Private Adoption At A Glance

As perhaps the name implies, private adoption is pretty much the antithesis of public adoption. As one might expect, relatives are more likely to engage in private adoption than public adoption.

While child adoption may represent children of all ages, with private adoption, infant adoption is decidedly more likely. Of all of the private adoptions in the United States as of 2007, a remarkable 60% of them involved children who were one month of age or less upon placement.

As some people might argue makes it the better option, private adoption is more than twice as likely as public adoption to foster pre-adoption agreements on open adoption. In addition, as of 2007 private adoptions are almost 30 percentage points higher than public adoptions on the variable of maintaining that contact.

In terms of yet another difference for private adoption and public adoption in the United States, in the former, a child much more frequently is an only child. Therefore, in private adoptions, it is much less common to see multiple biological siblings adopted together.

NEXT: Public Adoption At A Glance