There weren't alot of articles that focused specifically on my research question, but I did find some articles that focused on my general topic of adoption and certain aspects about this topic. While the overall focus of most of these articles is not my specific focus, there is information in each of these articles that pertain to my specific question.
My first article is from the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy, titled Internation Child Adoptions: Who Should Decide What Is In The Best Interests Of The Family. The part that I found most interesting in this article was where the author stated, "The primary concern revolves around what is in the best interests of the child and particularly what would happen to the child if the parent becomes financially or physically disabled, or even dies, while the child is still a minor. These concerns, although merited, are merely hypotheticals and do not take into account what is most important in determining what is in the child's best interests, which is to consider the child's aternative option of remaining in institutional care without even a single parent to love and care for him or her (Hubing, 2001)." I agree with this statement because one parent is better than none, and even if the child was adopted by two parents, something bad could happen to both of them also leaving the child without a parent. So, this concern does not seem like a valid reason, to me, to prevent single parents from adopting.
This article seems to suggest that two-parent adoptions are prefered over single-parent adoptions in domestic adoptions, which lead more people to adopt internationally. The author states, "Generally, domestic adoption agencies rank young, happily married couples at the top of the waiting list; single, older, and disabled people in the middle; and homosexuals and severely disabled people at the bottom (Hubing, 2001)." There are certain criteria that a prospective adoptive parent has to meet, and aparently being single doesn't quite meet that criteria for some adoption agencies.
Another article that I came across is a study done in Canada title, "Community Attitudes Toward Birth Fathers' Motives for Adoption Placement and Single Parenting (Maill, 2005)." It talks about what the community thinks about single fathers' decisions to either continue to be single fathers or give their child up for adoption. So, this article was sort of a different angle of my research question in which it focuses mainly on single fathers and adoption placement, rather than adopting children into their home. However, "Community attitudes were more positive toward birth fathers raising their children over adoption, when birth mothers were unable or unwilling to parent the child (Maill, 2005)." So, according to this article, most of the people who were interviewed felt that one biological parent was preferable to one, or two, adoptive parents.
Perhaps the most substantial article that I came across was one titled, "Adoption Proposal Causes and Uproar (Goldberg, 1996)." This article talks about how Governor Pete Wilson was proposing to prevent unmarried couples in California from adopting. According to the article, the governor's spokesperson stated, "The Governor believes the best interest for a child is to have a mother and father in the household (Goldberg, 1996)." I believe that this is wrong because everyone deserves a chance to have a family and should not be discriminated against because of their sexuality or because they are unmarried.
