Book of Resolutions: Support for adoption in a global context

“Mordecai had brought up Hadassah, that is Esther, his cousin, for she had neither father nor mother; … when her father and her mother died, Mordecai adopted her as his own daughter” (Esther 2:7, NRSV). “When the fullness of time had come, God sent [God’s] son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children” (Galatians 4:4–5, NRSV).

Every child is a child of God and deserves to grow up in a safe, healthy, and loving family environment. The United Methodist Social Principles (¶ 161, 2016 Book of Resolutions) state, “We believe the family to be the basic human community through which persons are nurtured and sustained in mutual love, responsibility, respect, and fidelity.” For a variety of reasons, including unwanted pregnancy, family violence, addictions, or poverty, children are placed for adoption with hopes for a better future.

Our theological understanding of baptism as described in the New Testament is an image of adoption into the family of God. We affirm that God is our ultimate parent, and persons who choose to raise a family are called to be loving parents, whether they gave birth to or adopted their children.

Clinical and social service agencies that relate professionally to adoption issues look for and encourage the same attitudes and behaviors that should apply for birth children. These attitudes and behaviors include: parental love; parental responsibility; encouragement of identity development of the child; physical, emotional, and economic security of the child; educational growth of the child; and socialization of the child.

Those seeking to adopt a child are faced with many challenges and concerns about the high costs of adoption, international laws and restrictions, interracial or intercultural differences, the availability of licensed agencies, and the long waiting times for processing adoptions.

International adoptions have increased dramatically in recent years. This has created a multimillion-dollar-a-year “baby-selling” market where profit is often the primary motivation. Licensed adoption agencies are required by law to meet certain standards and ethical practices protecting the rights of the adoptive child(ren), the birth parents/family and the adoptive parent(s). High costs of international adoption call into question issues of stewardship while making adoption cost-prohibitive for families with moderate or low incomes. An international adoption may give a child a new chance to live a more secure life with greater opportunities. However, removing children from their native land can have dire consequences. Unresolved prejudices held by the adoptive parents can lead to abuse and neglect and keep children from adjusting emotionally or socially to their new homes.

Intercountry adoption is not a solution to the problems of high birth rates or poverty in the countries of origin. Countries where babies are being considered for adoption are concerned that they may suffer a “brain drain” since typically only healthy babies, without disabilities or birth defects, are chosen by adoptive parents.

While some may pursue the adoption of children from other countries, many thousands of children in the intra-country foster care systems wait in vain for families to adopt them. These children may come from difficult or painful families of origin or may have been harmed by years in successive and less-than-ideal placements. A form of “ageism” prevails in the adoption process, both in the selection of parents and the placement of children.

Inter-ethnic (understood as cross-racial in the U.S.) adoption also presents many challenges. There are divisions over the “correctness” of interracial or cross-cultural adoption. A family becomes a multicultural family when it adopts a child of a different ethnicity, race, or culture than its own. The family should be sensitive to the societal impact of racism or xenophobia upon the child. Adoptive parents should not neglect the history and heritage of the child’s family of origin (if known) and should affirm racial and ethnic ancestry and culture. Studies have shown that children from ethnic backgrounds different from their parents grow up with a stronger sense of identity and self-esteem if their birth ethnicity has been positively communicated within the family. Great sensitivity also needs to be expressed with regard to the intricacies of the social welfare system and the impact on people who are adopted cross-culturally.

Foster care and adoption do not alleviate the complexity of social problems that severely impact children, including racism, gender discrimination, poverty, alcoholism, and family violence. In a time when many seek to adopt children, and when many children need a loving, caring family, The United Methodist Church affirms adoption as a means to create and strengthen families.

Given the multiple challenges posed by adoption, we call upon all United Methodists, local churches, annual conferences, and general agencies to:

• promote conditions that would make adoption rare by supporting programs that will improve the living conditions of children in their families, their communities, and their countries of origin;
• encourage adoptive parents to respect and affirm the cultural and racial background of the adopted child;
• make adoption more affordable by supporting efforts to provide increased financial assistance to middle- and low-income families considering adoption;
• support regulations and policies that enable more, better-qualified foster-care families and qualified extended family members to more easily adopt children in their care;
• in cases where information and contact is desirable for the well-being of the child, work through recognized organizations to make contact between adoptive and birth families;
• encourage those entering into the adoption process to work only with licensed adoption agencies;
• actively use literature and resources that positively reflect and teach about the cultures from which all children come in order to bolster self-esteem and positive cultural identity in the context of faith; and,
• “make adoption the center of theological reflection, teaching and counseling so that adopted children are less frequently assigned a second-class status in society and communities of faith” (“The Practice and Theology of Adoption,” Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner, The Christian Century, January 24, 2001, pp. 10–13).

ADOPTED 2024

See Social Principles, ¶ 162, The Nurturing Community, A.