BY BONNIE MILLER RUBIN, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO — For years, Americans hoping to build families through adoption looked overseas because the path was more predictable and less complicated than domestic adoption.
But in recent years, the landscape has changed dramatically, experts say.
Three of the most popular countries — China, Guatemala and Russia — have scaled back, tightened rules or temporarily halted adoptions as they struggle to establish more transparency and accountability.
Countries also have raised the eligibility bar, excluding more prospective parents based on income, marital status and even — in the case of China — body mass index.
Even if a couple manage to slice through the bureaucracy, there’s the price — which can hit $40,000 in some countries, double what it was 10 years ago and a deal breaker for many families.
“It’s never been so difficult to adopt internationally,” said Julie Tye, president of the Cradle in Evanston, Ill., calling it the most challenging climate that she has seen in a decade.
A decrease in available children has caused up to 25 of American agencies to close or merge since 2000, according to the National Council for Adoption in Alexandria, Va.
“The days of a large sending country are over,” said Chuck Johnson, the council’s vice president.
The current picture is a stark contrast to a nearly two-decade-long overseas baby boom, which started in the early 1990s and peaked in 2004 with almost 23,000 adoptions by U.S. parents. But since then, the numbers have steadily declined, with only about 12,750 international adoptions in the U.S. in 2009 — the smallest total since 1997, according to State Department data.
A major shift came in 2008 with the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. The treaty — signed by 70 countries, including the United States — has been widely supported by accredited agencies as an important step in eliminating concerns of baby-selling and coercion. Such allegations were common in Guatemala and Vietnam.
Although the pact certainly slowed the process by implementing more safeguards, other factors explain today’s realities, as well.
Russia had routinely allowed about 5,000 or more adoptions to the U.S. annually, but that figure has shriveled to about 1,500 simply because the nation is in less turmoil than it was after the fall of communism, analysts say.
China — which sent almost 8,000 kids to the U.S. in 2005 — accounted for just 3,000 adoptions last year. The decrease can be attributed, in part, to a robust economy and a larger middle class, giving couples more financial stability to raise kids and afford fines for having more than one child, experts say.
“It used to be that if you met the requirements, you would have a child in 12 to 18 months … but no more,” said Tom Jackson of Sunny Ridge Family Center in Bolingbrook, Ill., and Munster, Ind.
His agency had such a backlog a year ago it stopped taking applications for its China program — and has no idea when it will reopen. In 2003, Sunny Ridge completed 84 Chinese adoptions, versus 16 last year.
And just about everywhere else, there’s a new emphasis to first look for prospective parents at home, with nations like South Korea and India pouring more resources into domestic adoption.
In fact, only Ethiopia is on an upswing. That country, which figured in a mere 289 adoptions in 2004, now ranks second with almost 2,300 U.S. adoptions.
Jackson said parents are reconsidering their options and looking at special-needs children, older children and sibling adoptions — both in the U.S. and abroad.
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