Research paper on contemporary issues and findings

Adoption Challenges/Revision

Children who are adopted, particularly international adoptees, often face more challenges in family life and in school than parents' biological children. Genetics, pre-natal care, and experiences in early infancy -- none of which are under the control of the adoptive parents -- can have a great impact on a child's cognitive abilities and emotional and behavioral responses. Sometimes issues are immediately apparent, but too often parents realize much later that their adopted child has special needs. In some cases, the needs are not manifest until a child reaches school age. Potential adoptive parents should not necessarily be discouraged from adopting a child, particularly from a foreign country, but they should be aware of issues and challenges they may face. Parents with support systems, including family and friends, adoption support groups, caregivers, and educators, have a greater chance of success in raising a happy, well adjusted adopted child who is a full part of a loving family unit.

Adoption is the legal procedure that gives a permanent home and family to a child whose biological parents are unable, unwilling, or legally prohibited from keeping the child (Brumble and Kampfe, 2011, p. 157). In the United States, the practice dates back to Colonial times, but until the end of World War II, adoptees were almost always healthy children from within the borders of the United States, adopted by parents of the same race. Most adoptions took place within a relatively narrow geographic scope. Mothers died in childbirth and, without today's advances in medicines and health care, life expectancy for both mothers and fathers was shorter. Being orphaned was more common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even in the earliest years of the twentieth century.

Immediately following World War II, Americans began to adopt foreign-born children, particularly children from Germany and Greece. Brumble and Kampfe (p. 158) speculate this could have been due to the great number of American soldiers who saw, first hand, the devastation of the war and the need to help orphaned children. During the 1950s, Harry and Bertha Holt adopted eight Korean children, getting federal laws changed in order to do so. They were pioneers of international adoption and founded what has become the largest international adoption agency in the world. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement and the war in Viet Nam fostered a new tolerance and acceptance of human differences. Special needs adoption gained momentum in the 1970s, as more people became willing to adopt healthy children who were older, bi-racial, and possibly needed to be placed with siblings. There were more people willing to adopt children once considered "unadoptable," who had mental, emotional or physical problems (Brumble and Kampfe, p. 159).