e-mail
Thanks to the people who commented and let me know that my comment button is not actually broken! The winner of the book is Melissa (4givenagain). Will you please email me to tell me which book you would like?
~~~~~~
And now on to some recent adoption news. This has been a year of big change in international adoption. Due to slowdowns and rule changes in various countries, most notably in Russia, Guatemala, and China, there has been a tremendous increase in Ethiopian adoption.
An article at StarTelegram.com compared the US State Department visa statistics for 2006 to new statistics in 2007. Overall there were 1357 fewer adoptions of foreign children by American citizens. Americans adopted 1040 fewer children from China, around 1499 fewer from Russia, and 523 more children from Ethiopia.
Here are some of the actual number comparisons between 2006 and 2007. China saw 6,493 adoptions to America in 2006, and 5,453 in 2007. They remained the #1 sending country, but adoptions have slowed tremendously, mostly due to tightening regulations for adoptive families and (hooray) fewer kids in need of families.
Guatemala, despite all the trouble lately, saw an increase from 4,135 to 4,728. However the state department is no longer recommending that U.S. citizens begin adoptions from Guatemala, since the implementation of the Hague is expected to halt all new adoptions from Guatemala within the next few months.
Russia saw a decrease from 3,706 to 2,207. Familes affected by these changes shifted to other countries. Vietnam saw an increase from 163 to 626. It is expected that next year that program may get even more busy, especially as more families get discouraged with the 2 year wait for a baby from China.
Ethiopian adoption increased from 732 in 2006 to 1,255 adoptions in 2007. Ethiopian government offices are now straining to keep up with the huge influx of paperwork. If the numbers of families interested in Ethiopia continue, next year we may see more slowing of processing times. I hope that additional staff will be hired so that kids can continue to come into families in a timely manner.
It would be wonderful if progress could be made towards better supporting Ethiopian families so that fewer children would become orphans in the first place. But as long as the numbers of orphans in a country cay be counted in the millions, I see an increase in adoptions from Ethiopia as a good thing.
Thanks, Mary, I logged on first thing this morning from work to see if you had drawn the winner yet! LOL Woohoo!
My concern about the increase in adoptions from Ethiopia is that so many kids being adopted from there are not orphans. Many have one or sometimes two living birth parents who would gladly take care of them if they only had a few more birr.
I myself was mislead by all the talk about Ethiopian orphans. Yes, there are millions, but they are often not the kids who end up in western-run and -financed care centers. That’s disconcerting.
I also worry that rapid growth in any program can lead to corruption.
I think you make some good points. I do understand, however, that a living birth parent is only allowed to relinquish a child in the case of life-threatening illness such as HIV, or occasionally if a parent is certified as mentally ill and incapable of providing care. I do think that in a better world extended family would be offered financial support to keep children. However, there are cases when families will feed nieces or nephews less than their ‘own’ children, or will beat them and treat them as servants. Sure they are living with family. But in many cases kids might be better loved or have better opportunities with adoptive families who love and want them, as opposed to living with aunts and uncles who care for them simply out of obligation. Every story is different, of course, but ideally every child should have a committed family.
Mary, you said: “I do understand, however, that a living birth parent is only allowed to relinquish a child in the case of life-threatening illness such as HIV, or occasionally if a parent is certified as mentally ill and incapable of providing care.”
This isn’t the case at all. I know many families whose kids have at least one healthy birth parent. Sometimes kids have two healthy birth parents.
Poverty is also one reason living birth parents can relinquish a child, and many times there are healthy, competent, capable living birth parents who are going through a particularly tough time financially.
hmm… I just sent a question to my agency director about this. I heard that sometimes healthy living parents are forced to ‘abandon’ kids for adoption because they have no legal reason to relinquish. And as I stated, I thought that the legal reasons consisted of illness or incompetence…. oh, and a few cases of extreme abuse. But I’ll be interested to hear from my agency if there are more reasons than I was aware of. Thanks for writing.
Mary