"Always a child with two families"

For a long time, adoption has been seen as a way of fulfilling the desire to have children. The number of adoptions in Germany is now falling dramatically. At the same time, the proportion of stepchild adopters is growing. The reasons for this are diverse.

In Germany, significantly fewer couples adopt a child than a quarter of a century ago. The number of adoptions has more than halved within 25 years. While far fewer boys and girls are adopted from abroad, the proportion of stepchild adopters is increasing. What are the reasons for this and how has the handling of adoptions developed over the years?

Call Iris Egger-Otholt in Mainz. The 54-year-old is the head of the Joint Central Adoption Office for Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse. "Especially in the area of ??international adoptions there is a drastic decline," says the expert. The reasons for this are varied - and can be found both in the country of origin and in Germany.

An important aspect in this country is the progress in reproductive medicine. "Today many people simply have much better opportunities to have their own child." According to the German IVF Register in Düsseldorf, the number of artificial inseminations is steadily increasing. While there were already more than 110,000 treatments in the fertility centers in 2019, the figure was only around 23,700 in 1994.

New Adoption Assistance Act

But the situation has also changed abroad. Egger-Otholt says that attempts are increasingly being made to place the adopted children in their country of origin. "That makes sense, because the culture, the language, the country and the religion are retained."

ADOPTION ASSISTANCE ACT

The adoption of children has recently been comprehensively reorganized. The so-called Adoption Assistance Act has been in force since April 1, 2021. Families who want to adopt a child now have a legal right to comprehensive counseling. In the run-up to stepchild adoptions, mandatory counseling is usually required. The biological parents who give their child up for adoption have more rights: They are entitled to information from the adoptive family - provided that everyone involved agrees. At the same time, adoptions abroad are generally prohibited on your own.

The adoption of children was comprehensively reorganized by the so-called Adoptionshilfegesetz, which came into force on April 1st. Since then, it has been expressly forbidden, for example, to adopt children abroad if this process is not accompanied by an official placement agency. "That someone goes to an orphanage abroad with a bag of money and chooses a child is no longer allowed today," says Egger-Otholt.

According to the expert, every international adoption is a one-off job. "We look at every child and their needs individually in order to find the right family." Adoption is not a mass business.

But what exactly is the development of adoptions in Germany? According to the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden, the number of children adopted from abroad fell by 75 percent between 2010 and 2020, to 116 most recently. Overall, there was a minimal increase in all adoptions across Germany to just under 3800 children last year. For comparison: in 1995 there were still around 7,970.

Open adoption as the rule

It is also interesting that while the number of adoptions of strangers' children continues to fall, the proportion of stepchild adopters is continuously increasing. According to statistics, they make up almost two thirds (65 percent) of all cases nationwide, in Rhineland-Palatinate it was even almost 70 percent, in Hesse around 61. "It is striking that the number of infants who adopt stepchildren is very high," said Carmen Thiele from the path Federal Association of Foster and Adoptive Families in Berlin.

Among other things, this can be attributed to the situation with homosexual couples, she explains. If, for example, one of the two women has the child to bear, the other woman must apply for stepchild adoption in order to achieve parenting status. In addition, it is conceivable that the topic of surrogacy will contribute to this development, said Thiele. "But that has not been proven."

Egger-Otholt has been working in the adoption agency in Mainz for eleven years. The lawyer also observes a shift towards a more open approach to adoptions. Nowadays much more attention is paid to better advising and accompanying families and enabling contact between all those involved. That is an advantage for everyone: for the receiving parents, the leaving mothers and fathers - and of course for the child.

The education about the origin of the child is extremely important. "Then the risk that it will turn away in difficult phases, such as puberty, is much lower." Because, as the expert emphasizes: "The child is always a child with two families."

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