International adoptions, slight recovery in 2024

Timid signs of recovery in Italy for international adoptions, even if the levels of just 10 years ago remain far off. In 2024, 691 foreign minors were taken in by a 'heartfelt' mother from our country. There were 536 procedures, 12% more than the 478 of the previous year. The numbers bode well, but the comparison with the past remains pitiless: in 2015 there were 1,811 adoptions. In 2010, the year of the historical peak, over 4,100.

The drop in recent years affects the whole world and reflects complex transformations. Underlying the drop are both structural causes and geopolitical contingencies, as Vincenzo Starita, vice-president of the Commission for International Adoptions (Cai), explains: "In many countries of origin, child conditions have improved. Elsewhere, as in Ukraine, war has interrupted adoption channels. In states like Ethiopia, China or Russia, borders have been closed for nationalistic reasons'. At the same time, the domestic situation with high procedural costs and the increasingly advanced age of the parents also plays a role. Not surprisingly, domestic adoptions have also decreased, from 1,290 in 2001 to 866 in 2021.

The 2024 data collected by the Cai and anticipated in Il Sole 24Ore paint a clear profile: adopted children are on average 6 years and 3 months old and come mainly from Hungary (149 minors per 100 procedures), India (104 minors per 88 procedures) and Colombia (110 minors per 81 procedures).

But if adoptive motherhood is made up of expectations, discoveries and achievements, there is no shortage of difficulties, often already at an early stage. Anna Guerrieri, president of the Care coordination and a mother through adoption, points out how Italian laws, while formally equating adoption and biological birth, create, in fact, an 'imperfect equality'. "Many family welfare tools," she explains, "are based on the age of the child, making it difficult for adoptive parents of older children to make full use of them".

Another aspect to keep in mind concerns special needs. As many as 67.1 per cent of the children accepted in 2024 fall into the 'special needs' category, which - according to the definition of the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference - includes children over 7 years old, with disabilities or part of large siblings. A reality that makes public support as well as training at school even more crucial, "to manage differences and offer adequate support to children with an adoptive background," says Guerrieri.