International Adoption: Current Status and Future Prospects

Throughout the poorer countries of the world, millions of children live out their young lives in substandard institutions or in the streets. In times of war or political and economic upheaval, added numbers of children become homeless. At the same time, thousands of couples in the more advantaged countries of the West have demonstrated their eagerness to offer permanent homes to many of these children through adoption and have been doing so for more than four decades. As a result of political pressure and rising nationalism, there has been growing hostility to international adoption in many countries that have previously been willing to free some of the homeless children for adoption by foreigners. Elizabeth Bartholet is professor of law at Harvard Law School, and author of Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of Parenting. The laws regulating adoption are varied among the “sending” countries and numerous obstacles stand in the way of foreigners who wish to adopt. Aspects of the U.S. Immigration laws pose additional obstacles in the path of adoption of foreign-born children by American citizens. Declarations by the United Nations in recent years and current progress toward the completion of “Convention on Intercountry Adoption” by the Hague Conference on private international law offer some hope for facilitating the process of international adoption so that at least some of the children may be able to find permanent homes. At the same time, modifications of U.S. Immigration laws will also be needed. International adoption is a very important part of the total adoption picture. 1 How various nations of the world shape the rules governing international adoption will define to a great degree adoption’s future role as a parenting alternative. This is because the world divides into essentially two camps for adoption purposes, one consisting of countries with low birthrates and small numbers of children in need of homes, and the other consisting of countries with high birthrates and huge numbers of such children. In the United States and other Western, industrialized countries, the number of babies surrendered or abandoned by birthparents has been limited in recent decades by contraception, abortion, and the increased tendency of single parents to keep their children. As a result of these and other factors, very few children are available for adoption in comparison with the large numbers of people who, for Portions of the material in this article appear in Bartholet, E. Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of Parenting. New York: Houghton Mifflin,