Increased Demand + Stricter Rules = Long Waits for Most International Adoptions

The wait time for international adoptions made by U.S. parents has gone up drastically over the last several years. This is partially due to:

1. Increased demand for international adoption by U.S. parents;



2. Stricter rules being imposed by the countries from which adoptions originate, arsing both from a desire to protect children being adopted and to a growing "pro-national" (or "anti-international") adoption stance from within many countries;



3. In some cases, more domestic adoptions are taking place within countries that used to send many of their children to the U.S. as adoptees. This trend is due to stronger national economies and/or local government emphasizing the importance of children being adopted nationally;



4. The U.S. shutting down adoption from various countries due to political unrest or unethical behavior by agencies and orphanages within the countries.

U.S. demand to adopt foreign children has certainly increased over the last few decades. For example, the US issued 7093 visas to children adopted from foreign countries in 1990. That number grew to 22,884 in 2004. Since 2004, the numbers have dwindled somewhat, going down to 22,728 in 2005 and to 20,679 in 2006.

Since 2001, mainland China has been the most popular country for adoptions from the U.S. with numbers of adoptions rising steadily from 4,681 in 2001 to 7,906 in 2005. It remained the most popular in 2006, but adoption of Chinese babies decreased by almost 1,500 in that year to 6,493. This decrease is due to a variety of factors:

• New, stricter guidelines instituted by the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs CCAA);



• Adoptive U.S. parents, not wishing to wait more than two years to adopt a Chinese baby, have begun adopting from other countries such as Vietnam, Guatemala and Ethiopia;



• People in China are beginning to adopt domestically due to the country's strengthening economy and changing views on domestic adoption, thereby leaving less children available for international adoption.
  

With the increased popularity of international adoption from the U.S., several countries are now receiving more applications than they can comfortably handle. Vietnam has requested that American agencies decrease the amount of applications sent its way so that its adoption officials can catch up. The current wait time for international adoptions in Vietnam is estimated to be almost as long as in China, especially for parents hoping to adopt little girls. This is also true of adoptions from Taiwan.

In fact, some adoption agencies in the U.S. will no longer allow perspective adoptive parents (PAPs) to indicate their preference for the sex of the child they hope to adopt, or indeed to even specify the child's approximate age. This is especially true in China, where at least 90% of the children waiting for adoption are girls. This high ratio is due to China's one-child-only policy which allows Chinese couples to have only one child. Given China's overwhelming preference for boys, the vast majority of girls end up in adoption agencies or abandoned. (To read an article on why girls are abandoned in China, click here).

In all other countries where adoption is allowed, there are far more boys in orphanages than girls. In Korea, for example, approximately 80% of the children awaiting international adoption are boys. Although Korea allows Korean PAPs to specify their preference for girls or boys, PAPs in the U.S. can not specify unless they themselves are of Korean descent or they are adopting special needs children or older children.

In general, the more popular the country is for international adoption, the less choice that a PAP will have in selecting sex, age and ethnicity.

Increased demand and a growing trend toward "pro-national adoption" of babies, is translating into countries making stricter rules to limit the amount of foreign PAPs who can adopt their children. For example, in 2007 China implemented stricter rules intended to decrease demand for international adoption of its children by 25-30%. In addition to restrictions on U.S. PAPs' age, income, health and education, the new rules limit PAPs' body mass index to 40, ruling out the obese.

Homosexuals are not allowed to adopt internationally. Although many foreign countries do allow single females to adopt, they do not allow single males to do so.