If someone told you he was adopted, you might look at his adoptive parents to notice any physical differences. But by focusing on appearances, you might overlook the love and actions of a "normal" family.

Kate Burke, president of the American Adoption Congress, can relate to that from the adoptee's point of view. She thinks adoption should focus on the needs of children rather than the needs of adults.

"I think that adoption in the last 10 years has become an institution that is finding babies for families rather than families for babies," she said recently in a telephone interview with Children's Express.

Adoption has come under scrutiny with the cases of 2-year-old Jessica DeBoer and 14-year-old Kimberly Mays. Earlier this month, the courts ruled that Jessica's adoptive parents had to return her to her birth parents, who didn't fully give up custody of her after her birth.

In Kimberly's case, a judge ruled she cannot be forced to have contact with her biological parents. The judge also declared that the man who raised Kimberly is her legal father. Kimberly was switched at birth with another girl, Arlena, and it was only after Arlena's death that the swap was uncovered.

Look at adoption differently

Both Burke and Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard law professor who has adopted two Peruvian boys, believe that Americans need to stop thinking of adoption as a last resort for couples who can't conceive their own children.

"I think adoption is something that is necessary in our society. There will always be children who need homes. That's just the reality," said Burke.

Bartholet agrees and criticizes societal policies that often help couples pay for infertility treatments but give them no financial support for adopting a child.

"The world has millions of children who need homes, and the world really doesn't need a lot more children," Bartholet explained. "It seems to be so crazy to be pushing potential parents away from the kids who need homes and into creating more kids."

Besides, she added, infertility treatments don't work for all couples. "Adoption gives them a way to parent, whereas infertility treatment gives most of them just a way to spend their time with doctors," said Bartholet, who underwent years of infertility treatments unsuccessfully before deciding to adopt.

Both women understand a couple's desire to conceive a child.

"I think everybody's first choice would always be to have their own child. (But) if you can't conceive a child yourself, then I think you need to look at adoption," says Burke.

Methods of adopting

There are two ways of going about adopting a child, either independently or through an agency.

In a private, or independent, adoption, a couple tries to locate a pregnant woman who does not plan to keep her child. Sometimes such couples take out newspaper ads explaining that they want to adopt a child, in hopes a pregnant woman would see them.

The birth mother gives legal custody to a couple, not an agency. Burke calls this type of adoption a "cowboy adoption."

"It allows women who are considering placing their kids for adoption to be pressured or isolated from the rest of society, so that they don't get any support systems should they want to keep their babies," she explained. "It allows in a lot of cases almost the buying and selling of babies. It allows some wheeling and dealing. Most of them work out OK, but not all," she said.

Jessica's adoption was one of those failures. Jessica's birth mother, Cara Clausen, had asked her physician to find adoptive parents for her then-unborn child. Shortly after birth, he located the DeBoers. But three weeks after Cara signed custody over to the DeBoers, she wanted Jessica back.

Interracial adoptions

In agency adoptions, the agency arranges an adoption between couples and birth mothers, who often never meet. One drawback to agencies is that they have many regulations regarding the prospective parents, their lifestyles and their homes. One such regulation, which requires that parents and child be of the same race, upsets Bartholet.

"Current racial matching policies mean that children are held in foster care, and sometimes in institutions, instead of being placed in homes," she stated. She added that parents should encourage the child to learn about his/her heritage, as she has done with her Peruvian sons.

Bartholet tells of the adoption maze and of her struggle to adopt Christopher and Michael in her book, Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of Parenting.

She emphasizes that parenting is parenting, whether you are nurturing your biological child or an adopted one. "I consider myself a regular parent. I mean, I think adoptive parents are regular parents, and they're natural parents. I think it's very much the same experience of parenting a child that's born to you," she said.

Bartholet, a single parent, can make this comparison easily. Besides her young sons, she gave birth to a son who is now an adult.

Search for birth parents

Adoptees have concerns that children who live with their birth parents don't have, according to Robin Henig, who co-wrote the book Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self. She and two therapists surveyed more than 100 adoptees of all ages to see how they viewed themselves and their lives.

In a recent telephone interview, Henig remarked that the authors found that even the adoptees who had happy childhoods still wondered about their birth mothers.

"What stands out is that it can look like your life is going just fine, and it is going fine, but you've got these nagging questions in the back of your mind," she said.

Many adoptees wonder what their birth mothers look like, why she didn't raise them and what their lives would be like if she had raised them, Henig said.

Burke, who was adopted as an infant, can relate to that. She said she "had a great childhood, I mean, I was spoiled rotten, an only child."

But as she got older, she noticed differences.

"I wasn't like my adoptive family, genetically. My father was an accountant. . . . They were both very precise people, and I am a generalist."

This difference caused her problems when she hit adolescence. "I had a hard time with that growing up; I began to feel like a failure," she said.

Burke found her birth mother when she was 30 years old, and many questions she had had about herself were answered then.

"When I first met my birth family, I found a bunch of generalists. And all of a sudden, it was like a big (relief), like, `Oh, OK, there are other people in the world like this. I understand this now."'

Henig and Burke agree that adoptees should be able to find their birth parents. Burke believes knowledge of your ancestors is a civil right that states should recognize.

"As an adoptee, decisions are made about your life while you are still a very small, small infant," she said. "You are expected to live with contracts and agreement executed by other people for the rest of your life."

EDITED BY: Chanda Boyden, 17