture can become preschool teachers or childcare workers, and then they can be looking after children all day. It's not at all the same as being a parent and having a family.
When you're a foster parent, you're keenly aware that the children living in your home that you've devoted yourself to can be taken away from with almost no notice and handed back to someone who has already been demonstrated to be incapable of raising them. Maybe some people can do it, but two families I know who were foster parents for a while were so devastated at having to give up the babies and toddlers they'd bonded to, that they just couldn't foster any more.
When you adopt, your adoptive children are your children and you are a family.
I don't know anything about abandoned illegal immigrant children. Are they promptly made available for adoption, or do they spend years in foster care while authorities try to track down their birth families, or hope their parents show up?
^^ I should add that there is absolutely a need for foster parents and I am very glad there are people who are willing to do this, especially when their motive is not money. I only mean that fostering cannot take the place of adoption because they are totally different things.
I think it's important to not lose sight of what this topic is about. It's about no babies available to adopt. I read the full article posted by OP and it gives many valid reasons for why there's a decrease in babies to adopt and even for why there's a decrease in all births in general.
So no babies available for prospective adoptive parents. What are they going to do about it? What other options do they have? Will they give up on the idea of adopting altogether? Will they go get puppies instead to be members of their 'forever family' (as the term is used in that article)?
There are no guarantees of any parents keeping their children whether or not they are adopted, fostered or their own birth children. It's a risk that all parents have to take, knowing that they might lose a child at any time in the snap of the fingers due to circumstances beyond the parents' control. They still take the risk.
That's why I say that people who want to adopt because they really want children to nurture and look after, but can't adopt because of no adoptive babies available, they can still foster children who are already in the system and that's including the children who are disabled. Just because the parents can't 'own' those children shouldn't disqualify those children from being given a chance of love and nurture for a month, a year, several years or even for forever.
The analogy about preschool teachers or childcare workers has no bearing on fostering or adopting. Preschool teachers or childcare workers are paid employees who don't take their young charges home with them to nurture them at the end of the work day and they don't raise them and influence them as their own personal responsibilities and members of their families. That's what parents are supposed to do.
The children that I fostered were treated and raised the same way as my own birth children were and they are still members of my forever family. Even the ones that were eventually taken from my care and returned to their rehabilitated parents are still members of my forever family. They all still call me mom and their own children still call me grandma.
I know of some parents who fostered unadoptable children and then they adopted their foster kids after the kids turned 18 and had aged out of the system.
That's because we, as a nation kind of blew it. Russia stopped letting us adopt their babies when one very young child was put on a plane back to Russia, basically giving him back, with a note pinned to his shirt.
There was the Indian (from India) little girl who was put out of the house for not finishing her dinner, and froze to death...never mind the adoptive parents were also Indian...but India slowed down their adoption processes and started a much more thorough vetting process.
China is relatively easy to adopt from though.
Yes. The woman who put her SON on a plane with the one way ticket to Russia was inexcusable and egregious! She got a slap on the wrist from the US justice system. This was her child! What would have happened to her if she sent her biological child to a foreign country because he was difficult?
Our country should have been OUTRAGED! The adoption community was. She was handled with kid gloves in her state. Her other kinds should have also been removed.
The Indian child who was put out of the house for not finishing dinner, and subsequently died? Horrific and sad.
Madonna basically buying a child from Malawi to circumvent the home study process? Another travesty. If she felt called to adopt from Africa, there were countries open at the time. Madonna acts as though the rules do not apply to her.
There was yet another case of a very religious Christian family (white) who treated their adopted African children horribly, subjecting them to beatings for not memorizing the exact words to a bible verse. At least one child died in their hands. I think the other survived.
These cases are not the rule, they are the exception.
In the US we have an even GREATER PROBLEM with OUR CHILDREN. When a child is burned with cigarettes, starved or beaten so severely that bones are broken - REUNIFICATION should NOT be part of the conversation.
But, in this country, it is.
That's a little like saying that people who want children to nurture can become preschool teachers or childcare workers, and then they can be looking after children all day. It's not at all the same as being a parent and having a family.
When you're a foster parent, you're keenly aware that the children living in your home that you've devoted yourself to can be taken away from with almost no notice and handed back to someone who has already been demonstrated to be incapable of raising them. Maybe some people can do it, but two families I know who were foster parents for a while were so devastated at having to give up the babies and toddlers they'd bonded to, that they just couldn't foster any more.
When you adopt, your adoptive children are your children and you are a family.
I don't know anything about abandoned illegal immigrant children. Are they promptly made available for adoption, or do they spend years in foster care while authorities try to track down their birth families, or hope their parents show up?
Exactly. Protracted foster care, when the parents know that the child can be taken at any time, is heartbreaking to many people. Actually, the foster parents who are best at what they do, are the ones who are only in it for the money.
This is NOT the same as adoption.
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