You're reading: International adoptions by US parents fall again in 2012

The number of children adopted internationally by American parents fell 7 percent last year, continuing a multi-year decline brought on in part by tightened adoption rules, a U.S. State Department report showed on Thursday.

Some 8,668 children were adopted into U.S. families from
abroad in the 2012 fiscal year, down from 9,320 the previous
year, with more children coming from China than from any other
country, the report said.

“This is a continuation of a trend,” said Adam Pertman,
executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
and the author of “Adoption Nation.”

“There’s no lack of, if you will, demand in this country,”
he told Reuters. “People would like to adopt more children; the
issue is whether those children are available. And they’re
becoming less and less available, and that’s what the numbers
show.”

The number of foreign children adopted by U.S. parents
peaked in 2004 at 22,884, according to U.S. government figures.

China, which sent 2,697 children to the United States last
year, has for years sent more children to American parents than
has any other country, in large part due to its one-child
policy. Ethiopia was the second most popular country for U.S.
adoptions, with 1,568 adoptions last year.

Russia ranked third with 748 children sent to the United
States. The report, covering the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30,
concluded before Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law
last month banning Americans from adopting Russian children.

The ban is part of a package of legislation that responds to
a U.S. law known as the Magnitsky Act, which excludes Russians
from the United States who are suspected of involvement in the
death in custody of anti-graft lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009
or of other human rights violations.

Russia‘s Supreme Court has ruled that, in cases where
adoptions had been approved by courts before the new year, the
children should be handed over to their new parents.

TOUGHENED REGULATIONS

Part of the decline in adoption numbers can be attributed to
the signing of the Hague Convention on intercountry adoption,
Pertman said.

The convention entered into force for the United States in
2008 and improved regulation of international adoptions to try
to cut down on corruption. But it also slowed down adoptions and
led to a shutdown in some countries.

The other factor contributing to the decline is that some
countries are changing the way they view and handle their
intercountry adoptions.

One of those countries is China, which has begun to
re-examine whether it can afford to lose the large number of
baby girls it allows to leave the country to international
adoptive parents, Pertman said.

Most adoptions from China involve girls, because many
parents there prefer to have their one child be a boy for social
and economic reasons. China has created hurdles for
international adoptive parents as it has sought to build up its
own domestic adoption program.

As a result of the geopolitical changes making it more
difficult for Americans to adopt from abroad, they are having to
wait longer to bring a child to the United States, Pertman said.
Average wait times are now between two and five years, depending
on the country, he said.

“The people who suffer most as a consequence of this are the
children who remain in orphanages, who will not have a family in
their own country or in the United States,” Pertman said.

The largest number of adoptions in the United States
continues to come from within the country’s foster care system,
which accounts for over 50,000 adoptions a year, Pertman said.