The Challenges of International Adoption: What Happens When Adoptees Can’t Adapt

An interesting article (insert puzzled look).  The storyline is oddly ‘late to the party’…. I do not know of any family that would withhold a child’s story, identity, history or culture.  The story’s content reads as if this was written in the 1950-1970’s, certainly not present day.  Adoption is celebrated, never hidden. 

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Source: http://stream.aljazeera.com

Bringing a child home is a life changing event, but when that child has crossed borders to come into a family’s life the challenges of upbringing may sometimes be insurmountable.

From the end of World War II until 2004, the number of international adoptions by Americans rose steadily, and in 2004 almost 23,000 children were adopted from overseas. Children arrived from China, Russia, Guatemala, South Korea, Ukraine, Colombia and Ethiopia. Over the past decade there has been a rapid decline in many of the receiving countries.

This may be due, in part, to the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. The treaty imposes mandatory waiting periods, residency requirements for adoptive parents and a preference for domestic adoption.

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