with a middle class to upper middle class, infertile,
white couple, the nature of adoption has changed
dramatically. Beginning in the 1950s, the number of
healthy, white infants available for adoption began to
decline in a striking manner. Whereas approximately
20 percent of infants born to unmarried, white
women were relinquished for adoption from the mid-
1950s to the early 1970s, by 1995 the corresponding
rate was less than 2 percent. In contrast, rates of adop-
tion placement during this same period among
African-American and Hispanic women were quite
low, ranging from 1.5 percent prior to the 1970s to
less than 1 percent in the mid-1990s. The overall de-
cline in the number of infants available for adoption
has been linked to several factors, including the legal-
ization of abortion, greater availability of contracep-
tion, greater societal acceptance of single
parenthood, and increased availability of family sup-
port programs.
One significant outcome of the reduced availabil-
ity of adoptable infants was that many individuals
began to consider adoption through private place-
ments, which frequently offered greater hope for
finding a baby, rather than through licensed agen-
cies. Today, healthier newborn infants are placed for
adoption through independent means than through
the adoption agency system. In other cases, prospec-
tive adoptive parents began looking beyond the bor-
ders of the United States in their effort to adopt
children. Beginning after World War II and escalat-
ing after the Korean and Vietnam wars, international
adoption has become a major source of children for
individuals wishing to become adoptive parents. In
2000, for example, U.S. citizens adopted more than
16,000 children from other countries, with the great-
est numbers coming from Russia, China, South
Korea, eastern Europe, and Central and South Amer-
ica. In many cases, these adoptions involved place-
ments across racial lines. Still other prospective
adoptive parents began considering adopting foster
children whose history and personal characteristics
(e.g., older age at placement, minority racial status,
exposure to neglect and/or abuse, chronic medical
problems, mental and/or psychological problems)
were thought, in the past, to be barriers to adoption.
Interest in adopting these so-called special needs chil-
dren grew with the passage of the Adoption Assis-
tance and Child Welfare Act in 1980 and has
continued with the passage of the Adoption and Safe
Families Act during the Clinton administration.
There also has been considerable change in the
types of individuals who are seeking to become adop-
tive parents. In the past, most adoptive parents were
white, middle class to upper middle class, married, in-
fertile couples, usually in their thirties or forties, and
free of any form of disability. Agencies routinely
screened out older individuals, unmarried adults, fer-
tile couples, individuals with financial problems, ho-
mosexuals, and disabled persons as prospective
adoptive parents. Even foster parents were seldom
approved for adoption of the children in their care.
Since the 1970s, however, adoption agency policy and
practice has moved in the direction of screening in
many different types of adoption applicants as op-
posed to screening them out. As a result, many of the
restrictive criteria for adoptive parenthood have been
eliminated, opening up the possibility of adoption to
a much larger segment of the population. Adoption
has become a remarkably complex social service prac-
tice and a highly diverse form of family life.Psychological and Social Service Issues
in Adoption
A number of psychological and social service is-
sues in adoption have arisen since the 1970s. Some of
the more important issues include: (1) the psychologi-
cal risk associated with adoption, (2) special needs
adoption, (3) transracial adoption, and (4) openness
in adoption.
Historically, adoption has been viewed as a highly
successful societal practice for children whose biologi-
cal parents could not or would not care for them. Evi-
dence of the benefits of adoption is obvious when
comparing the more favorable medical, psychologi-
cal, social, and educational outcomes for adopted
children with the increased problems manifested by
those children who grow up in institutional environ-
ments, foster care, or neglectful and/or abusive
homes. Furthermore, adopted children, on average,
also have been shown to fare significantly better than
those who come from socioeconomic backgrounds
similar to the ones of the adopted children’s biologi-
cal families. Yet despite these benefits, many mental
health professionals have expressed concern about
possible psychological risk associated with adoption.
Although research has documented that the vast ma-
jority of adopted children are well within the normal
range of psychological and academic adjustment, the
data also show that adopted children are more likely
than their nonadopted age-mates to be referred for
mental health services and to display a variety of
diagnosable psychiatric conditions. In most cases,
these conditions are associated with one or more of
the following problems: inattention, impulsivity, defi-
ance, aggressiveness, attachment difficulties, depres-
sion, learning disabilities, and substance abuse.
Although numerous theories have been offered to ex-
plain the adjustment difficulties of adopted children,
a common theme that runs through most of them is
the psychological impact of adoption-related loss.12 ADOPTION