Within the international adoption scene, from 1940 to 2009, Italy has been witnessing a radical change in perspective: from state of origin of adopted children has turned into the second (after United States) world-wide most important receiving state.

In Italy, international adoption is regulated by Law. 184, in force since 1983. Moreover, in 1998, the Hague Convention was ratified by Law 476. Following this law, the Central Authority CAI, Commission for International Adoptions was constituted.

Over 30 years, many major and minor changes have taken place.

The first and most evident change – following the Hague ratification - regards the increase of age limit for those children who have been declared adoptable by their state of origin. Some states of origin do not know or even take into consideration the principle of subsidiarity, due to the extreme poverty endured by their populations. These are countries where people cannot meet their own children’s most basic needs, let alone welcome other children and have other little hungry mouths to feed every day. Moreover, their society’s culture often does not tolerate the adoption of children born out of marriage or born from unmarried women, consequently, such a choice would involve too a high price to pay.

Another important change to be considered is the percentage of adoptions compared to the prospective adoptive parents. In the 80ies, any couple who wished to adopt a child through international adoption was “nearly” sure their desire would be fulfilled. Nowadays, only 60% of the couples manage to adopt a child. As far as Italy is concerned, the number of international adoptions has been constantly increasing. However, from 2000 to date, thousands are the couples who did not manage to obtain the Adoption Suitability Decree from their local Juvenile court and were not able carry out their adoption project. At present, 20.000 are the couples who have been declared suitable for adoption but are waiting for a child and /or looking for an Adoption Agency who can deal with their adoption process.

It is important to remember the number of accredited international adoption agencies in Italy: they are 73 but they manage to carry out only 20% of adoptions. This is something to reflect on.

International adoption: a different way to become parents, today the same as yesterday, even though today becoming adoptive parents is more and more difficult. This difficulty does not depend on the legal paper work to be carried out by the Juvenile Courts but depends on the mere fact that international adoption is a complex reality, because many are the actors, many are the unpredictable factors, many are the continuous changes.