Essays on Adoption

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parents to the adoptive parents.

Contemporary adoption practices can be open or closed. Open adoption allows identifying information to be communicated between adoptive and biological parents and, perhaps, interaction between kin and the adopted person. The practice of closed adoption seals all identifying information, maintaining it as secret and preventing disclosure of the adoptive parents', biological kin's, and adoptees' identities.

Infertility, health concerns relating to pregnancy and childbirth, wanting to cement a new family following divorce or death of one parent, compassion motivated by religious or philosophical conviction, to avoid contributing to overpopulation out of the belief that it is more responsible to care for otherwise parent-less children than to reproduce, or to ensure that inheritable diseases are not passed on.

There are 135,000 children adopted annually within the United States.
As of now, there are more than 107,000 children eligible and waiting for adoption in foster care.
There are more adoption agencies in the U.S. than any other country, and Americans adopt the most children globally.
A full 40% of all adopted children are a separate race or ethnicity than their adoptive family.

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parents to the adoptive parents.

Contemporary adoption practices can be open or closed. Open adoption allows identifying information to be communicated between adoptive and biological parents and, perhaps, interaction between kin and the adopted person. The practice of closed adoption seals all identifying information, maintaining it as secret and preventing disclosure of the adoptive parents', biological kin's, and adoptees' identities.

Infertility, health concerns relating to pregnancy and childbirth, wanting to cement a new family following divorce or death of one parent, compassion motivated by religious or philosophical conviction, to avoid contributing to overpopulation out of the belief that it is more responsible to care for otherwise parent-less children than to reproduce, or to ensure that inheritable diseases are not passed on.

There are 135,000 children adopted annually within the United States.
As of now, there are more than 107,000 children eligible and waiting for adoption in foster care.
There are more adoption agencies in the U.S. than any other country, and Americans adopt the most children globally.
A full 40% of all adopted children are a separate race or ethnicity than their adoptive family.