Paper short abstract:

With international adoption growing, states try to find rules for getting ethic transaction between contracting countries.What would be good parents to replace the other ones ? I will present here a draft analyse of the discussions heard on this subject among the different actors of a French agency for adoption.

Paper long abstract:

With international adoption growing, contracting states try to find rules that will regulate child circulation within frames defined by the Hague Convention and by the International Convention for the Rights of Children. Both these conventions are based on the children's rights to have a family, to be raised by some parents, by a father and a mother. Countries then try to establish criteria to define first an ethic transaction between contracting countries and second what would be good parents to replace those the children could have kept from their birth.

I will put the emphasis on this second issue and I will present here a draft analyse of the discussions heard on this subject among the different actors of an important French agency for adoption.

After describing to you the « objective » rules that this agency follows to choose candidates to adoption whom it will accompany until they become parents, I would like to launch a reflection on the arguments used to refuse those same candidates who have already passed the "objective" rules' barrier. A real effort of coherence is required in the selection of future parents so that they are selected on the same criteria, but then what should be the logic behind the criteria? At what level? What certainties should be kept to reduce the risks attached to this so openly social kinship ?