Adoption Under One Roof

You've seen the drop in inter-country adoptions to the United States. Some of you have experienced the slow-downs in Russia, China and South Korea. Maybe you are trying to sort out the new rules in Ukraine, or cope with the upheaval in Guatemala and the impeding closure of Vietnam to American adoptive parents. There's a larger trend at work here, I think, and it is quite simply this: The golden age of international adoption is now behind us.

"Golden Age" has been a metaphor applied to many events in world history, from the rule of Elizabeth I in medieval England to the invention of radio and television. Wikipedia defines it as "a period in a field of endeavor when great tasks were accomplished", which seems right on the mark for today's discussion of adoption.

The golden age of international adoption began with the opening of Korea to adoptions by Americans a little more than 50 years ago. The process begun there made it possible, over the ensuing decades, for Americans--and the other nationalities that followed us--to give new lives to tens of thousands of children around the world who had been orphaned by war, famine, economic upheaval and politics.

It wasn't perfect, this golden age. None of them has ever been. Some children were trafficked, some birth mothers coerced, some bad matches were made between children and adoptive parents, and some intermediaries with more interest in financial gain than child welfare were allowed to operate for too long. But on balance, great tasks were accomplished, and children who had bleak futures have gone on to better lives.

Korea has long since stopped being a war-ravaged nation, Russia has recovered its economic equilibrium and China no longer stringently enforces the one-child rule. The United Nations has documented declining fertility rates in many of the world's countries. And so it is relatively certain that inter-country adoptions to the U.S. will fall again this year and the next, and well on into the future.

Should we then mourn the passing of the golden age of international adoption? No, I don't think so. International adoptions will be fewer in number, but they will not go away. We in the adoption community have an opportunity now to build on the Hague Convention reforms country by country to make the international adoption experience better for children and parents. And we certainly have an opportunity to apply what we have learned abroad to improving adoption at home. A golden opportunity, I think.