US International Adoptions Dropped Drastically!

Although there were still an enormous 12,753transnational adoption last year by Americans, that number is almost half of the previous year's 21,449.

It's not that less people ar wanting and trying to adopt kids from abroard. However, the numbers of orphans in many countries began to decline as parents in wealthier Western nations chose international adoption as a route to complete their families.

Another reason is tighter restrictions due to revalations of improprieties including child trafficking and kidnapping along with alarming reports potining to too llosley regulated adoptions that terminated or allowed children to be put in harm's way - even killed by ther adopters.

Full story here.

What Will the Future Bring?

Another reaosn for the slwodon, may well be what is causing a decline in US births - the economy. It is htought that less babies are being born because people are thinking more carfully of having or expanding families with unemployment so high and many people's future's in question.  

The economic downturn, the worst since The Great Depression of the 1930s, may have caused the number of births in the U.S. to decrease for the second straight year, as more women chose to delay pregnancy and motherhood.

Even as the total population rose slightly, the number of births dipped 2.6 percent to 4.14 million in 2009, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Birthrate dropped to 13.5 per 1,000 people, up from 14.3 in 2007 when sub prime loans collapsed which led to decreased home prices and over 8 million jobs were lost. Source.

If there is a later upswing in the economy, will those who have put of fhaving a baby increase the pool of potential adopters?  Where will all the babies come from to meet the demand?

We can only hope the reprpductive medical science will keep up with all the demand and create ways for thes epeople to have babies in their aging years...because to hope they would just simply accept childlessness as their true destiny and a speople in days gone by did, seems an impossible dream.