Thus nature "ensures some initial flexibility with respect to the particular adults who take on the parental role. "Beyond the foundational issues, the unique questions posed for adoptive parents are varied. They include how to respond to stereotypes, answering questions about heritage, and how best to maintain connections with biological kin when in an open adoption. One author suggests a common question adoptive parents have is: "Will we love the child even though he/she is not our biological child?" A specific concern for many parents is accommodating an adoptee in the classroom. Familiar lessons like "draw your family tree" or "trace your eye color back through your parents and grandparents to see where your genes come from" could be hurtful to children who were adopted and do not know this biological information. Numerous suggestions have been made to substitute new lessons, e.g., focusing on "family orchards".Adopting older children presents other parenting issues. Some children from foster care have histories of maltreatment, such as physical and psychological neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse, and are at risk of developing psychiatric problems. Such children are at risk of developing a disorganized attachment. Studies by Cicchetti et al. (1990, 1995) found that 80% of abused and maltreated infants in their sample exhibited disorganized attachment styles. Disorganized attachment is associated with a number of developmental problems, including dissociative symptoms, as well as depressive, anxious, and acting-out symptoms. "Attachment is an active process—it can be secure or insecure, maladaptive or productive."
More recently the military dictatorship in Argentina from 1976 to 1983 is known to have given hundreds of babies born to women captives who were then murdered to be brought up by military families.In Spain under Francisco Francos 1939–75 dictatorship the newborns of some left-wing opponents of the regime, or unmarried or poor couples, were removed from their mothers and adopted. New mothers were frequently told their babies had died suddenly after birth and the hospital had taken care of their burials, when in fact they were given or sold to another family. It is believed that up to 300,000 babies were involved. These system—which allegedly involved doctors, nurses, nuns and priests—outlived Francos death in 1975 and carried on as an illegal baby trafficking network until 1987 when a new law regulating adoption was introduced.On January 29, 2010, a group of ten American Baptist missionaries from Idaho attempted to cross the Haiti–Dominican Republic border with 33 Haitian children. The group, known as the New Life Childrens Refuge, did not have proper authorization for transporting the children and were arrested on kidnapping charges. After the process for the adoption of 400 children by families in the US and the Netherlands was expedited, Unicef and SOS Children urged an immediate halt to adoptions from Haiti.