Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parents to the adoptive parents.
Bastard Nation is a North American adult adoptee political advocacy and support organization. It was founded in 1996 by denizens of the Usenet newsgroup alt.adoption Shea Grimm, Damsel Plum, Marley Greiner and Lainie Petersen. The original intent of the organization was to support adult adoptees in gaining access to their original birth certificates as a civil right, rather than as a vehicle for facilitating a search, which had been the aim of prior open records organizations. It is also distinguished from search-and-reconnection focused organizations in that it supports the full spectrum of the adult adoptee experience, including adoptees who do not wish to search and adoptees whose reconnections were a bad experience.
Genetic sexual attraction is a hypothesis that attraction may be a product of genetic similarities. While there is scientific evidence for the position, some commentators regard the hypothesis as pseudoscience. The term is also used for a phenomenon in which biologically related persons separated at a young age develop intense feelings—including sexual attraction—upon the restoration of contact.
The international adoption of South Korean children started around 1953 as a measure to take care of the large number of mixed children that became orphaned during and after the Korean War. It quickly evolved to include orphaned Korean children. Religious organizations in the United States, Australia, and many Western European nations slowly developed the apparatus that sustained international adoption as a socially integrated system.
A family reunion is an occasion when many members of an extended family congregate. Sometimes reunions are held regularly, for example on the same date of every year.
An adoption reunion registry is a formal mechanism where adoptees and their birth family members can be reunited. Registries may be free or charge fees, be facilitated by non-profit organizations, government agencies or private businesses.
Closed adoption is a process by which an infant is adopted by another family, and the record of the biological parent(s) is kept sealed. Often, the biological father is not recorded—even on the original birth certificate. An adoption of an older child who already knows their biological parent(s) cannot be made closed or secret. This used to be the most traditional and popular type of adoption, peaking in the decades of the post-World War II Baby Scoop Era. It still exists today, but it exists alongside the practice of open adoption. The sealed records effectively prevent the adoptee and the biological parents from finding, or even knowing anything about each other. However, the emergence of non-profit organizations and private companies to assist individuals with their sealed records has been effective in helping people who want to connect with biological relatives to do so.
In the United States, adoption is the process of creating a legal parent–child relationship between a child and a parent who was not automatically recognized as the child's parent at birth.
Open adoption is a form of adoption in which the biological and adoptive families have access to varying degrees of each other's personal information and have an option of contact. While open adoption is a relatively new phenomenon in the west, it has been a traditional practice in many Asian societies, especially in South Asia, for many centuries. In Hindu society, for example, it is relatively common for a childless couple to adopt the second or later son of the husband's brother when the childless couple has limited hope of producing their own child.
The Adoption Information Disclosure Act, formally An Act respecting the disclosure of information and records to adopted persons and birth parents, also known as Bill 183, is an Ontario (Canada) law regarding the disclosure of information between parties involved in adoptions.
The Canadian Council of Natural Mothers (CCNM) is a Canadian lobby group for the rights of women who have placed children for adoption, founded in 1999. It is opposed to most continuing adoption practices, arguing that adoption is traumatic for mothers and frequently does not benefit their children as currently practised. To support mothers, CCNM maintains an active email group which discusses issues which pertain to those who have experienced adoption loss and those who may be in reunion with lost family members. Members of the CCNM also at attend adoption related conferences, government meetings and meetings with social services agencies to educate people about the experiences of natural mothers and argue for improved policies, practices and rights of mothers and adopted people.
Interracial adoption refers to the act of placing a child of one racial or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another racial or ethnic group.
The Minnesota / Texas Adoption Research Project (MTARP) is a longitudinal research study that focuses on the consequences of variations in openness in adoption arrangements for all members of the adoptive kinship network: birthmothers, adoptive parents, and adopted children, and for the relationships within these family systems.
Genealogical bewilderment is a term referring to potential identity problems that could be experienced by a child who was either fostered, adopted, or conceived via an assisted reproductive technology procedure such as surrogacy or gamete donation.
The Baby Scoop Era was a period in anglosphere history starting after the end of World War II and ending in the early 1970s, characterized by an increasing rate of pre-marital pregnancies over the preceding period, along with a higher rate of newborn adoption.
The language of adoption is changing and evolving, and since the 1970s has been a controversial issue tied closely to adoption reform efforts. The controversy arises over the use of terms which, while designed to be more appealing or less offensive to some persons affected by adoption, may simultaneously cause offense or insult to others. This controversy illustrates the problems in adoption, as well as the fact that coining new words and phrases to describe ancient social practices will not necessarily alter the feelings and experiences of those affected by them. Two of the contrasting sets of terms are commonly referred to as positive adoption language (PAL), and honest adoption language (HAL).
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to adoption:
Pregnancy options counseling is a form of counseling aimed to counsel women on decision-making for a troubling or unintended pregnancy.
Adoption does not exist formally as a practice in Jewish Law (Halacha), although rabbinic texts were not uniform on whether or not they recognized the validity of adoption and several examples of adoption take place in the Hebrew Bible and texts from the Second Temple Judaism. The Hebrew word for adoption ‘אימוץ’ (immutz), which derives from the verb ‘אמץ’ (amatz) in Psalm 80 verse 16 and 18 meaning ‘to make strong’, was not introduced until the modern age. Jewish perspectives towards adoption promote two contradictory messages towards nurture and nature. On the one hand, Judaism expresses favourable attitudes towards adoption across religious movements and is widely viewed as a good deed (mitzvah). Based on the Talmudic teachings that when one raises an orphan in their home, "scripture ascribes it to him as though he had begotten him," rabbis have argued that the commandment of procreation can also be fulfilled through the act of adoption. However, this interpretation raises a number of questions in relation to lineage and biological status, which is a core value in Halacha.
Adoption in South Korea, specifically the low rates of domestic adoption in their history, has been a point of discussion for the country, causing new policies to be passed over the years. South Korea, at the conclusion of the Korean War in 1953, began to partake in transnational adoption. As these overseas adoptions increased over the next couple of decades, South Korea pushed to encourage fewer transnational adoptions and more domestic adoptions. The high number of children put up for adoption each year in South Korea can be attributed to a variety of factors: the lack of support for unwed mothers, as well as social stigma, contributed greatly to these numbers. Several organizations have been created to support unwed mothers and combat stigma. There has been changes to adoption policies throughout the decades as well. The Special Adoption Act was passed in 2011 with the intention of boosting domestic adoptions. However, the unexpected outcome of more abandoned children ensued following the amendment taking effect.