Does anyone know what % of people looking to adopt , actually adopt?

Question

I guess what I'm looking for is statistics showing how many families are ready to go, with homestudy completed, and everything paid for, short of that final placement fee. how many of those (%), get matched through an agency?

Answer 1

There are no statistics on people seeking adoption through domestic adoption. Adam Pertman from the Evan B Donaldson institute estimates over 1 million couples are "looking" to adopt.

But a tiny percentage of them only follow through with it.

Whats even MORE surprising is the amount of people who look into foster care, but because of the apparent unorganized system and inability to follow through with the prospective foster parents they lose interest, hope and are lead away from the unorganization of the foster care system and get detoured from it.

This article here: http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/s_seek....

(and the links are working on the site right now so that sucks, but its on the statistics for persons seeking to adopt of the child welfare.gov website)

says the following:

"Over one-third of Americans have ever considered adopting (Harris Interactive, Inc., 2002; Princeton Survey Research Associates, 1997), but no more than 2 percent of Americans have actually adopted (Mosher & Bachrach, 1996). Somewhere between those percentages lies the number of people seeking to adopt-that is, those who have taken concrete steps to adopt a child.

Data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) included responses of more than 10,000 women who were interviewed about topics that included adoption. Analysis of the data led researchers to the following conclusions (Chandra, Abma, Maza, & Bachrach, 1999):

    * In 1995 there were nearly 10 million ever-married American women ages 18 to 44 who had ever considered adoption, and this number amounted to more than one-fourth (26.4 percent) of all ever-married women.

    * About 16 percent of those who had considered adoption (4 percent of the total of ever-married women), or 1.6 million women, had ever taken concrete steps toward adoption; this percentage may represent those seeking to adopt.

    * Only 31 percent of those who had taken concrete steps (1.3 percent of the total of ever-married women), or 487,000 women, had ever completed an adoption.2

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and when you read further into the article about "why they aren't adopting" it says this:

All of these studies found a significant discrepancy in percentages between those who have considered adoption and those who actually adopted. The NSFG study also showed a discrepancy in percentages between those who took steps to adopt and those who actually adopted. The reasons for these discrepancies may be attributed, at least in part, to the types of children that prospective adoptive parents are seeking.3 While there are more than 118,000 children in public foster care awaiting adoption (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2005), potential adoptive parents are not always seeking to adopt from the foster care system.

The 2002 Harris survey focused on this question. Public foster care includes a disproportionate number of children of color and many older children, as well children in sibling groups and children who have experiences of neglect or abuse. Those polled in the Harris survey indicated they would be more willing to adopt older children and children of different races. However, they expressed concern about adopting children with health or behavioral problems. Additional concerns unrelated to the child's characteristics included whether the birth parents would try to regain custody and whether the costs of the adoption would be affordable.

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so folks you can make your own conclusion...bring on the thumb downs! I usually average at least 4 a post.

Answer 2

That depends a lot on how you define "looking to adopt."  Lots of couples would be glad to adopt if they were asked, but don't get all the way through the process at an adoption agency or with a lawyer.  This can be due to lack of funds or lack of perseverance or other factors.  

Placement rates vary widely by agency, and this is a great question to ask before you commit to working with one particular group.  

Good luck to you!