It’s Saturday afternoon at the YB World Martial Arts Academy in Stamford and the joint is hopping, but not with the usual martial arts students. Clutching paper lanterns and miniature South Korean flags, dozens of youngsters and their parents are celebrating the start of the lunar new year. However, the party might just as well celebrate something more meaningful to American life — a growing trend toward international adoption. The sixty or so people in attendance are all Korean adoptees and their families.
In his book Adoption Nation, Adam Pertman writes that we are experiencing an adoption revolution, with the signs all around us — “white parents picking up their yellow or brown or black toddlers at preschool, the TV movies about anguished or triumphant biological and adoptive parents, the movie stars and the people down the street proudly announcing the arrival of their adopted children from Georgia or Guatemala.” Whether international or domestic, adoption has moved mainstream.
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