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Chapter One: What Is Adoption? • International versus domestic. Adoptions that happen within one country are called domestic adoptions. For example, an American child is adopted by Americans, a Canadian child is adopted by Canadians, and so on. But sometimes adoptions happen across borders—an American fam- ily might adopt a Chinese child, for instance, or a Canadian family might adopt a child from Ethiopia. These are called international adoptions . About 8,600 foreign children were adopted by American families in 2012. That total is way down from the peak year of 2004, in which there were almost 23,000 international adoptions. The drop is mostly due to other countries—especially Russia and China—placing limits on how many adoptions are allowed. • Younger versus older kids. A lot of parents dream of the day when they bring a baby home from the hospital. For that reason, it’s pretty

The actor and musician Jamie Foxx was adopted by his grandparents when he was about seven months old.