If you posit that institutionalization is not good for children, something that I think is probably uncontroversial (but come on HN, give me your best shot), yo

If you posit that institutionalization is not good for children, something that I think is probably uncontroversial (but come on HN, give me your best shot), you have a bunch of interesting externalities from the adoption system, especially the international adoption system. In particular, kids in most Geneva convention countries need to 'time out' of their domestic processes, so they are institutionalized longer, sometimes years longer than a local adoption would have been. They are also very often 'damaged goods' depending on the country of origin -- babies with unproblematic histories get adopted quickly some places. For whatever reason, upper-middle-class adoptive families seem to me to trend international (and we did that in our case); the gap there might be exaggerated even further over a lower income family doing a local adoption. The article and / or studies cited could be living with these sorts of correlative issues unless very carefully considered and designed around; nothing in the article made me think that level of detailed consideration had been accomplished by the author, though.