Why does the 2010 Census care if my child is biological or adopted? I was sort of caught off guard today when completing the Census 2010 questionnaire. Why does the census bureau care if I gave birth to my child or not? I decided to do some research and here is what I came up with...
1. The data collected provides agencies designed to assist adoptive families such as, the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse (NAIC), understand in what geographical areas services are needed.
2. The data also assists policy makers with adoption legislation such as the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994, the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, and the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993.
Census 2000 included "adopted son/daughter" for the first time as a category of relationship to the householder. The Census is the principal source of data on adopted children and their families. According to the NAIC, no other sources for comprehensive national data on adoption are available.
To read a comprehensive special report from the Census 2000 regarding adoption visit http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/censr-6.pdf
So, go ahead and check the box stating your child is adopted. Try not to be offended and understand your answers are needed to make laws and legislation regarding adoption.
Sources:
http://www.adopting.org/adoptions/census-bureau-report-on-adoption.html
http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/censr-6.pdf
9 comments:
THANK YOU for this. I can be really rabid about this but I totally understand the benefit of good data for the census. Okay, much calmer now. Thanks again for doing the research.
Thanks for posting this info! I am going to direct my readers your way!
Actually those statistics are already gathered as part of the legal process, just as births are recorded annually. You can see some stats here - http://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/statistics/adoption.cfm - taken from Jenna's blog cooments -http://thechroniclesofmunchkinland.com/2010/03/15/the-census-and-adoption/
It would have caught me off guard except I had already heard about it via Twitter from birth parents & adoptive parents. I'm not sure I'm thrilled with the idea.
As for legal stuff, I'd rather see a comprehensive national law covering adoption to stop all the illegal & unethical stuff that goes on in the industry. That doesn't require statistics from the census.
I just sent you an email with regard to the constitutionality of such questions. Nowhere in the constitution is anything required of you but the number of people in household. Hope you receive the video.
I sent you a video with regard to Census taking and The Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution will you find that you must give this info.
I don't see how it matters that my child was adopted. There is no info on where my child was born from. The services are needed in the places where the children are born - or better where they are conceived. As adoptive parents we will travel anywhere to get our children. My children were born in other countries so there are no necessary services. So, this logic is utter nonsense. It is just the government's way of being in our business.
Think of it as a way to monitor how many children are adopted so that services to them can be improved, provided even, as so few good ones exist. It may also be a way to see the demand for adoption agencies to be abolished and no-one can prove anything without stats.You may see it as nonsense and unnecessary, adoptees may not in years to come when legislation changes.It's about their better future isn't it?
I am also upset about the question regarding adoption. My child was adopted in a distant state. I don't need any services from NAIC and never did. If the NAIC uses data like this, they will have services in areas where they aren't needed and not have them where they could be used.
More importantly, this whole situation sets a precedent for other "nosy" questions which are irrelevant to the Census. The purpose of a census is NOT to provide information to any government agency that wants to know something. It is a head count of how many people live in a specific area, and that's all it should be.
Recently, I found the 2010 Census form hanging on my door. As I began filling it out, I came across a dilemma. The U.S. government wants to know if my children are adopted or not and it wants to know what our races are. Being adopted myself, I had to put “Other” and “Don’t Know Adopted” for my race and “Other” and “Don’t Know” for my kids’ races.
Can you imagine not knowing your ethnicity, your race? Now imagine walking into a vital records office and asking the clerk for your original birth certificate only to be told “No, you can’t have it, it’s sealed.”
How about being presented with a “family history form” to fill out at every single doctor’s office visit and having to put “N/A Adopted” where life saving information should be?
Imagine being asked what your nationality is and having to respond with “I don’t know”.
It is time that the archaic practice of sealing and altering birth certificates of adopted persons stops.
Adoption is a 5 billion dollar, unregulated industry that profits from the sale and redistribution of children. It turns children into chattel who are re-labeled and sold as “blank slates”.
Genealogy, a modern-day fascination, cannot be enjoyed by adopted persons with sealed identities. Family trees are exclusive to the non-adopted persons in our society.
If adoption is truly to return to what is best for a child, then the rights of children to their biological identities should NEVER be violated. Every single judge that finalizes an adoption and orders a child’s birth certificate to be sealed should be ashamed of him/herself.
I challenge all readers: Ask the adopted persons that you know if their original birth certificates are sealed.
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