Utah has been known as a hub for adoption for some time, and not always for the right reasons. But for the last five years, adoptions have steadily declined in the state, according to numbers from the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, from 1,658 in 2021 to 1,284 last year.
Long seen as the “Wild West” of adoption, Utah has a reputation shaped by lax oversight, sums of money directed toward birth mothers, and a pro-family culture formed by the ubiquity of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Adoption is a complex, like, mirror into society,” said Ashley Larsen Gibby, a researcher who focuses on adoption in Brigham Young University’s School of Family Life.
The process is expensive, stressful and emotional, and Larsen Gibby attributes the state’s falling numbers to multiple reasons. Some may be obvious, like improvements in fertility technology, but more nuanced things, such as the rise of social media, have played a role.
“Especially right now with social media, I feel like adult adoptees are becoming a lot more vocal about the problems with it,” she said, “and I think people are becoming more aware of the complexities of adoption and how tricky it is.”
Negative publicity surrounding adoption has certainly turned some prospective parents away, Larsen Gibby said. The cost is another. Families can spend tens of thousands of dollars on matching fees and other expenses, including a birth mother's living and medical costs.
“The United States is one of the only countries that treats adoption not as a social service, but has some sort of business component to it,” she said.
All of this, she said, is contributing to the decline.
International adoptions have also been on a downward trend. Larsen Gibby said she wasn’t surprised, though, citing geopolitical reasons like cultural preservation in countries that many children have been adopted from. The U.S. adopted more children from China than anywhere else until the country ended its foreign adoption program in 2024.
Because of the business aspect, it's difficult not to describe adoption in terms of supply and demand, as “problematic” as that can be, Larsen Gibby noted.
“A lot of people have made the argument that instead of it being about children who need homes, it has now become about couples who need children,” she said.
She said she wishes there were more desire to foster. But that has its complications, too.
Tara Romney Barber is the director of adoptions and clinical services for Children’s Service Society of Utah, a nonprofit that works in both private and public adoptions. Private adoptions usually involve a birthmother who has planned while pregnant to place her child with an adoptive family. Public adoptions typically involve the foster system.
These public adoptions are down 32% nationwide since their peak in 2019.
If a child is placed for adoption out of the foster system, it means they won’t be reunited with their biological parents. Romney Barber said Utah and other states are trying to focus on prevention so that children don't enter the foster system in the first place.
“They really have made a push to remove children only when absolutely necessary from their biological parents, and when children enter the foster care system, reunification is always the goal,” she said.
The National Council for Adoption finds the majority of children who are adopted from foster care are between the ages of 1and 5. Romney Barber said that sometimes the most difficult children to place are not allowed to go back to their biological parents.
“They may have behavioral health needs, or mental health needs, or physical health needs that may mean that the family would need to be very well qualified to meet that child's needs in order to be considered as an adoptive placement for them,” she said.
