"Adoption of Unrelated Children". Essay is about adoption and the its effects on the society. Includes Darwin's theory.

Essay by daeiUniversity, Bachelor's September 2002

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Adoption of Unrelated Children

Adoption has long provided a mechanism for the care of children whose biological parents are unable to provide for them a sufficient way of life and an alternative means by creating a family for couples that are unable to create families of their own. These foster families are meant to serve as the permanent families of the children who do not have their own relatives. Although adoptions are quite regular in today's societies, they create a conflict with Darwinian Evolutionary theory. According to Darwin's theory, every individual will act in ways that allow that individual to increase its own fitness and its inclusive fitness. Each person will make decisions that allow for maximizing fitness. Adoption allows for a child without a family to join a family, but when this child is not related to the family it is joining, it creates a conflict with Darwinian theory. Why are the adoptive parents accepting an unrelated individual into their family? This act appears to in fact decrease their inclusive fitness due the fact that they are not investing time in the transition of their own genes, but the genes of an unrelated individual.

Even though the logistics of adopting an unrelated child goes against Darwinian theory, more people are adopting children and the numbers of adoptions are increasing every year. A survey of American women in 1988 had showed that only 200,000 people were considering adoptions and by 1995 more than 500,000 thousand people were considering adoptions. It is obvious that there has been a drastic increase in adoption rates within these seven years. People are not considering the losses of adoptive unrelated children and in fact they believe that there are many benefits that can be obtained by adopting a child that is either related...