Adoption Under One Roof

I was reading a news article and ran into some adoption statistics. Of course I could not help myself. I just have to share. And I think that I can use these numbers to look at general adoption trends..

This first set of numbers are from the Center for Adoption Research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

2,524 children were adopted in Massachusetts in 2005.

1,414 of these children were adopted internationally. This is 6% of the total number of children internationally adopted by Americans.

858 of these children were adopted from the foster care system. This is 2% of the total number of children adopted from foster care. On average 50,000 American children are adopted from foster care every year.

252 of these children were adopted via private domestic adoption. These children were likely infants. But this could have also been stepparent adoption or grandparent adoptions.

Now Massachusetts is a pretty average state, so I am going to try and pull out a trend that might apply to the US on the average.

The biggest problem with understanding private domestic adoption is that no one tracks it. But the US government did some research in 2000 and 2001 to try and estimate the number of these adoptions based on the number of adoption court hearings. So I am able to look at Massachusetts adoptions in 2000, 2001 and 2005.

Take a look at the huge drop in domestic adoptions between 2001 and 2005. Remember this statistic covers all private adoptions; kinship, non-relative, stepparent and tribal. The number of infants available for private adoption has dropped over the years. And the number of adoptions by non-relatives has been dropping since 1975.

Count this as a rumor, but I have heard that more kinship adoptions are happening via the foster care system. This is because the grandparent needs the additional resources, money and medical benefits for their grandchild. So they let the child enter the foster care system.

Just based on the numbers it does look like families shifted from private to international adoption in 2005. And notice the stability of the foster care adoptions.

References:

How Many Children Were Adopted in 2000 and 2001? from Child Welfare Information Gateway, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Private Domestic Adoption Facts from Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute