Five Thousand Since 1999

I was reading tonight (admittedly for the first time) the US State Departments website about adoptions from Ethiopia. Most of the information was not new to me as our agency has a very good program outline--clear information and rules about the Ethiopian governments adoption process.

What I found really interesting was the State Dept statistics on Ethiopian children adopted by US citizens since 1999. It's astounding! The rate increases by a third every year until last year: going from less than 50 to a little over 1700. For context you might compare it to Chinese orphan adoptions which are on the decline since 2005, but from a benchmark total of nearly 8000 children that year alone. I might write Secretary Clinton and ask if she could please publish these statistics with the child's gender included. (Wishful thinking that she would find this important... maybe.)

So, for our allied families in The Process, in the coming days, I've decided to pull a few more responses from our Home Study Autobiographical Statements to post. I hope that those considering adoption from Ethiopia will find them interesting if not helpful in answering their own questions. By the way, we were warned that the Home Study social worker has seen many biographical statements and knows that nobody's family history is perfect--in fact they are suspicious of statements that are too perfect. But if your family of origin is as dysfunctional as mine, take heart, answering honestly is very important. It will be viewed as a skill set that is invaluable to an adopted child: the ability to speak freely of childhood experience, your emotions and lessons learned.