{"id":21386,"date":"2013-10-03T13:12:57","date_gmt":"2013-10-03T18:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=21386"},"modified":"2013-12-03T09:51:28","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T14:51:28","slug":"race-and-adoption-american-children-abroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2013\/10\/race-and-adoption-american-children-abroad\/","title":{"rendered":"Race and Adoption – American Children Abroad"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The United States is the largest receiver of intercountry adoptees, and has historically always been so. However international adoptions to American \u201cforever families\u201d have been on the decline since 2004<\/a>, in line with the global trend<\/a>. The decline is broadly attributable to tighter adoption controls and regulation, often implemented in response to controversies about baby-selling scandals and shifts in sending country sentiments about the propriety of sending orphans abroad. More recently, Russia\u2019s controversial, politically-motivated decision in January to pass a country-specific ban halting adoptions of Russian children to American parents<\/a> is likely to further impact the declining rate of foreign-born orphans received into American families.<\/p>\n

In this context, and given the broader academic and policy debate on the merits and costs of international adoption generally, it is interesting to point out one figure that is reportedly rising \u2013 the number of African-American children being adopted from<\/i> the US to<\/i> foreign parents. Statistics on the total number of American children adopted abroad are hard to come by, but CNN reports<\/a> that most go to Canada, with the Netherlands in second place as a receiving country (250 US children adopted by Dutch families between 2004 and 2010.)<\/p>\n

There are a number of factors behind this trend. Apart from the tightening of adoption regulations in many traditional sending countries (such as China and Russia), the US allows birth mothers to have a say in who adopts their children. According to CNN, adoption experts report that international adoptions are sometimes preferred by American birth mothers, due to a \u201cperception that their black or mixed-race children will not face the same race issues [abroad] as in the United States.\u201d \u00a0On the \u201cdemand\u201d side of the equation, prospective adoptive parents in Europe are apparently increasingly drawn to the US in their search for adoptive children given the transparency and sophistication of adoption procedures here.<\/p>\n

The movement of mostly black American children to mostly white European families potentially feeds into a body of scholarship studying the historical and evolving impact of race on adoption. In the context of the US\u2019 role as a receiving country, several scholars have posited that some American adoptive parents turn to international adoption, over domestic adoption, for reasons of race. Solangel Maldonado, for example, has argued that the \u201cracial hierarchy in the adoption market places white children at the top, African American children at the bottom, and children of other races in between.\u201d Hawley Grace Fogg-Davis, similarly, posits that white adoptive parents, if unable to adopt white infants, \u201care more likely to adopt children of Colombian, Korean and American Indian ancestry than to adopt African American children.\u201d<\/p>\n

If American birth mothers are indeed demonstrating an increasing willingness to look to foreign families as potential adopters, it would seem that the racial preference aspect of intercountry adoption might be relevant to America not only as a receiving country, but also as a sending country, something that merits further research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States is the largest receiver of intercountry adoptees, and has historically always been so. However international adoptions to American \u201cforever families\u201d have been on the decline since 2004, in line with the global trend. The decline is broadly attributable to tighter adoption controls and regulation, often implemented in response to controversies about baby-selling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-law","category-public","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}