ABSTRACT
The United States (USA) has long led the world in the adoption of children from other countries, with over 300,000 adopted in the last 30 years (see Chapter 1). Given this magnitude of foreign-born adopted children living in the United States, it is not surprising that academic works have focused on the adjustment, development, and well-being of these children and their adoptive families. Missing from this academic canon, however, are the experiences of adoptive parents, birthparents, and adoptees that comprise a smaller subset of USA adoptions known as outgoing cases (U.S. DOS, Bureau of Consular Affairs, 2009a, 2011). This official Department of State (U.S. DOS) descriptor covers those intercountry adoptions, in which USA children, mostly Black and Biracial infants are adopted by citizens of Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and other countries. The USA, with respect to intercountry adoption, is both a receiving and a sending nation. Indeed, from 2003 to 2009, nearly 1,500 USA-born children were adopted by foreign nationals in 14 countries (see Chapter 1)
This chapter outlines some of the issues surrounding outgoing adoptions, provides an overview of the process and ends with a brief discussion of an exploratory qualitative research study conducted by the author with USA and Canadian adoption professionals involved with these adoption cases over time. The discussion is framed within the context of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption (HCIA) and the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 (IAA; Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000, 2000), and is focused on USA infant adoptions to convention countries.
