Response to "Adoption helps children."

After reading the article "Adoption helps children", I got an understanding on why some people feel that adoption is best. When you take someone out of an abusive of otherwise neglectful home, and then place them with loving guardians to take care of them, of course it's a good thing. The current issue with child welfare is understandable yet unreasonable. True the welfare system may not have been built to provide homes for every child but they could at least make a decent attempt at getting a child into a permanent home. They cannot keep relying on the biological parents to get better with whatever causes them to be unfit. Weather it's drug abuse, alcoholism, a mental illness, or just not knowing how to raise a child. Baby adoptions are the most successful because the baby has time to from bonds with their adoptive parents that is nurturing and loving. As a baby the child might not remember the abuse as well as a teenager might. That doesn't mean that teenagers aren't unfit to be adopted. Many are adopted, it's just that many are traumatized from their past life that they may need more love and nurturing and a little more patience than a baby who was abused. Adoptive children do well because the adoptive parent(s) love them and know how to raise a child. As for the mothers who are against adoption, and feel that the biological parents are the best parents for the child, they're wrong. Studies show that children who were adopted from abusive homes compared with children who weren't and were placed with their biological parents were better off than the children with their real parents. Many adoptions stay intact which is good although some don't. It is true that the younger the child the more the chances are of the adoption being a success. Baby's make bonds with whomever is caring for them while teenagers are more cautious especially when from abusive homes. They're weary of whom they befriend because of fear of being hurt. Adopted children go into loving homes and are better of than in their abusive and /or neglectful biological home.

"Adoption helps children"

In the article "Adoption helps children" by Janet Alberchtsen, on the Opposing Viewpoints database, she states how adoption essentially helps children by taking them out of their abusive or neglectful home and placing them with loving parents. "Yet adoption remains unfashionable in child welfare circles." She says that a lot of children suffer abuse in the child welfare systems "which was built to react to crisis rather than provide long-term homes for children." Problems with the current system are as pointed out that the state usually ends up keeping the child in foster care until he's eighteen, going from foster parents to biological parents in the states hope that the child's real parents have learned how to care for their child. By doing this, the state overshadows the welfare of the child. "It is painfully obvious that biological ties do not guarantee that children will be loved and nurtured." Alberchtsen talks about a book by a Patricia Morgan, Adoption and the Care of Children- The British and American Experience. In her book, Morgan did research on adopted children. "Baby adoptions are the most successful." "Adoptive families seem to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative factors." "A study which compared children who had been adopted from care with those who had been returned from care to their parents found that the "restored" children did bad in every respect compared with the adopted children. Morgan concluded in her research that "adopted children do so well because the [adoptive] parents are so keen to rear a child." Many "relinquishing mothers" view adoption as unjust and a means of dealing with the children of unwed mothers. These mothers claim that the children are always better off with their biological parents. "Breakdown rates for adoption are about 9 percent. However, the younger the child is at placement, the more likely the adoption will succeed." "Adoption needs to be embraced, not as punishment for unfit parents, but as a gift of loving for the child."

Decided ISearch topic

My decided topic for the ISearch will be adoption. After failed research of my original three topics, I decided on adoption because it is a topic of great interest to me. I do think about the adoption process a lot. What it will be like to adopt a child when I grow up and what I would have to go through. Especially if it was a single parent adoption or an adoption over seas.

Adoption is a hot topic. In my beginning research, I found that there were many articles on adoption and many different viewpoints on different subjects related to adoption. The amount of information I found was astounding. Some of the topics covered were weather or not adoption was good or bad, gay couple adoption, and how children should not be bought and sold like dogs. I could also look into celebrity adoptions and what it is like when Americans adopt overseas and when someone outside of America adopts a child from America. I wonder what the ratio is of children adopted from over seas to children adopted from America is? The articles were very interesting and brought up new perspectives on my topic. I feel that by the end of the ISearch process, I will have a whole new perspective on adoption.

The information will be available throughout the ISearch process. There are many websites I can use. Google, Opposing Viewpoints, Marvel, etc. The opinions on this topic are changing constantly so there will be much information to research.

The articles I found are already challenging my thinking. I have knew ideas on what I think is right and wrong in the adoption process. Weather or not adoption is even good for the child. Weather or not gay couples should adopt a child and if single couple adoption is a good idea.

Overall, I feel the topic I have decided on has answered all five criteria questions and will definitely keep me interested for the next five or six months.

I think adoption would be a great topic to research, because laws are always changing, and there are some aspects of it that are somewhat controversial. Adoption would be a good topic to choose because you can interview parents of adopted children, and children who are adopted and find out their opinions on the subject, to get a few different angles on it. I dont really know of any alternate sources that offer information about adoption, but if you do for some reason decide to change your focus to the "Mental Health Institutions in Movies" topic, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is a great movie, and I've heard its also a really good book.

Samaras Ideas

I really liked your topics for the I-Search.  Most of them seamed really good and interesting, but not really the type that would be featured in the newspapers.  Out of all of them, though, I think that adoption is the best.  

response to Samara's isearch ideas

So I really like the idea of seeing how music effects one's mood, but I could see how finding information on this topic would be difficult. It seems as though you're more or less set on the idea of adoption. I think this would be a really cool idea to research because there are so many different things to learn. There's probably a lot of information out there, and you could also link this topic to how the different parties or candidates view the topic. This could also lead you to gay rights if that's something you might be interested in. Some ideas to consider : What are the pros and cons of adopting? What would cause someone to adopt a child? Where can you adopt from? Celebrities who have adopted children, and the adoption process. I hope these idea's help!

Cole's Response

I think that adoption as your I-Search topic is a very good idea. There is a lot of information on adoption on the internet and a few good books. My topic for last years i-search was adoption and there are plenty of resources to get information from. In my opinion it was also very helpful to be able to talk to someone who had actually gone through the adoption process. There is a close friend of my family who recently adopted a baby girl from Kazakhstan, it turns out that it is actually a very difficult process. They flew halfway around the world twice before they could actually adopt a child. You should try to find someone who you can talk to who has an adopted child.