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Approximately 127,000 children are adopted in the United States each year. Sixty percent of the population has had contact with some aspect of adoption (whether knowing someone who relinquished a child, having an adoptee in the family, or knowing someone who was adopted, etc.). Over fifty percent of children are adopted into familiar families, either by a kinship adoption, through a foster care program, or by a step parent. Thirty-five percent of adoptions are due to infertility.1
Adoption is a word that conjures up many images. It is a word that brings clans to mind. There is a primal connection to a blood line. We are uncomfortable around strangers who differ in race, religion, sexual orientation. Adoption raises the issue of blood-and the saying is that “blood is thicker than water.” We know grandparents who have difficulty accepting children of a daughter-in-law or son-in-law. The adopted grandchild may assume a second-class position. This is central to the adoption story. How do the people who adopt become to attached to an adoptee, the stranger who does not have the red hair or curly hair or pouty lips or fair skin so valued by one's clan?