Dr. Amanda Baden Comments on Broken Adoption for Yahoo! News

Dr. Amanda Baden, Professor in the Counseling Department, recently commented on broken adoptions for Yahoo! News. The article stated that a USA TODAY investigation found that while the majority of adoptions in the U.S. remain intact, tens of thousands of children suffer the collapse of not one but two families: their birth family and their adoptive family. Those failures occur across the spectrum of adoption, affecting children adopted internationally, from foster care, through private agencies, and by relatives.

Additionally, the article noted that today, more than half of the roughly 120,000 adoptions each year come out of foster care, according to the analysis of data collected from states and the federal government. In three states – Arizona, California, and New Mexico – foster care adoptions account for more than 75% of all adoptions.

As that landscape has shifted, experts said the government has a greater responsibility to provide support to ensure those adoptions are safe and successful. Foster children are more likely to have experienced trauma from neglect, abuse, or forced separation from their biological families.

“A child who knows that they are not truly orphaned, it’s going to be a harder adjustment,” said Dr. Baden, a licensed psychologist in addition to being a professor. “And a child who’s been through a lot of trauma, of course, is going to have some real adjustment.”

Dr. Baden is a member of the Doctoral Faculty and an active researcher. She currently leads the Adoption Research Team, which consists of Dr. Baden along with advanced masters and doctoral students in Counselor Education. Dr. Baden is on numerous committees within the Department and the College of Education and Human Services. She is an avid proponent of multicultural competence and specializes in adoption-related research in counseling and psychology.

Dr. Baden specializes in transracial adoption, counseling, and therapy with the adoption triad, multicultural counseling competence, and identity and racial-ethnic issues in adoption.