Adoption and Foster Care in the United States

Foster care and Adoption are two forms of parenting that have increased and have had major success rates over the last decade. Every day in the United States approximately 10,650 babies are born. Some of these pregnancies are planned and others are not. For those who believe that being a parent isn't for them, adoption is the best option. Giving up your child can be tremendously stressful and heart wrenching. Some reasons why people choose adoptions are because, they may feel like they can't support the baby financially, or give them all the love that they deserve. There are various types of adoptions and most of them offer total confidentiality, but what happens if there are no awaiting adoptees? Foster Care becomes the very next step.

Foster Care is defined as "the term used for a system in which a minor who has been made a ward is placed in the private home of a state certified caregiver referred to as a "foster parent". There are about 500,000 children in foster care in America. 49% of them are waiting to be reunified with their families and 25% of them are waiting to be adopted. Children in foster care are removed from their families due to neglect, physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse. In most cases when children are taken away the parents are required to seek help so that they can become better parents. In most cases half of the kids return home to their families, but that doesn't mean that it will be permanent. Sometimes parental rights are suspended and kids are forced into foster care and then onto adoption.

Adoption is a legal process that creates a new, permanent parent-child relationship where one didn't exist before. Adoptions gives full parental rights to the adoptees. There are many types of adoptions to choose. Agency adoptions are one of the popular ones. In agency adoptions the birthparents and adoptive parents may find each other through the internet, a common friend or neighbor, a church group, or maybe a personal advertisement. The...