Adoptive Families in Distress

Intercountry adoption (ICA) is a relatively new phenomenon in Australia and it is only since the plight of abandoned children was brought to world awareness at the end of the Vietnam War that it has become an accepted means of eradicating or extending a family. However, the major impetus for this situation has been the rapid decrease in the availability of local infants for adoption and this appears to be an outcome of the greater social acceptability of single parenting and the introduction of the supporting parent benefit which has provided single women with the financial means to keep their babies rather than give them up for adoption. While the numbers of children available for adoption have decreased the demand for them has not and so one is faced with a problem of supply and demand which has lead many persons who would otherwise have not done to consider ICA. It is of course recognised that not all adoptive parents of overseas children come into this category, although increasingly this is becoming the case. If one Is honest then it is suggested that ICA is rarely a first choice as a way of creating a family, indeed, one might say that it is a third choice for those whose age precludes them from adopting an infant. Objectively then, the risk of adoption failure leading to breakdown is a real possibility and one that needs to be thought about and prepared for before the number of ICA accelerate and the probability of breakdown increases.

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Social Development, its Contexts, and Child Welfare

Maas¹

1987

Children Australia

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Child welfare agencies and workers are often so besieged by pressures from all sides that they may lose sight of their purposes. They may mistake their current programs for their reasons for being. Daily activities in agencies are frequently determined by crises in the lives of societally unintegrated children and youth. They may be called neglected and/or abused, disturbed and/or deliquent. What they tend to have in common, whatever label they are given, is that they are somehow peripheral to their society, undervalued by it, and often victimized. Is it any wonder that children and youth become alienated, feeling unbelonging and depressed? Or that there are high staff turnover, under-funding and organizational emergencies in agencies mandated to provide primarily remedial (after-the-pain) services? Under these circumstances, practitioners have little opportunity to review the assumptions, as well as the effects of their daily work.

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Adoptive Families in Distress

Cited by 6 publications

References 5 publications

Parenting attitudes, foster parenting attitudes, and motivations of adoptive and nonadoptive foster parent trainees

Parenting attitudes, foster parenting attitudes, and motivations of adoptive and nonadoptive foster parent trainees

Love is Not Enough: Breakdown in Intercountry Adoption

Social Development, its Contexts, and Child Welfare

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