To help launch National Adoption Month at the beginning of November, our friends at the Institute for Family Studies have provided a helpful analysis of the anti-adoption movement – and yes, there is such sentiment bubbling about out there.
According to those who oppose it, adoption is exploitive, coercive and downright harmful to children.
If such claims leave you scratching your head, you wouldn’t be alone – especially if you’re a social scientist who studies the data and works to separate the fact from the fiction. As it is, study after study has confirmed adoption’s collective good both corporately and individually.
At the outset, it might be helpful to level set and acknowledge that adoption has existed in some fashion since the beginning of human history. Whether motivated or necessitated by death, desire (altruistic or financial), desertion or the incapacitation of one or more birth parents, or out-of-wedlock births, the transfer of children (or adults) between individuals and families has been an acceptable, albeit exceptional, means of family formation.
Over the years, references to adoption have been recorded in the Bible, numerous historic texts, Greek and Roman mythologies, movies, music, television, and even popular children’s literature.
In the Old Testament book of Exodus, we read about the adoption of Moses and Esther. In ancient Rome, Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire, was adopted – as was Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Marcus Aurelius.
Today, adoption is culturally ubiquitous. Everyone knows someone who was adopted or someone who has adopted. Whether from somewhere overseas or here in the United States, upwards of 120,000 children are adopted every year. That translates to over 5 million individuals here in America who grew up in an adoptive family.
At the heart of the anti-adoption movement is an overwhelming, and some might argue, unrealistic level of support for reunification between the child and their biological parent(s). They hold that resources and efforts should be poured into serving and helping the mothers and fathers who either voluntarily or involuntarily relinquish their children. Those who champion such a position claim adoption is so traumatic that a child is better off in an uneven and dysfunctional biological family than they are in a stable adoptive one.
But as the authors writing for the Institute for Family Studies note, such a position is not supported by social science.
Adoptees’ well-being is generally comparable to that of the general population, with some elevated needs that are offset by greater support.
While children who are adopted have statistically higher needs, adoptees enjoy greater access to assistance.
National surveys consistently report broadly positive outcomes and family functioning among adoptive families.
Surveys of adoptive families reveal a high level of warmth and compatibility.
Where gaps persist, pre-adoption experiences explain a great deal.
Studies show adoption doesn’t cause behavioral challenges but they are instead caused by the trauma that led to the adoption itself.
Focus on the Family has long supported pursuit of reunification wherever possible and whenever it’s deemed to be in the best interest of both the child and the biological parent. Yet, in a fallen world, it’s also not always able to happen and many times not even safe. Many of the children adopted or currently in foster care come from drug addicted parents or abusive family situations. While rehabilitation of the parent is a worthy goal, it often proves unattainable.
It’s possible to make reunification such an idol, of sorts, that doing so puts vulnerable children at risk.
To be sure, every adoption isn’t always straight from the script of a family movie with a happy ending. Various difficulties arise. However beautiful it is to welcome a child into a loving new home, the loss suffered by that child is very real and not always without complications or consequences. They deserve our love, prayers and unwavering commitment.
Yet we can confidently and unapologetically still celebrate adoption. That’s because it puts every child on the verge of everything because, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, “Every child begins the world again.”
Image from Shutterstock.
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