Infertility Series: The Infertility Relationship to Adoption

Greetings! Let me share a personal story to set up the inspiration for this weeks blog post. Several months ago, Amanda and I went to visit a fertility doctor. While there, we had a discussion about how young women often visit him to avoid pregnancy. We then shared a tearful moment together as he shared, "You know, it is difficult to witness your efforts to try and have children while, at the same time, several young women I meet with are trying to find ways to avoid having their conceived child." This made me think of the potential blessing it can be for a infertile couple to move toward a decision to adopt a child. Hence, this week I would like to share with you the research I found regarding the relationship between infertility and the decision to adopt unplanned children.

Who adopts:

According to research conducted under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Jones (2009) found 81 percent of adoptive mothers are 35-44 years of age. In addition, women who have ever used infertility services are 10 times more likely to have adopted children than women who have never used infertility services. This next part may surprise you: Men who have fathered children are more likely to have adopted children than men who have not fathered children. Moreover, women with incomes below 150% of poverty level and Hispanic women are the least likely to have adopted children compared with women of other characteristics. Overall, roughly 2 percent of the U.S. population, two million, aged 18-45 had adopted a child in 2002.

Something to Consider:

Ever considered infertility a blessing in disguise? It can be. Across the U.S. in 1973 nearly 20 percent of infants born to white never-married women were relinquished to adoptive parents. Interestingly, the percent of babies relinquished among other ethnicities were significantly lower. However, in the mid-1990s the number of babies being relinquished among all ethnicities decreased to a mere 1 percent, or about 7,000 infants annually.

References:

Jones, J. (2009). Who Adopts? Characteristics of Women and Men Who Have

Adopted Children. National Center for Health Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db12.pdf on March 25, 2011.