Children are in need of adoption because some birth parents are unable to meet adequately the needs of their child. There are numerous reasons for making an adoption plan. Birth parents may feel they cannot take on the responsibility of an unplanned child because they are too young or because they are financially or emotionally unable to provide proper care. They do not feel ready or able to be good parents. In other cases children are in need of adoption because courts have decided that their birth parents are unable to function adequately. Many of these children are victim of abuse or neglect. Regardless of how children come to need adoption, they are put with adoptive parents through private or public social service agencies. Other adoptions may be arranged independently, as when birth parents and adoptive parents come to know each other outside of an agency and then complete the adoption according to the laws and regulations of their states of residence. Children from all countries and all walks of life need adopting. Although international adoptions occur, the largest number of adoptions in the United States involve American parents adopting American infants. In the early 1970s there was a dramatic increase in the number of families seeking to adopt, a condition which persists today. For this reason, the number of those who wish to adopt regularly exceeds the number of infants available. Reasons for this dramatic increase are varied. A major factor has been the choice of many people to delay the start of a family until later in life. Many of these people, in turn, have found themselves to be less fertile at that time, and so they have decided that their desire to have children might best be fulfilled through adoption. In every state, however, there are children who are legally free to be adopted are desperately waiting for parents. The children in this group are usually older and often have special needs. They may require additional care from a parent because of their physical, emotional, or mental disabilities(which may have been caused by abuse, neglect, or medical or genetic factors). Because of their special needs, these children are challenging to rear. In fact, adoption experts believe that people who adopt these children need special training and preparation in order to successfully rear the child and to integrate the child into the family and eventually into society. The author holds an______ attitude towards adopting children.