Invaluable Desktop Adoption Resource Now Available

By William Pierce, Ph.D., President
National Council for Adoption

An invaluable new resource has been published by the National Council for Adoption (NCFA) for all those who are interested in adoption. It's called Adoption Factbook III (earlier editions were published in 1985 and 1989). This new Factbook, a 637-page compendium, has information and features that exist nowhere else.

* The book compares the performance of individual states in the area of infant adoption and shows that some states are showing outstanding results.

* The book provides the latest comprehensive statistics on U.S. adoptions and reflects the fact that adoption is doing quite well in America.

* The book features in-depth, well-documented essays on the critical issues written by the leading experts on adoption.

* The book gathers together the best of the previously published information relating to adoption so that people concerned about adoption can rely on one desktop reference.

INDIVIDUAL STATES' PERFORMANCE VARIES WIDELY
One of the most fascinating features of Adoption Factbook III is the "scorecard" developed for the states showing how they compare in terms of pregnancies to unmarried women which end in adoption. The book features an "Adoption Option Index " which is a statistical look at the outcome of out-of-wedlock pregnancies - - whether they are aborted, brought to term, and/or whether an adoption decision is made. [Technically, it is a ratio calculated by dividing the number of domestic infant adoptions by the sum of abortions and births times 1,000.]

The scorecard shows that in the U.S., about one of every 100 pregnancies to unmarried women ends with an adoption. But some states, such as Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska, Vermont, and Oklahoma, score twice as high as the national average and as much as 10 times higher than the bottom tier of states, South Dakota, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Virginia, California, and Michigan.

ADOPTION IS ALIVE, WELL, AND POPULAR WITH AMERICANS
Although infant adoption rates vary substantially in the U.S., as a nation Americans may be the most enthusiastic country on earth when it comes to offering family membership to children without homes. Adoption of children from other countries continues to soar, up to an estimated 15,774 for the latest fiscal year. In 1989, when the last Factbook was published, intercountry adoptions by Americans stood at 7,948.

The growing number of adoptions of children with special needs is especially heartening. These are the children who are most challenging and difficult to find families for. In seven years adoptions of these children, most of whom were rescued from the foster care system, nearly doubled: from 13,568 in 1989 to 26,434 in 1996.

For Fiscal Year 1998 experts project that 30,000 children with special needs were adopted. Adoptions of babies have remained remarkably constant, especially in comparison with the results in countries such as the United Kingdom.

In 1986, there were an estimated 24,589 babies adopted. In 1996, the number was 23,537. By contrast, in England and Wales, adoptions of infants under age one fell from 4,548 in 1975 to just 322 in 1995, a 93% decline.

EXPERTS PUT THE INFORMATION IN CONTEXT
Numbers by themselves are often meaningless. U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ), an expert who chairs the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the House Committee on International Relations, helps explain why and how such adoptions are working out in his essay, "Inter-country Adoption Experiences of Americans."

Rep. Smith points out that a government survey shows some Americans are opting to go abroad to adopt because they are concerned about U.S. adoptions being challenged in court. Dozens of other experts cover nearly every major topic being debated in adoption circles today. In some instances, where the controversy is especially pointed, contrasting viewpoints are provided by authors. Fortunately, these essays are heavily referenced so that readers can, if they choose, go directly to the best in the adoption literature for more details.

COMPREHENSIVE REFERENCE DATA IN ONE SOURCE
Although the editors of Adoption Factbook III have conducted research and commissioned papers on a host of adoption-related questions, they have not hesitated to include the most important data which has already been published with the new information.

For instance, a 12-page article from the National Center for Health Statistics discusses attitudes of American women toward adoption. A report by the National Conference of State Legislatures on the implementation of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act provides guidance to each state's response to this positive new law.

Data in two essays provide insight into why children enter foster care (for 17%, the reason is sexual abuse) and how the states rank on child abuse and neglect cases (overall, cases are up 17.6%). A national portrait of the maternity homes that serve pregnant adolescents is provided which shows, surprisingly, that a major need for these facilities is not privacy alone: many young pregnant women are homeless.

Adoption Factbook III is $39.95, plus postage and handling, and buyers may also order a CD-ROM of the book. For more information, contact major Internet booksellers or the publisher, NCFA, at 202-328-1200.