Over the 15 years I have been doing adoptions, private independent adoption has changed a great deal. Part of that may just be evolution, but the economy has played a huge part in changing the scope of domestic adoption. Many of us involved in adoptions believed that with a poor economy, we would have more adoptions. Birth mothers who were having trouble with finances would have to face some tough decisions with the economy getting worse and worse. On the contrary, what actually happened was that the birth rate went down and the abortion rate went up. While current statistics are showing an increase in teen pregnancy, not many teens actually place their babies for adoption. If they are not prepared to parent, their parents are typically young enough to help. Those who would be birth parents in a better economic time are simply opting not to get pregnant or to abort if they do. I think that someone who may have considered parenting and then realized that financially they couldn't do it, are not getting that far now. They know right up front that they can't do it financially (who can?), so they are more careful not to have an accidental pregnancy or they opt for the alternative. The actual birth rate today is at the lowest it has been since the great depression.
What does this mean? It means that independent private adoptions are slow everywhere. I just finished reading an article which detailed the closure of an adoption agency in England that had been in operation for 45 years. They just don't have the adoption rates that they used to have and they can't pay their bills or afford to stay in business. That has happened here too. Last year, some major adoption agencies closed their doors. One of them, Commonwealth Adoptions, had offices in multiple states and was a longstanding agency.
How has this impacted waiting families? Families are understandably distressed with the longer wait. Some are looking to multiple avenues, but are still hitting dead ends. All of our families will eventually adopt, but the waits are longer than they were in years past. That said, for every action there is an opposite -- a reaction. At some point, the economy will turn around, things will get back to normal and, if history is any indicator, we'll have a baby boom. (We're all waiting for that!)
One of the outcomes of this new economic situation is that women who never thought that they would place their children are facing such difficult financial times, they are placing older children. We have had a number of such placements over the past year and we are currently working on placing 3 year old twins. For those families waiting to adopt, some have opted to consider children older than newborn. There are many things to consider with older children that do not come into play with infants. More on older child adoption tomorrow...
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