Ajia Williams
Options Laboratory School
Reseach paper
April, 2013

Approximately one hundred and twenty thousand adoption cases take place each year. Adoption is the practice where the rights of biological parent(s) to the child are transferred to foster parent(s) permanently. Adoption of a child usually would take place at a tender age of the child’s life, so the child wouldn’t know of ever being adopted. Although this depends on if the child’s foster parents reveals to them the information of them being adopted. Usually a biological parent putting their child in foster care or up for adoption is all in good reason. Some of them could be; the parent(s) at the time of conception and birth weren’t ready financially to take care of the child. They could have been too young and not ready for a child, declaring incapable of taking required care of the child. Possibly even due to their religion they couldn’t have a child when they did. Adoption is a very sensitive subject to most people involved in such cases, especially the child. When information of adoption is revealed at such a tender age children can result in psychological damage. In most cases, this information though is usually held from the child until they are old enough to make their own sound decisions. Some even want to know more and possibly even find their biological parents.
In most cases though today about 99% of children ages 5 and older know that they are adopted. Most adoption professionals agree that at least a semi-open adoption is good for both parties and the child to create healthy relationships between each other. A semi-open adoption is the post-placement sending pictures and letters through agency mediation. In fact 100% of all biological mothers have the right to choose the openness of the adoptive relationship. Also she will be able to select the family for her child. But in some other cases birth parents still go through a closed adoption, which is when there is no contact or information at all about the birth parents. Now when the child is a little older and finally finds out about their adoption this is what makes a child want to know more and embark on a journey to find their birth parents. Also the child may try to do anything they can in the hopes of finding or getting any type of information on their birth parents. The decision for a child to look for their birth parents mainly falls in the hands of the foster parent, if the child is under age. But if the child is of age and able to make sound decisions the older child should be able to search for their parents.
The decision if a child should find their biological parents is a very controversial topic; it’s debated in many different aspects. In some cases it is okay for a child to reach out to their biological parents because their parents only gave them up to better