Adoption Activities on the Internet: A Call for Regulation (Report‪)‬

The advent of the Internet has changed the face of information access and communication as well as the provision of goods and services. The Internet is now facilitating interactive services such as psychotherapy (Alleman, 2003; Holmes & Ainsworth, 2004) and medical advice (Currell, Urquhart, Wainwright, & Lewis, 2000). Adoption services, too, are increasingly being facilitated through the Internet, with Web sites proliferating since the first photolisting Web site was introduced in 1994 (Martin, n.d.). The Internet has become a factor in all three types of adoptions--domestic infant adoption, public foster care adoption, and international adoption. Although foster care adoptions are now subject to considerable regulation (Freundlich, Gerstenzang, & Blair, 2004), adoption activities on the Internet seem to be flourishing--particularly domestic infant adoptions--with little or no regulation. International adoptions are not free of Internet-based abuses, with increasing access to the Internet around the globe. The purposes of this article are to describe the current functions of adoption-related Web sites, examine their potential benefits and risks as applied to different spheres of adoption activity, discuss the current state of regulation related to Internet-based adoption activities, and begin a dialogue on social work self-regulation and leadership in this arena. In the end, we argue that the social work profession has a special responsibility to establish self-regulation of its own members and to extend its leadership to the wider arena of Internet-assisted adoption activities. FUNCTIONS OF ADOPTION-RELATED WEB SITES