Adoption

A man and a woman get to know each other. They like each other a lot, get clother, have sex. Some weeks later the woman realizes that something is not following the normal rythm. She buys some tests, goes to the gynecologist. She is  pregnant! She has a fetus inside her body, the result of an act, that presuppose the closest and most intim contact you can have with a person. The fetus grows, the woman feels it everyday, every minute. When she eats, she also does it for the baby, when she drinks, the baby drinks with her. The pregnant belly grows, gets bigger and bigger, she starts to feel the baby´s kicks and punches, to feel how it grows. The baby hears her voice everytime she talks, only her voice. They are together every single second for nine months. Than follows the birth, the baby sees finally the daylight. It sees the doctors, the hospital, but there is one person it does not see, not in this moment and maybe never. It´s mum. She adopted it.

Already in the middle age adoption was a topic the people discussed about a lot. For the Germanic, Celtic and Slavic cultures it was an absolute taboo. When the Roman empire started to influence their laws and tradition the their opinion about adoption started to change, too, owing to the roman traditions, where it was already legal to adopt. The next crucial event concerning adoption was the American civil war. Many children became orphans and meanwhile a part of them were used as farm laborers or household servants, some became part of a new family and were able to live the life a child is supposed to live.
But the enforcement of these laws was very tough. In 1923 only every fiftyth orphan was living in an adoptive family. From then on the society accepted it more and less than forty years later every third child without parents was adopted.
In the times from today the reasons of adoptions variate a lot. It is not only the solution, when the parents die anymore. 
Many teenagers or young adults adopt in case, that they neither want to race the child nor to abort it. People adopt, when a couple get a child and later separate. Now for example the new stepmother could adopt her new houspand´s wife. Also child abuse can be a reason of take away and later adopt the child.
These are examples to mainly national adoptions. 
But also international adoptions exist. International adoption is very expensive and needs a lot of time. It is a difficult task to chose the country the organisation and to go through all the paperwork, tests and visits you need to realize this idea. Organistations are leading you through this steps, but it is neccessary to travel at least once or several times to the child´s country, sometimes for weeks. The problem regarding international adoption is, that it is always done owing to business interests and it barely clear, if the child welfare is truely the most important aspect. It is even used as a new way of child trafficking and because of these it is often seen very critically to adopt international.
When an adopted child grows up it will sooner or later find out that it´s family is not it´s consanguinity. So during all this process of adoption all involved have to make one important decision: Should the child stay in contact with it´s parents? 
According to the different circumstanceses this questions brings different arguments or problems with it. It is impossible to find a generel answer to this. Would the parents be a good influence? Do the parents even want to know their child? If it was an international adoption; would it even be possible to stay in contact? Every single human being has the urge to find out about his or hers roots, but not everyone has the possibility to do this. An other way of adotion is the anonyme adoption. Nobody know, who is the mother or the father, there are no documents according the child´s background, parents or family. This always causes many difficulties for the child. 
And then, when a child finally arrives in its new family, having a new mother and a new father, is it even possible that a love arise like the love to a natural child? Many studies deal with this question. The result Hoffman - Riem found out in 1984 was that 60 out of 65 parents described their relation to the adopted child equal to the relation they had to biologic children. Only 4% of the fathers were described as "disinterested". All in all the relations are mainly similar to a normal parents - child relation.