International Adoption Essay

Adoption has existed since the ancient cultures. There are multiple reasons for adoption, which include preserving the family line, offering children to childless couples, and supporting children who have been orphaned or abandoned. International adoption exists for similar reasons, which will be explored in this paper. International adoption refers to the legal adoption of children born in foreign countries. Worldwide, international adoption involves more than 30,000 children a year, moving between more than 100 countries. France is one of the four countries receiving the largest number of internationally adopted children, after the United States, which is far ahead in first place, followed by Spain and Italy (Selman, 2009). Internationally

These early adoptive parents often had biological children and were religious and family-oriented. Their primary motives for adopting internationally were humanitarian. Americans, eager to provide humanitarian means of providing children with what they need and deserve above all else; a loving family of their own but some see it as one of the ultimate forms of human exploitation. No matter what type of adoption is being considered, each adoption case should be evaluated based on what is in the best interest of the individual child in question (Lee,

Understanding the process of cultural integration is similarly necessary for family therapists and other professionals working with families to prepare for international adoption and the raising of their new child. Research is only beginning to try to understand the need for cultural socialization in facilitating internationally adopted children’s ethnic identity development. Though scarce, studies have explored the role of cultural socialization by adoptive parents in the ethnic identity formation of their children. These studies focused on the importance of ethnic identity development (Yoon, 2001; Huh & Reid, 2000; Andujo,