Thinking of adoption in economic terms is an uncomfortable reality. There has been a deterioration of the constraints once put in place to protect members of the triad from exploitation, with market factors such as inflated inventories, scarce commodities, demographic trends in the marketplace, products in oversupply and the principles of supply and demand affecting adoption services. Key questions to consider include: Should there be free trade or should there be protectionism in adoption - an issue of particular importance with the emerging role of the Internet in adoption? Are some children worth more than others, and if so, why? What are the criteria that an individual must meet to be considered an adoption professional?

There are currently thousands of adoption businesses and no guidelines as to who qualifies as an adoption professional. Anyone who decides to be involved in adoption, even a blatant "child trader," can legally label himself or herself a "professional."

Public policy is also an area of concern. The federal government, for example, offers financial incentives in the form of tax credits to families who privately adopt infants (and who are often affluent), yet does not offer the same support to those families who adopt children in foster care (and who usually have the greatest need for such support). Is it ethical that intermediaries and those least in need benefit the most from these tax credits?

I. Amy Silberberg, J.D., Adoptive Families of America, Education and Policy Council, Afton, MN

II. Ruth-Arlene Howe, J.D., S.M., Boston College Law School, Newton Centre, MA

III. Joe Kroll, B.A., North American Council on Adoptable Children, St. Paul, MN

I. Amy Silberberg, J.D., Adoptive Families of America, Education and Policy Council, Afton, MN

Marketing in Adoption Is advertising appropriate in adoption? If so, what kind, by who, and where?

Who advertises on the Internet? Agencies, service providers and prospective adoptive parents.
Many ads give the impression that if you pay more money, you will get a better baby. Others attempt to entice birthparents to place their babies with them by offering luxury accommodations.

One prospective adoptive couple in New York State who had innocently advertised on the Internet became the victims of an international baby-selling operation. A broker not only tried to sell them a baby, but tried to sell the same baby to five different couples. This couple ultimately helped to get this broker convicted of a felony, although it was not on the grounds of baby selling (which is considered only a misdemeanor) but rather, the fact that he had tried to sell the same baby to five different couples.

Advertising, however, isn't inherently evil. It is a way of connecting people to each other without giving money to agencies or other intermediaries. "The problem is a lack of knowledge, naivete and lack of advocacy in the process." Birthparents and prospective adoptive parents need information and preparation and they need to be advocated for.

The problem with advertising is that it is often not truthful. In the attempt to "put their best foot forward," prospective adoptive parents and birthparents often exaggerate or tell outright lies which are difficult to control.

Many prospective adoptive parents take the route of intercountry adoption with the belief that they will avoid the possibility of dealing with biological relatives of the child. Some agencies anxiously market themselves in order to place as many children as possible and in the process, fail to adequately educate the families. Results can be disrupted adoptions and wrongful adoption suits.

Key Questions

1) Who is the client?

All of the parties are clients, and all should be advocated for through confidential legal representation. Birthparents often do not know what their legal rights are, particularly birthfathers (particularly in states such as Minnesota where there is no legal requirement for birthfathers to be notified of their child's adoption if they have not registered with the birthfathers' adoption registry).

2) What role is money currently playing in adoption?

Money drives almost everything in adoption. Something good that has come out of this is that open adoptions occur because when birthparents began demanding this service, adoption agencies could not compete in the "market" without providing it.

Many attorneys' fees are very high and unreasonable - a fact which causes the line between baby selling and adoption services to become blurred.

Birthparents are often promised money, gifts, etc. in order to induce birthparents to place their child with particular prospective adoptive parents or service providers. Is this ethical?

3) What is the right role for money in adoption?

Birthparents should not be paid large sums of money in exchange for placing their children for adoption, but they should not incur expenses in the process either. They should be left in the same financial situation as before the adoption process by having medical expenses, legal expenses and post-adoption services paid for.

Regulation can help to a certain extent, but it is very difficult to control. Court review and approval of expenses could help. It is also important to remember that the fact that an agency has a non-profit status does not guarantee that they are going to be more ethical in their practices than other agencies. Non-profit is merely a tax status.

Adoption is both a legal and an emotional experience and if we sacrifice either one of those things, the process is flawed.

II. Ruth-Arlene Howe, J.D., S.M., Boston College Law School, Newton Centre, MA

Child advocates and professionals in the field of adoption should be questioning the efficacy of current U.S. adoption laws and practices for all children, but especially with respect to African American children and other children of color. A disproportionate number of these children are being removed from their homes and placed into foster care. Are either the short or long-term needs of these children being met appropriately? Are their "best interests" protected by current federal law which prohibits any consideration of race (race being a social construct grounded in identity reference group theories rather than in the biological or genetic context of the 19th century)? Are the interests and asserted rights of adults superceding the best interests of children of color? Is the growing for-profit "business" of adoption a positive or negative development for children of color?

Some Blunt Observations

1) Two paradigm shifts in the field of adoption are redefining the concept of "power" - Who holds it? Who exercises it? To accomplish what ends?

Once, child welfare workers were the primary providers of adoption services for the child in need of a substitute permanent home.

Today, private adoption lawyers and others seeking to privatize adoption services approach it as a profit-making enterprise to meet the desires of adults.

2) Private infant adoption involves a recommodification of babies of color. Because of continuing income gaps between white and black Americans, African Americans are out-bid in the "marketplace" as infants of color go not for the highest price, but for the lowest price, to white Americans.

3) Both unregulated "baby-selling" by private adoption business entrepreneurs and transracial placements by agencies can destructively undermine the African American family and community as a "cultural genocide." "The greatest harm that can ever be inflicted on any group is the oblivion that awaits a people denied the opportunity to rear their own children."

4) Current laws and practices, adopted from the child protection system, are reminiscent of the "placing out" strategies of 150 years ago - a "public policy" to regulate the poor and disadvantaged.

The Baby Adoption Business

In recent years, the supply of Caucasian infants has not been able to meet the demand. This has created a business opportunity for those who can "supply" babies. The desire for healthy infants has led many adults, frustrated by long agency waiting lists, to use private "businesses" to obtain infants here and abroad. Some search via the Internet.

Indeed, the movement to eliminate race as a consideration in adoption is not built on the desire to find families for African American children in foster care, but rather is a "smokescreen" strategy to "garner the market" on the only readily available "crop" of healthy infants - the increasing number of mixed-race babies who are voluntarily relinquished by unwed white birth mothers.

Non-Infant Agency Adoptions

Current prohibitions against consideration of race in placement decision-making ignores the realities of caste in our society and encourages participation in a charade. The true needs and interests of children of color can not be met by ignoring something as immutable as their skin color and appearance.

Race and color are inextricably intertwined in this country with the issues of power, status, and how resources are allocated and distributed, influencing and governing the choices that we all make or believe that we have. Eliminating race from consideration in adoption when it is so central to the social climate of our society cannot be justified. It prevents needed acknowledgment of a set of important unresolved issues.

Adoption should not be a private, for-profit business, but a specialized child welfare service provided by private voluntary or public governmental agencies staffed by diverse and culturally competent professionals. These agencies, however, to advance their stated mission, should implement sound "business-like" practices such as budgeting and long-range planning.

III. Joe Kroll, B.A., North American Council on Adoptable Children, St. Paul, MN

The best measure of a parent's success of a transracial adopted child is to ask: "Does your adult adoptee have a positive self-image, grounded in the culture of their origin?"

The Impact of Money on Decision-Making

Financial incentives have not driven increases in adoption. States' decisions to look at time frames "through the eyes of the children" and to reduce the time that they spend in care have had the greatest influence.

Of all the types of care - residential treatment centers, group homes, therapeutic foster homes, foster care, kinship care - welfare (TANF) payments for kinship care is the cheapest. We pay caregivers more the further they are from the child's family. What does this say about social policy?

The contractor negotiator may be the most important person in an agency who is making decisions. This is the person who may determine that it is easier to buy 50 beds than to recruit, retain, train, approve and match 50 foster families.

For some children, on-going support is needed for the families who are caring for them.

Principles of Child Welfare Support

Abuse and neglect are the only reasons that children should be entering child protective services. Other reasons require alternate solutions.

A child should be placed in a family-like setting, preferably with kin. The government should provide services and financial support to the kin or foster family.

With regard to outcomes, a child should be returned to the family of origin and receive ongoing services to avoid going back into the system. If this doesn't work, the child should be placed with an adoptive family and the government should provide support.

Principles of Adoption Assistance

The government's interests are served by placing the child and making sure that the family stays together.

A child should be eligible for assistance because he/she could not be placed without ongoing services due to having special needs. This focuses on the current needs of the child as well as future needs.

The level of financial support should be based on needs of the child and the resources of the adoptive family.

If the child's condition changes, government support should be provided to maintain the family.

When we develop a service plan, the special needs of the child and the ability of the families to meet these needs should be assessed. The service plan should include meeting the medical and therapeutic needs of the child as well as the needs of the family. The government should commit resources for the assessed needs.

Discussion: Points Raised by Conference Participants

Each state must work toward creating laws so that all birthparents have legal representation and agencies and lawyers are accountable for their fees. In Minnesota, before an adoption can be finalized, the agency has to disclose the amount of and reasons for their fees.

In moving children from foster care to permanent homes, we must make sure that these children are being placed in homes that are appropriate for them. In the rush to meet incentive quotas, it may be that children are being pushed into adoptive homes too quickly. We also must make sure that these children receive appropriate and on-going post-adoption services.

Recent welfare reform was grounded on false assumptions. It is another example of applying a "micro"solution to a "macro" problem. The question should be, why do so many children enter the foster care system? We need to do something about the drug problem - for example, by legalizing drugs and heavily taxing them instead of criminalizing drug use. Meaningful jobs should be created and offered so that parents have the wherewithal to care for their children. At the policy level, stereotypes of incompetent minority parents are propagated and supported and societally, we set it up so that they never have a chance.

Pregnant parents are actually not powerless because they hold the desired commodity. They are, however, emotionally vulnerable. Are adoption services created to purposely not inform parents of their power so that practitioners can take their power for their own? If parents experience their power, will adoption professionals be unhappy?

The most powerless party in an adoption is not the pregnant parent, but the child.