Many children in the USA need loving families. These children can be adopted through private or foster care adoption.

Private Adoption

Most often in private adoption, a birth mother makes an adoption plan for her child. A family who wants to adopt that child usually makes contact either through an adoption agency or an attorney.

The number of white infants placed for adoption in the United States has declined in recent years, in part because of increased access to contraception, the legalization of abortion and changed social attitudes about unmarried parenting. Adoption is a hard choice for women in crisis pregnancies; and it is not always presented as an appealing option by the clinics that serve them. We pray that churches will come alongside women in crisis pregnancies, to support them with Christian love.

Some birthmothers do make adoption plans and many families are eager to embrace the babies. Estimates of the annual number of infants adopted domestically in the United States (excluding foster and relative adoption) range from 25,000 to 30,000.

In many newborn adoptions, adoptive parents are selected by the birth parents. This sometimes means a long wait, as adoptive parents’ photos and profiles sit in an agency’s binder, competing with other families for the attention of birth parents.

Adoptions used to be very secretive; now open adoption is a growing trend. Birth parents and adoptive parents often meet each other at least once and they may have ongoing contact. Adoptive families, birth families and social workers create guidelines for any ongoing relationship. If you are interested in private adoption, but worried about an open relationship with the birthparents, talk to agencies or families with experience in this kind of adoption.

Adoption laws are regulated by individual states and you will need to be familiar with the laws of your state as well as the state of prospective birth parents. The Adoptive Families Magazine website has a chart of state adoption law in the USA.

Foster Care Adoption

There are approximately 534,000 children in foster care in the USA. About 126,000 of these are eligible for adoption. Each year, about 20,000 children in the USA age out of foster care, sent into the world without a family of their own.

In the past, reunification with birth families has been the main goal of foster care. Because many professionals and families realized that children were hurt by being continually moved from birth to foster families, the Adoption and Safe Families Act was passed in 1997 to make it easier for children to be adopted from foster care.

Most foster families do their best to care for these children. But a minority of foster parents abuse the already hurt children entrusted to them. There are terrible stories of all kinds of foster parent abuse. Somehow, it is possible for these horrors to be hidden, overlooked or misinterpreted by the child welfare system.

One child abused is one child too many. Belittling and bullying heaped onto a child already broken from not having a permanent family can create lifelong devastation. God can redeem this brokenness. But we must work with him. We must step in on the children’s behalf.

The foster care system in the USA includes controversy. It has some of the inevitable failures from running a large governmental agency with limited resources. Its many social workers and administrators have to use these limited resources to make difficult decisions for vulnerable children and families.

Analyzing the foster care system is beyond the scope of this website. But under all these layers of people and government are boys and girls who long for a place to belong and parents who love them. Over 100,000 of them are eligible to be adopted into families. Children of all ages express deep longing to be adopted, even though hope of becoming a part of a family may become more desperate as they get older.

Adopting a boy or girl from the foster care system costs nearly nothing, and the government provides continuing financial provision for medical care and counseling when necessary.

Consider adopting a child from foster care. Consider how your church can provide a way to support those who are interested in serving as foster parents. Pray for the children in our midst who are hurting and lonely.