Word: infantability
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Though many adopted children went on to live contented, successful lives, others suffered from the start and were slow to heal, a phenomenon largely ignored by the mental-health community. The visceral sense of loss, psychologists suggest, even in the case of infant adoptions, is an abiding , wound, too little understood. Adoptees represent 2% of the U.S. population, yet by some estimates they account for one-quarter of the patients in U.S. psychological treatment facilities. "There are many issues that are particularly critical for adoptive families -- issues of compatibility, intellectual mismatches, personality conflicts," says Ruth McRoy, a University of Texas...
...Gilman, who is the author of The Adoption Resource Book, an information guide for those setting out to adopt a child. Gilman devoted weeks of work to the cover package, but in effect she began her personal research in 1979 when she and her husband Ernest adopted Seth, an infant from Chile, then Eve from South Korea in 1981. "We wanted this week's story to convey how much the dynamics of adoption are changing," Gilman says. "Our whole notion of who can be a parent and who can be adopted is dramatically different...
...some estimates, these special-needs children account for about 60% of all those available for adoption. They make up the large majority of the youngsters now handled by the public adoption agencies of most states. Yet while there may be dozens of couples bidding for every healthy white infant, only about one-third of the approximately 36,000 available special-needs kids will be taken in any given year. Some of the rest can be found in hospitals as "boarder babies" -- left behind at birth by addicted or otherwise incapable mothers. Others are crammed into group facilities...
Frank and Dante, a gay Long Island couple, have not only taken in the fragile 19-month-old Mickey; they are also preparing to adopt two-year-old Jonathan, who has weathered two bouts of AIDS-related pneumonia and, under their care, blossomed from an emaciated infant into a chubby, cheerful toddler. A private adoption agency, Leake & Watts, provides the men with $1,200 for each child a month in city, state and federal funds instead of the $437 subsidy for a healthy child...
...already endured surgery on his throat and intestines. When he arrived at the Children's Institute International in Los Angeles six months ago, he weighed only 5 lbs. "He looked like a child assigned a set of skin three times too big," recalls Sheila Anderson, director of the infant's shelter at C.I.I. Crack babies frequently have trouble keeping down their food. Given to spasms, trembling and muscular rigidity, they resist cuddling by arching their backs, an early sign of what some studies suggest may be lasting neurological and emotional disorders. In pediatric intensive-care units around the country, they...