What does Winston Salem, North Carolina native and Glenn Elementary Pre-School Teacher, Kristie Moore, Alonzo Mourning, Cher, Charlotte Avanna, Daunte Culpepepper, Eddie Murphy, Esai Morales, Ice-T, James Dean, John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe, and Tommy Davidson have in common?

Well, for starters they are all successful professionals in their chosen fields and all are adoptees and products of foster homes.

Adoption is the legal act of, permanently placing a person under the age of 18 with a parent or parents other than the birth parents. The United States has a system of foster care by which adults care for minor children who are not able to live with their biological parents. Most adoptions in the U.S. are placed through the foster care system.

In 2001, 50,703 foster children were adopted in the United States, many by their foster parents or relatives of their biological parents. However, the number of children awaiting adoption dropped from 132,000 to 118,000 during the period of 2000 to 2004 according to the USA Adoption Chart. Due to the ratification of the Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1997 the number of children adopted from foster care in the United States has doubled approximately in number.

Like many other hundreds of thousands of adopted kids, Kristie struggled with the transition of a new environment, a new way of life, and old memories. Kristie has been in the foster system since the age of 10 years old. Like Kristie, many adopted superstars have achieved their dreams despite their launch, their landing has been flawless. In the 1990s, there were approximately 120,000 adoptions of children each year. This number remained fairly constant in the 1990s, and is still relatively proportionate to population size in the U.S.(Flango and Flango, 1994)

Other celebrity adoptees include: Anthony DiCosmo, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Billy Mills, Babe Ruth, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Jamie Foxx, Carl Hancock Rux, Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas, Eric Clapton, Dan Obrien, Faith Hill, Dave Pelzer, Melissa Gilbert, Malcolm X, Scott Hamilton, Ray Liotta, Tom Monaghan, Victoria Rowell, and Wayne Dyer.

Because at least half of all the “waiting children” available through public welfare agencies are black, black children of all ages are often considered children with special needs. Census studies indicate that blacks adopt at about the same rate as whites, but to successfully place all the black children available for adoption, experts estimate blacks would need to adopt children at three times the rate of white families.

A cultural/racial bias against adoption is blamed as one reason why black birthmothers often choose not to place babies for adoption and other blacks choose not to adopt, but the reasons are much more complex than this. For example, some blacks have alleged that adoption agencies are dominated by whites who unreasonably impose the same criteria on black families as they do on white prospective parents.

Whites have also adopted some of the available black children, and transracial adoption has been one of the most hotly debated topics of the past 20 years. Those who disapprove of whites adopting blacks, notably the National Association of Black Social Workers, believe that whites cannot truly understand blacks, that children will be deprived of their heritage and that their development will be harmed. They also worry that black children will feel inferior, particularly if raised in a predominantly white neighborhood.

Supporters of transracial adoption when suitable black adoptive families cannot be identified, such as the National Council For Adoption, cite longitudinal studies, especially by researchers Rita Simon and Howard Altstein, that indicate black children raised by whites are generally well-adjusted. In addition, they state that permanence is the real issue and that loving, appropriate white parents are better than continuous foster care or other less suitable arrangements.

Research has revealed that black adoptive parents adopt for essentially the same reasons stated by Caucasian adoptive families.

A study by Gwendolyn Prater and Lula T. King discussed the motivations of black adoptive parents. According to their article, the primary reasons given for adopting by the 12 families who participated in the study were “unable to have children biologically,” the desire to “share their love with a child” and a desire to “give a child without a home, a home and a family.” Three couples wanted to adopt a girl because they already had boys.

All the couples but one said they were glad they had adopted a child. One couple had adopted a five-year-old child, and Prater and King reported one of the adoptive parents stated, “I felt good when he told us he didn’t ever want to leave me, his daddy, his daddy, or brother.”

The researchers concluded that black adoptive parents would make a valuable resource in recruiting other black adoptive parents. They warned, however, that families were reticent about discussing adoption with strangers, and thus adoption workers should be sure to maintain confidentiality unless the parents indicated their willingness to talk about adoption with prospective parents. (See also BLACK ADOPTIVE PARENT RECRUITMENT PROGRAMS; NATIONAL COALITION TO END RACISM IN AMERICA’S CHILD CARE SYSTEM.)

For more information on adoption needs, please visit www.adoption.com.

Portions of this information provided by www.Encyclopedia.adoption.com