August 06, 2016

Adoption News Roundup

Happy Saturday, dear friends!

Here are a few links to reads for the weekend…we hope you enjoy!

Hundreds of thousands of children are living in orphanages — adopting them shouldn’t be such a challenge. “As countries have implemented the Hague Adoption Convention, passed in the wake of the Romanian exodus, they have stamped out the worst cases. Last year 12,500 children were adopted by overseas parents, about a third of the total just over a decade ago. The crackdown was necessary: babies are not goods to be trafficked. But many governments have gone too far. It is now too hard for willing, suitable parents to adopt needy children—and this hurts both the would-be adopters and, more importantly, the children.”

This podcast shares a very important birth mother story — what does it feel like when not one, but two adoptive families dropped out after making a match, one because they had an opportunity to adopt a baby who was due sooner than hers. Such a powerful story.

Is there a link between transgender youth and adoption rates? “I thought I was just a packaged deal, like, this only happens to one kid in every place in the world,” he said. But then, as fellow campers told their stories, Nathan realized he was not all that different. “I was like, you know what, there are a lot of adopted kids who are trans. And that’s pretty amazing.”

5 ways to support siblings in special needs families.

Is international adoption on its way out? “But then something changed. From its historic peak in the mid-2000s, the number of international adoptions began to fall. It has been falling ever since. According to figures collected by the U.S. State Department, Americans adopted 5,647 children from other countries last year, the lowest figure since the early 1980s. That is a 75% decline in just over one decade.”