This evening, Larry and I watched the PBS Point of View Documentary about a New York family who adopted an 8 year old from China. The video was stressful to watch. Our hearts were breaking for that child: she just wanted to be listened to and understood.
Larry and I will be discussing things from this video for a long time.
Wanting some closure or other information following the viewing, I saw the following facts posted on PBS's website.
In 2001, there were 1.5 million adopted children in the United States, representing 2.5 percent of all U.S. children.
The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute's 1997 public opinion benchmark survey found that 58 percent of Americans know someone who has been adopted, has adopted a child or has relinquished a child for adoption.
Though U.S. citizens adopted nearly 13,000 children from 106 different countries in 2009, a little more than two-thirds of all children came from only five sending countries: China (23 percent), Ethiopia (18 percent), Russia (12 percent), South Korea (8 percent) and Guatemala (6 percent).
In 2006, the Chinese government proposed a new set of rules requiring that adoptive parents must meet certain educational and financial requirements, be married, be under 50, not be clinically obese, not have taken antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication in the previous two years and not have any facial deformities.
Domestically, the percentage of infants given up for adoption has declined from 9 percent of those born before 1973 to 1 percent of those born between 1996 and 2002.
Same-sex couples raising adopted children are older, more educated and have more economic resources than other adoptive parents. An estimated 65,500 adopted American children are living with a lesbian or gay parent.
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