Baby Backlash

After decades of nonstop growth, the international adoption mill has begun to stall. Driven by rising affluence, falling birthrates and resurgent national pride, many developing nations are much less willing to let their orphans go abroad. Not only can these nations increasingly afford to care for orphans at home, they have been spooked by highly publicized international baby-selling scandals into tightening the rules. Countries as diverse as South Korea, Russia, Kenya and Brazil now openly discourage foreign adoptions. As a result, intercountry adoptions have plunged 10 percent in the top five receiving nations: the United States, Spain, France, Italy and Canada. The turnabout is most dramatic in the United States; after nearly tripling between 1990 and 2004, international adoptions in America have fallen three years running. Mac Margolis caught up with international adoption expert Peter F. Selman, visiting fellow at the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University in England. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What's behind the steep drop in international adoptions?
Peter F. Selman: There have been a lot of pretty bad scandals in recent years, with serious charges of baby trafficking and bad matches between children and prospective adoptive parents. There's also some resentment, and the old taboos are still strong. In many developing countries there's the idea that "We don't want our children brought up by Americans or Frenchman." In the United Kingdom we sent many children—the so-called "child migrants"—from children's homes to Australia, Canada and New Zealand right up until the 1960s. Many countries also feel they can get along by themselves.  (Article continued below...)

Isn't part of the rollback a reflection of economic and demographic changes in the developing world?
In the last two years the big fall has been in China. In part it's because of the stricter guidelines for prospective adoptive families. The government no longer accepts single parents, fat people or elderly couples. We don't know if the fall is temporary or whether it is going to go up again in the future. South Korea started sending children abroad after a devastating war, when it was a poor country and many children were mixed-race. Now it's a rich country, with one of the lowest birthrates in the world. The birthrate in China is also low. In fact, a lot of sending countries have fewer children per female than do receiving countries. Why doesn't Korea take in children from, say, the Philippines?