Adopting Outside of the Us

ADOPTING OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES 1

Adopting Outside of the United States

Megan Vandermark

English 112

Professor Rodriguez

18 August, 2011

ADOPTING OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES 2

There are all kinds of resources for child adoption in the United States. Americans that want to adopt a child should do so from within the United States. Adoption outside of the United States is not beneficial to our country. It leaves many of our own country’s children without homes, creates more abandoned children in the U.S., and makes international child adoption seem like a fashion craze.

More than ten percent of the United States’ children up for adoption could have found homes in 2009, had it not been for international adoption. In 2009, 114,562 children were awaiting adoption in the foster care system in the U.S. 12,753 children were adopted from outside the U.S. and 57,466 from within the U.S. in 2009. If Americans only adopted children in the United States, at that rate it would take less than two years to get all of the children up for adoption in the United States a home.

The adoption of children that are older than seven years old are less likely to work out. Ten to twenty percent of older-child adoptions are more likely to eventually disrupt than adoptions of infants. This causes problems because if an international adoption doesn’t work out, the child could be put back up for adoption in the U.S. This would increase the number of adoptable children in the U.S.; whereas if a child in the U.S. was adopted in the first place the number of adoptable children in the U.S would have decreased.

Celebrities or public figures adopting outside of the United States make adoption seem like a fashion statement or a mark of stature.