In the United States, adoption proceeds via two distinct, non-overlapping paths. The first, and the image most prospective adoptive parents have in mind, is infant adoption: an arrangement planned in advance between birth parents and adoptive parents when the birth parents are not in a position to raise their children, in which babies are adopted immediately after being born. Adoption in this case is the goal from the beginning. Around 25,000 infants are adopted by this approach annually, with another 1,000 or so via now-rare international adoptions.
The second route is foster care, for which adoption is a failure state. The goal of foster care is not to match kids with new families, but to reunite children with their birth families whenever possible....
In the case of infant adoption, there are functionally zero babies who wind up without adoptive parents. None go from infant adoption to foster care, and while estimates are unreliable, some indicate double-digit couples waiting to adopt each baby.
The Atlantic is informative here. When considering adopting from foster care, prospective adoptive parents tend to hope to adopt younger kids. As a result, few young children, usually ones with serious medical needs and in difficult positions, are in a position to be adopted from foster care.
I find each path admirable and have not ruled any out. It’s good for people to become parents, whichever route they take. Each route is very different, though, and they are complementary, not replacements for each other. Prospective parents who are in a position to bring children into the world and raise them well should not be pushed into one path or another—it is good to have kids, good to adopt kids, good to foster kids. My husband and I want to have biological children whether or not we also adopt in the future.
