If you posit that institutionalization is not good for children, something that I think is probably uncontroversial (but come on HN, give me your best shot), you have a bunch of  interesting externalities from the adoption system, especially the international adoption system.<p>In particular, kids in most Geneva convention countries need to &#x27;time out&#x27; of their domestic processes, so they are institutionalized longer, sometimes years longer than a local adoption would have been. They are also very often &#x27;damaged goods&#x27; depending on the country of origin -- babies with unproblematic histories get adopted quickly some places.<p>For whatever reason, upper-middle-class adoptive families seem to me to trend international (and we did that in our case); the gap there might be exaggerated even further over a lower income family doing a local adoption. The article and &#x2F; or studies cited could be living with these sorts of correlative issues unless very carefully considered and designed around; nothing in the article made me think that level of detailed consideration had been accomplished by the author, though.