The Negative Effects Of Adopting Older Children

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Adoption is permanent; foster care is temporary. Children that aren’t adopted by the age of eight-teen from foster care age out of the system, and once they leave they are thrown into the world with no support to cling to. The lack of adoption of older children inside the foster care system stems from adopter’s personal concerns and the adoptees psychological issues. However, encouraging parents to adopt older youth is a positive effect because it will stimulate stability and decrease behavioral and mental problems within the child’s life. Initially, the original platform to convey foster care principles was created in “The Placing Out System of the New York Children’s Aid Society,” which launched the purpose to take care of unsettled and
“Approximately 30,000 to 40,000 youth leave the foster care system each year with no permanent, stable family to support them as they negotiate the challenges of early adulthood” (Diehl 81). Additionally, according to the most recent “Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System” from 2013, 296,833 children between the ages of four to eighteen, considered of older youth to adoptee parents (Waterman 18), lived in the foster care system. The highest amount of children placed was at 16 or 17 years old. This totaled to be 53,990, and came to be about 20 percent of the children residing in this lifestyle (AFCARS Report #21). Yet, even while these numbers exist, the problem remains. Older children without a definite family are not being adopted. Statistics display numbers well, but the one thing statistics do not display is perspective. When a people look at these numbers, they shouldn’t see just numbers but children in need of a
Despite the lack of adoption shown in the numbers of older youth, it doesn’t dismiss that people adopting have not considered it. Nevertheless, children are still left homeless in a sense; without the stability of a loved one. Parents adopt younger children because they want to have the similar familiarity that a biological parent would have with their own child (Brind 323). These parents normally are not capable to conceive on their own; however, although this is a positive outcome for younger children in the system because they are provided with loving homes, it negatively affects older ones. The fantasy would stand that foster care wouldn’t have to exist because parents would willingly invite a child with every odd against them into their home so that in return the odds could be in their favor. Then again, for this type of effect to take place people have to be aware of the issue at hand, and they have to be able to lend a

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