Adoptive Vs Nonadoptive Parents

The textbook explains adoption as human beings caring for non-human primates. In an article from the California State University, Fullerton library in the Anthropology department, an Anthropology researcher, Stein writes “about behavioral definitions of adoption are scarce.” (Stein) The concept of “change of primary caregiver” is central in adoption, but as will be seen, adoptors are often individuals other than adult females. Also, measuring attachment can prove difficult, especially in the field. Anthropology researcher Riedman defines a foster parent as one who “provides exclusive care for another 's offspring.” (Riedman) This also appears over-restrictive, for many cases of adoption in nonhuman

Raising children is one of the most important responsibilities in any society. Today, working parents have many options, but what about those children who have neither a mother nor father? What about those children who come from broken and abusive homes? In such cases there are often few choices. Parentless children may be placed in orphanages or in foster homes. Ideally, foster care offers children more personalized attention than would normally be available at a public or private situation. However, orphanage care is notoriously uneven. While some children are indeed in loving homes, others find themselves neglected or

Adoption is the process in which a person takes over the parenting of someone else’s child and permanently transfers all the responsibilities and rights from the biological parent or parents. Giving up a child for adoption is a very difficult decision for a mother to make. Today, many children are being parented by a single parent, a grandparent, a stepparent, foster parent or other parent figure. Making adoption an option is done by providing loving, responsible, and legally permanent parents to a child when their biological parents are not able or will not take care of them.(Carter)

There was a study done but the University of Colorado by Robert Plomin called the “Colorado Adoption Project” between 1975 to 1982 where he took two groups of 240 pregnant mothers. In one group the children all got adopted and in the other the biological parents raised the children (Harris). This study helps support Judith Harris’s opinion on how parents hold very little influence on their children growing up.

Foster Care and Adoption are the most multi-faceted areas of child welfare. Foster care consists of placing children outside of the custody of their parents or legal guardians. This out-of-home placement can be temporary or long-term. Adoption on the other hand, consists of the legal and permanent process that establishes a parent/child relationship between individuals not related biologically (Downs, Moore, & McFadden, 2009). These two areas of child welfare are constantly evolving and the decisions made on a child’s behalf can affect many areas of their biological, spiritual, social, and emotional wellbeing.

In this research they took out a longitudinal study. They studied 65 children which were placed in an institution when less than four months, which had all experienced early privation. By 4 years old, 24 children had been adopted, 15 returned to their natural homes and the rest remained in the institution. It was found that the adopted children had closer attachments to their parents and had good family relationships and this was not the case for the ‘restored’ children.

Millions of children are living without parents around the world and they need help. Over 153 million youths around the world are without one or both parents, and 7 million of them are in institutional care (qtd. in “Children’s Statistics”). Worldwide, minors are suffering from living without a family and a stable relief system. International adoption, although often in the limelight, is on a slight decline and domestic adoption is increasing. Despite the fact that the percentage of people considering any form of adoption has decreased from 2007 to 2013, the percentage of foster care adoptions has experienced more growth than international and private adoptions (“BAAF Adoption

“I want to be like my adoptive mother, but my birth mother says I’m like her. I don’t know what to do or who I am. My whole life is messed up. It’s not my fault. It can’t be fixed,” said a girl adopted into an open adoption (Byrd). An open adoption is a process in which the birth parents and the adoptive parents know each other and are involved in the adopted child’s life. A closed adoption is when there is no contact at all and no identifying information is given between birth and adoptive parents (Byrd). While both are common to today’s society, closed adoptions allow opportunities for the adoptive parents to raise their kids without the interference of birth parents (Bender).

When looking at adoption there is a large variety of studies that can be done with adoptive children and their development. How does the child attach to his or her adoptive parents? How does the child view themselves in regards to a family unit when siblings are involved? How do the parents view the child’s placement in the family after a certain period of time has passed? All of these variables can be observed in study after study. But for sake of this paper, we are going to take a look at what researchers found in Romanian orphanages and how these children connected and attached with their adoptive mothers and parents. We will also look at a study

Foster care differs from adoption in several ways. For example, when individuals choose to become foster parents, they are not legally responsible for the child for which they are caring. Instead, that legal responsibility remains on either the local authority or the birthparents. In addition, foster care is temporary, although it can be permanent in some scenarios. In most cases, though, it is only short term. Adoption of course gives legal responsibility to a new family and is designed to be permanent in nature. However, foster care can be just as advantageous for a child as adoption for various reasons.

The adoptive family may ignore or make little effort to incorporate into the family the cultural heritage of the adopted child (Adamec,136). This decision to leave the culture behind, outside the family, does not suggest that the child is neither accepted nor loved or cherished as their own. However, when the adoptive family also adopts and embraces the cultural identity of the child's birth culture, it enriches not only the adopted child but also the entire family and extended family as well. Another factor is attachment is the child’s age when they were adopted. The older the child when adopted, the risk of social maladjustment was found to be higher (Simon, 188). Most children when adopted at younger ages have a better chance to adjustment normally, than children adopted over the age of ten. An infant learns to trust quicker, than a ten-year old child does, but all of this depends on each case. Developmental theorist Eric Erikson, discusses trust issues in his theory of development. Erikson's first stage of development is “Trust versus Mistrust”, which states “if needs are dependably met, infants develop a sense of basic trust” (Myers, 149). For an adopted child, placing the child early in a key ingredient to successful attachment of child to parent and vice versa (Cox, 1). Such an attachment, which is strong among the majority of families throughout the paper, is an important

When the average American citizen today thinks about the concept of adoption, what images are typically the first that come to mind? Although different people are sure to have equally as different experiences in this field, one picture continues to remain the most commonly-accepted. This image consists of a man and a woman who cannot have children of their own, a newborn baby, and a single mother who will certainly be unable to provide for the infant due to her young age, lack of financial support, or another variety of unfortunate circumstances. Making the decision to adopt a child is without a doubt one of the best options available for couples who are unable to conceive, but by thinking of adoption as nothing more than the fallback

Further, applicants for adoption should be accepted on the basis of an individual assessment of their capacity to understand and meet the needs of a particular available child at the point of adoption and in the future (Rosario, 2006, p.8). The United States is facing a critical shortage of adoptive and foster parents. As a result, hundreds of thousands of children in this country are without permanent homes. These children deteriorate for months, even years, within state foster care systems that lack qualified foster parents and are frequently faced with other problems.

Secondly, birth parent’s intense stress can continue into later years like on the child’s birthday and while they think of what type of person their son or daughter might have become under their care. For example, an adoptee might study and learn to play instruments very well with the adoptive parents, but if the child would have grown – up with his/her birth parents. They might would have been a great artist, but since this was not the case. The child may not develop those skills as the birth parents would have hoped. Through all this loss and guilt, the relationship among both parents may fall apart because of how each one feels about the adoption and their parent’s lack of support will distance them all even farther from one another. A major case is when the birth mother may have to leave her home and family due to pregnancy, which would degrade her educational and work status in the community. (Information Gateway) The birth parents have to encounter much hardship and denial to of most of an adoption plan, but more current issues, such as their shame, identity, and long- term issues effect them as well.

     Adoption is metamorphosing into a radical new process that is both sweeping the nation and changing it. But this process is not an easy one, there are many steps to go through. Through research it is made a lot easier. Adoption is a also a highly visible example of a social institution that has benefits from and been reshaped by both the Internet and the exponential growth of alternative lifestyles, from single to transracial to gay. It is accelerating our transformation into a more multicultural society; even as it helps redefine out understanding of “family.” The process includes three main steps including a type of adoption, the techniques for location a baby for adoption, arranging