Sociology Now, Census Update

or bad, it is increasingly inaccurate. The number of grandparents raising their grand-

children has grown from 2.2 million in 1970 to nearly 4 million today.

Of this last group, grandparents raising their grandchildren alone, they tend to

be African American, living in urban centers, and poor. Twenty-seven percent of chil-

dren being raised by grandparents (and 63 percent being raised by grandmothers

alone) are living in poverty. They tend to be working full time: 72 percent of grand-

fathers and 56 percent of grandmothers, as opposed to 33 percent and 24 percent,

respectively, who aren’t raising their grandchildren.

What happened to the parents? Often the father has abandoned the child, and

the mother is incompetent, in prison, or on drugs. Courts are much more likely to

grant custody of a child to a blood relative than to a legal stranger. Grandparents can

even legally adopt their grandchildren, in effect becoming their parents.

Adoptive Parents

When Angelina Jolie and Madonna each adopted babies from orphanages in Africa,

they were ridiculed for trying to save the world one baby at a time. These Hollywood

celebrities were not an elite vanguard but latecomers to a well-worn trend in the indus-

trial world. In the United States alone there are 1.5 million adopted children—over

2 percent of all children (Fields, 2001).

Historically, adoption was considered an option to resolve an unwanted preg-

nancy—that is, it was about the biological mother. For centuries, all over Europe,

foundling hospitals (hospitals that received unwanted newborn babies) enabled moth-

ers to anonymously leave babies at a back door or on the steps, and nuns would find

willing families to raise the children as their own. Today, however, the interest has

shifted to the adoptive families, as more and more people who want to have children

use various services to adopt babies. Adoption has shifted from being about helping

“a girl in trouble” to “enabling a loving family to have a child.”

There are many different types of adoptions, including:

■Foster care adoption:adoption of children in state care for

whom reunification with their birth parents is not feasible for

safety or other reasons.

■Private adoption:adoption either through an agency or

independent networks.

■Inter-country adoption (ICA):adoption of children from

other countries by U.S. citizens. The top three countries for

international adoption in 2006 were China (6,500 adoptions),

Guatemala (4,135), and Russia (3,706) (U.S. Department of

State, 2007).

■Transracial adoption:adoption of a child of a different race

from the adopting parents; this involves about 10 to 15 per-

cent of all domestic adoptions and the vast majority of ICA.

Motivations for adoption vary. The couple may be inca-

pable of conceiving a child themselves; they may be infertile or

gay. Some single women adopt, while others use assisted repro-

ductive technologies to become pregnant. In some cases, fertile

couples adopt because they choose to adopt.

Adoption seems to have largely beneficial effects for all

concerned (birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees).

However, a sizeable minority of birth parents characterize their

adoption experiences as traumatic, and many birth parents and

404 CHAPTER 12THE FAMILY

In the United States, there are
1.5 million adopted children—
over 2 percent of all children.
Movie star Angelina Jolie has
adopted three, including
daughter, Zahara, and son,
Maddox (here with Jolie's
partner, Brad Pitt). n