Numbers

By Trace A. DeMeyer

I was asked recently how many domestic adoptions take place in America each year. I did some research and was surprised to see how much the numbers are shrinking, which means the Nightlight Adoption Agency who handled the Baby Veronica transaction must be very nervous and scouring poor communities like Indian reservations to snatch more infants to sell to people like the Capobiancos (shown at right).
Yes, I am cynical these days. The agencies are going to push to keep their profit margins somehow. They are going to charge more and more to keep their doors open and pay desperate mothers well to relinquish.

 

Infant Domestic Adoption: A Gradual Slowdown

Every five years, NCFA hires a researcher to survey state administrators in order to determine the total number of infant domestic adoptions in the U.S. As reported in Adoption Factbook V, there were 18,078 infant domestic adoptions in 2007, down from 22,291 in 2002, the last year in which the survey was conducted. The first NCFA survey (1982) identified 17,602 infant domestic adoptions. Since the peak year of 1992, when 26,672 adoptions were identified, the number of private domestic adoptions has dropped each year.
One of the reasons for the decreasing number of domestic adoptions may be a parallel decrease in the percentage of unmarried women relinquishing children for adoption. According to data from the National Survey of Family Growth, relinquishments have declined from nearly nine percent in the 1970s to under one percent of births to never-married women by 1995 (the last available data year). Reasons offered by researchers include an increased social acceptance of single motherhood, and a higher number of unmarried mothers in their 20s rather than their teens.

Read more here: http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=2309