2010

Adoption is defined as the social and legal placement of a child or children into a home other than with birth parents (Sharma, McGue, & Benson, 1996a; Sharma, McGue, & Benson, 1996b). Over the last forty years an increasing number of Americans have pursued adoption as a method for fulfilling the desire to have a family life with children (Nickman et al., 2005). Further, International adoptions in the United States have more than doubled between 1991 and 2003 (Mohanty & Newhill, 2006). Yet, despite the increased willingness to adopt, many people are frustrated by an ever increasingly complex adoption process. Fewer healthy Caucasian children available for adoption (Reilly & Platz, 2003; Wright & Flynn, 2006); adoption legal reform (Egbert & LaMont, 2004; Reilly & Platz, 2003); and the growth in acceptance of transracial, transcultural, and international adoptions (Groze, 1996) are some of the issues identified as contributing factors to the increased biological, psychological, and social complexity of adoption.