Newsweek: International Adoption Focus

The current issue of Newsweek includes two articles looking at international adoption.

When There’s No Place Like Home looks at the United Nations Children’s Fund and its impact on international adoption programs.

The United Nations Children’s Fund may be known worldwide for helping underprivileged children obtain better health care and education, but when it comes to finding homes for orphans, they argue, the organization places misguided emphasis on maintaining cultural and geographic ties rather than on the child’s overall well-being. That’s true even when there is little chance of domestic adoption and virtually no public programs to provide care for abandoned children or struggling families. “National boundaries should not prevent abandoned children from having families,” says Thomas Atwood, president of America’s National Council for Adoption. “UNICEF’s exclusive focus on domestic programs amounts to an obstacle to international adoption and prevents untold numbers of children from improving their lives through international adoption.” – Newsweek, February 4, 2008

Who Will Fill the Empty Cribs?, the second Newsweek article, examines reasons for the decline in international adoption. In a previous post on adoption trends, I mentioned some Asian governments are working to change the stigma of domestic adoption – seems there has been some success in South Korea with doing just that:

“With a birthrate of just 1.1 children per woman, which is below the level required to keep the population steady, the country needs to hold onto its people. Last summer protesters gathered in downtown Seoul with placards that read KOREAN BABIES NOT FOR EXPORT! Today Seoul offers tax breaks, cash incentives and even extra vacation days to families who take in domestic orphans. The measures seem to be working: last year marked the first time since the Korean War that more South Korean children were adopted at home (1,388) than overseas (1,265).” – Newsweek, February 4, 2008

Adoption Trends – Part II: Domestic Adoption in Taiwan

This post is part of a series looking at adoption trends, both here in the United States and in Taiwan.

Domestic adoption is on the decline in Taiwan, according to reports from the country’s Child Welfare League Foundation in 2005. While the foundation is working to change misperceptions and attitudes about adoption within Taiwan, it has also sought help finding homes for children by looking overseas to countries like the US.

 

The Child Welfare League Foundation reported that approximately five thousand children are abandoned each year, but only about 10 percent of those children will find an adoptive family in Taiwan.

 

“Many unwanted children stay in the custody of the [Child Welfare League Foundation] or in temporary foster care until they are seven or eight years old, and still cannot find adopters. If they fail to find adopting parents overseas, those children will eventually be sent to orphanages, the foundation said.” — Taipei Times, July 4, 2005

 

While there are many different circumstances that may lead a birthmother to choose adoption for her child, I believe there are two aspects of Asian culture which help explain the availability of children for adoption overseas.

 

First, while single-parenting has become more acceptable here in the United States in recent years, children born out-of-wedlock in Asian countries are often placed for adoption because of cultural norms and expectations. Secondly, there continues to be a stigma on adopting an unrelated child in Asian society, despite efforts by some governments to change this way of thinking. This Wikipedia explanation of South Korean society provides more insight on the level of importance placed on bloodlines in Korean families:

 

“Many families would go through excessive and expensive procedures such as surrogacy or in vitro fertilization to ensure that their offspring are at least related than to accept a child of a complete stranger into their family. Indeed, it was the case until recently that Korean citizenship was directly tied to family bloodline. Children not a part of a Korean family (i.e., orphans) were not legal citizens of Korea. Another reason is the stigma of adoption. Ninety-five percent of families who do adopt choose babies less than a month old so that they can pass them off as their natural born offspring, overlooking older adoptable children (Yun, Korea Times, 1997).”

 

China is also trying to change the “taboo” societal view of domestic adoption, as reported in this article from USA Today last November. Does that explain the slowdown of child referrals to Americans seeking to adopt a child from China? I don’t know. I hope and pray, though, that the orphans needing homes will be able to find loving parents, whether in their native country or abroad.

 

Adoption Update: USCIS Fingerprinting

We traveled to the USCIS Application Support Center today to be fingerprinted for our immigration paperwork. When we walked in, we were given numbers 820 and 821. There were about 19 people in front of us. It soon became apparent that we would be in for a long wait, when the technicians started taking breaks for lunch and we realized that it was taking 5-10 minutes for each person to be fingerprinted. After waiting for an hour and a half, it was finally our turn. It is expecting a lot from your children to sit and be patient that long, but our kids were troopers and very well-behaved, much to my surprise.

Rebecca, another mom adopting from Taiwan, had commented on her blog when she was fingerprinted, the words “Match Warning” kept showing up on the screen. The same thing happened with my fingerprints, so I asked the technician. He said it is a computer glitch and shows up on the screen for everyone. That’s reassuring…

Now we wait for approval from USCIS for our adoption, which may arrive in the mail as early as February.

Adoption Trends – Part I: Adopting Infants in the US

This is the first post in a series looking at adoption trends, both here in the United States and in Taiwan.

Several people have asked us why we have chosen to adopt internationally – couldn’t we just adopt an infant placed for adoption here in the United States?

Private domestic adoption statistics are difficult to track because not all states report them. The availability of infants for adoption in the United States does appear to be decreasing. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute reports why this may be the case:

“A variety of factors, including increased access to contraception, the legalization of abortion and changed social attitudes about unmarried parenting, have caused the number of white infants placed for adoption in the U.S. to decline dramatically. Between 1989 and 1995, 1.7 percent of children born to never-married white women were placed for adoption, compared to 19.3 percent before 1973. Among never-married black women, relinquishment rates have ranged from .2 percent to 1.5 percent.”

If we had chosen to adopt an infant domestically, our family’s photograph and information would most likely be on file with an agency. The agency would show birthmothers our information along with other families waiting to adopt. The birthmothers would then have the opportunity to “interview” the adoptive families and choose the family that would adopt her child.

Because we already have two biological children, we felt that may prevent birthmothers from choosing us because they would be concerned about their child’s place in our family. We also were concerned about how long our wait could be for a child if we adopted domestically, since we would be waiting for a birthmom to choose us. In Taiwan, there are a few programs where the birthmother chooses the adoptive family, but the placements for the program we chose are done by the orphanage staff.

Next in this series. . .a look at domestic adoption in Taiwan.

Outlook for International Adoption in 2008

It seems many countries are closing their doors to international adoption.  An article posted on Rainbowkids.com offers a look ahead as well as information on the situation in specific countries.   

Taiwan, not Thailand. . .

We watched the Amazing Race tonight. The teams traveled from Osaka, Japan to Taipei, Taiwan. We were surprised when one of the contestants, after receiving their clue to travel to Taiwan, said he enjoys Thai food and has some Thai friends.  We have had a number of people ask us about Taiwan’s relationship to China, but confusing it with Thailand – that’s a first!

The teams traveled from Taipei on the bullet train to Taichung, then back to a tea house in Taipei. They then went to a Taipei park to complete a task before arriving at the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (recently renamed “Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall”). We enjoyed getting a glimpse of Taiwan, and we are looking forward to our trip there when we go to pick up our little one.

VA lawmakers consider adoption tax credit

A legislative bill (HB743) has been introduced in the Virginia General Assembly which, if passed and signed into law, would provide a tax credit up to $4,000 for qualified adoption expenses of families adopting in Virginia. If you live in Virginia, please take a moment to write or call your state delegate and senator to let them know you support this bill. The bill is HB743 and was introduced by Delegate Charles Caputo on January 8, 2008.

Adoption Update: Immigration paperwork submitted

We filed our paperwork with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) this week. For international adoptions, we are required to have approval from the US Government to adopt an orphan overseas. As part of our application, the USCIS requires both of us to be fingerprinted at one of their offices. We will likely receive an appointment notice to have that done in the next few weeks. The USCIS updates their processing times online for applications at each of its field offices. The office responsible for our application is taking about five to six months to process applications, according to the website. We held off filing this paperwork immediately because we were anticipating a wait for a referral – the USCIS approval, an I-171H, is only valid for 18 months before it has to be renewed.

Today marks our third month waiting for a referral. These first few months seem to have gone by so quickly, probably due in part to the busyness of the holidays. When we started, we were told to expect a 12-18 month wait for a referral of a child. (We did not specify a gender.) I spoke with our agency today and found out that the time frame is still about the same. However, it’s been leaning towards the longer side of the estimate. So that would mean we would be due to receive a referral sometime in the spring of 2009.

 

“Amazing Race” in Taiwan next week?

Rumor is the next episode of CBS’s Amazing Race may be in Taiwan.  It’s down to the last four teams, and there are only two episodes left.  The teams finished tonight in Osaka, Japan.  Tune in next Sunday to see if Taiwan is their next destination!

Bilingual dolls

 

I was online today and came across bilingual dolls that speak English and Mandarin. They are called “Language Littles” and help teach children basic phrases in a foreign language. The 16-inch dolls are available in several other foreign languages as well. It may be a good toy for an adopted child, to help them hear words that are familiar as they transition to their new home and family, and to help them feel a little more comfortable. The only downside, if we adopt a boy, I’m not sure they will be all that interested in playing with a doll baby. Maybe I should contact the company and ask them to make a boy version? If anyone else knows of toys that may be helpful for adopted children, please leave a comment.