'the Relationship Between Institutional Care and the International Adoption of Children in Europe': A Rejoinder to Chou and Browne (2008)‪.‬

In a recent, much publicised article in Adoption & Fostering, Shihning Chou and Kevin Browne offer a scientific study of the 'do-gooder hypothesis' that international adoptions reduce the number of children in institutional care (2008, p 42). Campaigners for intercountry adoption have, they tell us, used this proposition to strengthen their claim that intercountry adoption is ethically justifiable because it constitutes a solution to the problem of child institutionalisation (ibid). And yet, Chou and Browne emphasise, the assumptions behind the hypothesis remain to date untested, having never been 'scientifically investigated'. They therefore 'seek to test this assumption' by applying the Spearman rank correlation to 21 European countries. They conclude that, rather than reducing institutional care in either sending or receiving countries, intercountry adoption 'may contribute to this harmful practice' (2008, p 40). This claim was presented in a press release about the article as 'Madonna-style intercountry adoptions are causing a rise in the number of children in orphanages'. (2) In what follows we examine Chou and Browne's case and evidence closely. We argue that their article is based on a badly formulated research question, that it draws on inaccurate data and that it proposes a misleading and unjustified set of conclusions. While we accept that all social scientific research is rooted in the distinct value-orientations of researchers, there remains a pressing need for genuinely informed debate between interest groups concerning intercountry adoption. The poor methodology underlying this article will do little more than entrench misunderstanding and harm dialogue on an area of key public interest.