The Perfect Child

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, child abuse, and mental illness (including reactive attachment disorder and antisocial personality disorder).

In the United States today, 5 million Americans were adopted as children, with more than 115,000 children adopted in 2019 alone. Children are adopted in a variety of ways, including through both national and international methods. There are almost 400,000 children in foster care in the United States, with less than a third of these being eligible for adoption (“US Adoption Statistics.” Adoption Network). Over half of the children in foster care spend more than two years in the system, as they either await adoption or the possibility of returning to their biological families. Adoption and the federal childcare system have been criticized both in the past and present; in the past, child protective services has been openly accused of “baby scooping,” or taking children from backgrounds deemed “lesser than” and adopting them out to white, middle-class families. Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized groups all experienced this phenomenon. The Baby Scoop Era took place from the 1940s until the 1970s as the rate of unmarried women becoming pregnant rose and many were pressured by their families or the state to surrender their children.