November is National Adoption Month, an occasion usually devoted to celebrating adoptive parents and asking more families to step up and care for children whose own parents are unable or unwilling to do so. But this year it might be more appropriate to use the occasion to ask why state and federal agencies are standing in the way of more children being adopted.

About half of Americans hold a favorable view of adoption, compared with about one in ten who view it unfavorably. (The remainder either don’t know or don’t have an opinion.) But in recent years, the media and policymakers have tried mightily to chip away at those numbers. Especially in the wake of the Dobbs decision, the Left wants to make sure that no one thinks adoption is preferable to abortion.

The drumbeat appears to be having an effect. According to data released from the Children’s Bureau of the federal Administration for Children and Families a few weeks ago, 391,000 kids resided in foster care on September 30 of Fiscal Year 2021, of whom 114,000 were waiting to be adopted. But the actual number who were adopted—54,200—reflects a 6 percent drop from the previous year and an 18 percent decline from FY2019.

Last week’s dialogue between Nicole Chung of The Atlantic and her fellow adoptee Tony Hynes is emblematic of the anti-adoption messaging. “Many adoptees I know today feel conflicted at best about this month,” Chung explains, “in part because the narratives leveraged to celebrate and promote adoption have not always left space for discussing its complexity.” Hynes, who is black and was raised by a white lesbian couple, responds that we are feeding into a notion that “families of color are somehow ‘less fit’ to raise their children.” Chung adds, “Yeah, sometimes it’s hard for me not to hear the assertion that ‘more kids should be adopted’ as ‘more kids should experience the trauma of being separated from their families of origin.’”

The problem of speaking in these broad terms about “narratives” is that no one is denying that adoptions are complex. Of the hundreds of adoptive parents and professionals I have met in the past several years, I cannot think of one who does not see the process as inevitably beginning from a source of loss or tragedy.

Hope for 14 Belgian adopted children from South Korea in search of identity: "The stories are harrowing"

She was nine months old when she was adopted as a Korean by a couple from Deurne, but it was only sixteen years ago that Yung Fierens (46) discovered the fraud in her file. She is far from alone: ??a special committee in South Korea will examine adoption fraud among more than 350 adoptees, including 14 Belgians. “They will finally know who their birth parents are.”

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Todd and Julie Chrisley hit back at biological mom of adopted daughter, Chloe, 10, after she said she wants custody back amid their legal troubles

Todd and Julie Chrisley have spoken out after the biological mother of their adopted daughter, Chloe, 10, announced her plans to regain custody following their recent prison sentencing for tax evasion and bank fraud.

The couple, best known to television audiences for their USA Network reality show "Chrisley Knows Best," were sentenced to a combined 19 years in prison on fraud convictions in November.

Shortly after, their eldest daughter together, Savannah Chrisley, shared that she had been granted custody of both her niece, Chloe, and her 16-year-old brother, Grayson.

However, earlier this week Chloe's biological mother Angela Johnson announced that she is seeking to regain full custody of the pre-teen. Johnson told TMZ she has yet to file any official paperwork but said she hopes to "go back to court and get Chloe back home," per ET Online.

Research Presentation

This research is being carried out by the Université Libre de Bruxelles within the framework of an international collaboration. The aim of this study is to increase scientific knowledge about the development of the adoptive family in different European countries. This is important to answer current questions and improve professional practice.

Are you an adoptive parent (heterosexual, gay or lesbian)?

Do you have one or more adopted children between the ages of 4 and 17? Are you single or are you in a relationship?

If so, your help is invaluable.

Following a Telegraph investigation, authorities are to examine claims of deception around many of the babies’ true identities

By

Nicola Smith,

ASIA CORRESPONDENT and

Sarah Newey,

The Himachal Pradesh High Court on Thursday upheld an order of a Family Court which directed the petitioner to pay maintenance to his alleged son. The child's mother had also deposed that the child was born out of her physical relationship with the petitioner, who once had kept her as his 'mistress'.

While dismissing the revision petition, a Single Judge Bench of Justice Satyen Vaidya observed,

"The statement of mother of the respondent regarding the paternity of respondent cannot be brushed aside easily. It is hard to believe that a female would name any unknown person to be the father of her son. Contest by petitioner to the prayer for DNA test strengthens the claim of the respondent."

Background

The respondent sought maintenance from the petitioner claiming himself to be his son. He alleged that he was born out of relationship that once existed between the petitioner and his mother. The mother of the respondent also deposed that she had fallen in love with the petitioner, who had kept her as a mistress. She further stated, on oath, that the petitioner had maintained physical relation with her, as a result of which she conceived and ultimately delivered a baby boy i.e. the respondent.

Introduce…

Fiom is the center of expertise in the field of unwanted pregnancy, distance & adoption and related questions. We offer information and help with unwanted pregnancies, information and aftercare in the field of adoption and guide people in their search for biological family in the Netherlands and abroad. We also manage the KID-DNA Database, which enables a match between a donor child and an anonymous donor. The starting point of working at Fiom is the right of self-determination of unwanted pregnant women, the right of a child to know where it comes from and to grow up while retaining its own identity. We do all this with approximately 80 passionate employees from our offices in 's-Hertogenbosch and Houten and from our home workplaces. Soon we will start with the establishment and design of the Expertise Center for Intercountry Adoption. This will be a network organization of stakeholders around the theme of intercountry adoption. In the Center of Expertise, adoptees, adoptive parents, birth relatives and other parties involved can access files, psychosocial assistance, searches and legal support, among other things.

For Program Adoption Services we are immediately looking for:

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SEOUL, South Korea — Nearly 400 South Koreans adopted as children by families in the West have requested South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigate their adoptions through Friday’s application deadline, as Seoul faces growing pressure to reckon with a child export frenzy driven by dictatorships that ruled the country until the 1980s.

The commission on Thursday said it decided to investigate 34 cases among the 51 adoptees who first submitted their applications in August, which could possibly develop into the country’s most far-reaching inquiry into foreign adoptions yet.

A total of 63 adoptees from the United States, Europe and Australia submitted applications to the commission on Friday, claiming their adoptions were marred by falsified documents that laundered child statuses or identities as agencies raced to send thousands of children abroad each year.

The adoptees accused agencies of fabricating documents to ensure their adoptability, such as falsely registering them as orphans when they had living relatives or switching their identities with other children, which have resulted in lost connections or false reunions with birth relatives.

Similar issues have been raised by many of the 306 adoptees who previously submitted applications in past months, as they called for the commission to pressure agencies into fully opening their documents and to establish whether the government was responsible for the corrupt practices.

his article is the 26th in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. We are deeply grateful to Seo-vin for sharing his insightful perspective as a second generation Korean-Dutch. His story reminds us that adoption not only affects one's lifetime but ripples through the generations to come. ? ED.

By Bastiaan Flikweert (Shin Seo-vin)

In this 2011 file photo, Bastiaan Flikweert poses with his family during the Ministry of Justice's event celebrating reinstatement of nationality for Koreans who were adopted overseas as babies. Courtesy of Bastiaan Flikweert

I vividly remember the grand ceremony at the Korean Ministry of Justice in 2011 when both of my parents' Korean citizenship was restored. It had been more than two years since we had moved to Korea as a family, and I remember feeling proud ? proud that my parents had completed their journey back home, and proud to be their "Korean" son. While my parents seemed to have completed their journey, mine had barely begun.

Korea had always played a role in my life. I looked different and was bullied for this, but simultaneously could not explain to myself why I looked different. I had a hard time explaining to my peers on the playground that my parents were adopted and that I, therefore, was Dutch. Why did I have to explain myself in the first place? Were my parents not ordinary Dutch people? It took me a while to realize that most people did not see it that way: To them, I was a second-generation immigrant. For a while, I attempted to explain that this was not ? no, could not ? be the case. My parents did not choose to come here in the first place! Why are they not seen as just Dutch people? They were adopted! Well, it turned out that adoption was the problem.

During a stay in her country of origin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Julienne MPEMBA made a dramatic observation. In his neighborhood, many children do not go to school. And when she asks them why they stay at home, the answer is the same "I was expelled because my school fees have not yet been paid" or "this year, I will not go to school because we doesn't know how to pay my school fees".

Watching some children from her neighborhood wandering in the street, at a time when the others are at school, she said to herself that she was very lucky to finish her humanities in Congo and to be able to go to Belgium to undertake university studies.

The unfortunate and alarming observation is there. The lack of schooling in the DRC at the budgetary level obliges parents to finance the studies of their children, among other things by taking charge of the teachers' salaries and the various fees required by the school managers. This system is materialized by the payment a premium that varies according to the public Catholic, official, kimbaguist schools, etc.

If the parents are unable to pay the premium in question, the children are simply sent home, and this dramatic situation most often leads to dropping out of school. This situation particularly affects a large number of orphans who no longer have parents to pay the said premium. And when they are collected within a host family, the children of the host parents often have priority with regard to the payment of the premium.

In recent years, the Congolese state has made considerable efforts. But, despite significant government intervention in the education sector (representing 10% of the national budget for the schooling of 10 million children), the Congolese population is faced with major challenges: many infrastructures are dilapidated, the school materials are seriously lacking, the number of teachers is insufficient.