Canadian Adoption Statistics: 1981-1990

Abstract

Patterns of adolescent pregnancy resolution have changed dramatically over the past 30 years. Contrary to popular belief, there has been a decrease in the fertility rate among adolescents. In the United States, the fertility rate for adolescents aged from 15 to 19 has dropped from 97.3 per 1000 in 1957 to 51.7 in 1983 (Vinovskis, 1988). This parallels a similar, although less steep trend in Canada where there were 53.4 pregnancies per 1000 in 1975 and 44.1 in 1989 (Wadhera & Strachan, 1991). These declines have been attributed primarily to the increased use of contraception (Herold, 1984). In 1985, 44.8% of teenage pregnancies in the United States, compared to 38.0% in Canada, were terminated by an abortion (Wadhera & Strachan, 1991). Furthermore, with increased social acceptance, the percentage of pregnant adolescents who were unmarried at the time of the birth rose in the United States from 30 in 1950 to 72% in 1981 (Vinovskis, 1988). In Canada, the number of births to single adolescents more than doubled between 1974 and 1981 (Herold, 1984). The negative implications of unmarried parenthood during adolescence are numerous: lower educational attainment (Furstenberg, 1981), need for welfare assistance (Orton & Rosenblatt, 1986), reduced occupational attainment (Card & Wise, 1981), increased risk of further out-of-wedlock pregnancies (Furstenberg, 1981), and lower perceived self-efficacy (McLaughlin & Micklen, 1983) Given this increase in the number of births to unmarried adolescents, it would be expected that there would be a corresponding increase in the number of adoptions. This has not occurred. Festinger (1971) estimated that in the United States in 1963, 40% of unmarried mothers who carried the fetus to term placed the child for adoption. By 1971, the figure had fallen to 14%. Using more sophisticated sampling procedures from the National Survey of Family Growth, Bachrach, Stolley, and London (1992) found that before 1973, 8.7% of premarital births were placed for adoption. They estimated that this figure had fallen to 4.1 between 1973 and 1981 and that between 1982 and 1988 it further declined to 2.0%. Based on survey data, the National Committee for Adoption (1989) indicated that in 1986, 51,000 children in the United States were adopted by nonrelatives. In addition, approximately 10,000 children were adopted outside the United States and subsequently brought back into the country. There have been no directly comparable figures for Canada. Hepworth (1980) obtained provincial adoption statistics for the period between 1959 and 1977. He reported an upward trend in the number of adoptions from approximately 12,800 in 1959-1960 to 20,500 in 1970-1971. This fell to 16,200 in 1976-1977. No further national figures have been gathered since then. Unfortunately, Hepworth's figures combined nonrelative adoptions with stepparent and relative adoptions as well as voluntary and involuntary placements. Further, it was not possible to distinguish between the proportion of offspring of married and unmarried mothers who were placed for adoption. Thus, Hepworth's findings are of limited assistance in determining whether Canadian and American adoption trends have been similar. As the number of infants available for adoption has decreased, adoption practice has become strained (Daly, 1989b). It is not uncommon for couples to be on waiting lists for up to 7 years (Westhues & Cohen, 1988). In the absence of enough adoptable children, service providers are faced with the time-intensive task of managing the frustration, anger, powerlessness, and persistence of great numbers of prospective adoptive couples (Daly, 1989a). In order to establish a baseline for understanding this intensifying imbalance between the demand for adoptable children and adoption placements, the present study traced a number of adoption trends in Canada over the past decade. This research was undertaken as part of the National Adoption Study of Canada, funded by National Welfare Grants, Health and Welfare Canada. …