Adoption Discussion |
What is adoption?
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Colleen knew she'd been adopted as a baby, and she'd always felt special because her parents had sought her out. Although she didn't know the names of her birth parents or the details of her adoption, she'd never really been concerned about them. So, as her fifteenth birthday approached, Colleen was surprised to find herself thinking more about her adoption, and wondering about what her birth parents were like. She realized that, although she knew a lot of things about her adoptive family, she knew nothing about the people whose genes she shared. Colleen is one of more than 120,000 kids who, according to the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, are adopted in the United States each year. Adopted children are loved and cared for just like other kids. But it's natural for people who've been adopted to wonder about their birth families (also called biological families) and where they came from. This curiosity often becomes more intense as part of the process of self-discovery that happens during a person's teenage years. What Is Adoption? Adoption is the welcoming of a child who has been born to other parents into a new family. Birth parents have many different reasons for putting children up for adoption; most decide that they want better lives for their children than they feel they can provide. Every adoption is different. Some adopted children join their new families when they are babies, others are adopted as toddlers, kids, or teens. There also is no standard adoptive family. Some children are adopted by a relative. Others are adopted by their foster parents. And many children are adopted by people who don't know them, but who are searching for a child to love as their own. An adoptive family might be a single mom or dad, a couple, or a family with kids. The adoptive parents have the same emotional and legal ties to their adopted child as birth parents do to their children. Adoptions can be arranged by adoption agencies or be handled independently (where the parties involved work through an adoption attorney or someone else who knows adoption laws). An increasing number of adoptions are taking place internationally, where children are adopted by parents who live in a different country from that in which the child was born. Adoptions are subject to the laws of different states and countries. Some adoptions are confidential (also called closed adoptions), which means that neither the birth nor adoptive parents know the others' identities. Other adoptions are handled more openly. Open adoptions, where both parties have some level of contact with each other, are becoming more common. As views about adoption change, the secrecy and confidentiality surrounding adoption is giving way to openness in which birth parents are more likely to be involved in the process. This can mean anything from choosing the family they want to adopt their child to keeping in touch with that family as the child grows up.
Last changed: 09/24/07