Last month when I attended the 2011 Families Supporting Adoption National Conference I also heard Chuck Johnson, President and CEO of the National Council For Adoption, tell a little bit about the NCFA. Although I didn’t take notes while he was speaking because I was at a banquet and cutting up my French-stuffed pork chop (which was really good, by the way) while listening to him speak, I was relieved to learn that some of the statistics he shared concerning adoption could be found online.
These are the specific statistics Johnson shared:
*98.7 percent of unwed women in 2007 — chose to parent rather than place their child for adoption.
*In 2007 there were 10.3 adoptions per 1,000 non-marital live births, down from 18.7 in 1996.
*1.2 million abortions a year are happening
These statistics are not only sobering, but as a prospective adoptive parent, they are discouraging. With so many families wanting to adopt (almost 900 through our agency alone) and only 1% of women willing to place their children for adoption, how am I going to find the 1 or how is she going to find us? We REALLY want another child and we’d prefer that child to be a baby.However, Chuck Johnson also shared another statistic with us:
Number of children in foster care waiting* to be adopted (on September 30, 2005):
114,000
*Waiting children are identified as children who have a goal of adoption and/or whose parental rights have been terminated. Children 16 years old and older whose parental rights have been terminated and who have a goal of emancipation have been excluded from the estimate. It seems much more likely (statistically speaking) that the next child we adopt will come from one of those “numbers” of children listed as foster children needing homes rather than the teeny tiny percentage of a number (1.3%!) of women faced with an unexpected pregnancies who choose to place their child for adoption.
Whatever the case, it’s accurate to say, after all of our searching, we will be overjoyed when we finally find “the one”. 
5 comments:
Wow! It's so sad to read those statistics! Society has begun to teach that it's selfish of a single mother to give her child up for adoption to a home with a married mother and father. In fact, I actually read this article contending that it's *less* selfish to abort a child than to put them up for adoption -- how sick is that? My thoughts are with you ... thank you so much for your blog; I've passed it onto a friend who wants to adopt as well.
One thing that is so great about having Heavenly Father on your side is that he will always lead you to where your "one" is at. And sometimes you will find them in the most unexpected places and in the most unexpected ways. And you maybe willing to parent a child that you never thought you would be capable of parenting. But as long as you listen to the promptings of the Spirit, you will you will be blessed. Good luck in finding your missing piece. And there are infants in the foster care system too.
Katrina
Carlene's soon to be momma :)
www.operationorphannomore.blogspot.com
This is really an amazing site that you have here! Thanks for all that you do! Jocelyn -http://beinglds.blogspot.com
I just found your blog! My husband and I adopted a sibling group of two boys in 2006 from the Pennsylvania Foster Care system. These statistics are pretty accurate, which is so unfortunate for both the children born to these families and the families who are waiting to adopt...
I hope you don't have to wait much longer until you find "the one" :)
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