Intercountry Adoption
Exploring Child Welfare by Joan Shireman
Adoption of children across national borders raises political and moral
questions, for the countries which "send" children are those
which lack the basic family support and child welfare services that would
enable parents to raise their own children, and those that "receive" children
are the wealthy countries of the world. The United States, with its very
open adoption laws, has permitted and encouraged international adoptions,
beginning with the adoption of children left behind after the ravages
of World War II. Major wars have left children in Korea and Vietnam without
parental care; poverty and enormous governmental changes have left children
Russia and Romania available for adoption; cultural preference for male
children, combined with restrictions on family size, has made girls available
for adoption from China.
The impetus for international adoptions has usually come from the wealthy
country, which has moved to establish adoption regulations that will
permit children to be removed from the country of origin and placed in
adoptive families. It has been difficult to insure that the rights of
the child's original family are always sufficiently protected, and difficult
to insure that the prospective adoptive homes were appropriate for the
children. Adoptions arranged through lawyers or other independent "go-betweens" have
been prominent in international adoption, and there is concern that families
adopting independently have no post-adoption support services available.
However, there are also non-profit agencies which have worked with the
governments of "sending" countries to develop child welfare
services and to establish sound adoption services.
Regulation of international adoptions has been difficult to establish.
Various scandals have highlighted the role that large sums of money can
play. The internet has made the independent establishment of connections
possible. First steps toward establishing some order in international
adoptions occurred with President Clinton's signing the Hague Treaty
bill into law in 2000. Known as the Intercountry Adoption Act, it provides
a framework for protection of children.
Books and articles
Altstein, H. and R. Simon (1991). Intercountry Adoption: A Multinational
Perspective. New York, Praeger.
Bartholet, E. (1993) Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of
Parenting. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company
Evans, K. (2001) The Lost Daughters of China: Abandoned Girls,
Their Journey to America, and the Search for a Missing Past.
New york: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam
Pertman, A., (2000) Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution
is Transforming America. New York: Basic Books
Simon, R. J. and H. Altstein (2000) Adoption Across Borders: Serving
the Children in Transracial and Intercountry Adoptions. Lanham,
MD:Rowman and Littlefield, Publishers.
Simon, R. J. and R. M. Roorda (2000) In Their Own Voices: Transracial
Adoptees Tell Their Stories. New York: Columbia University Press
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