If you've ever looked at the social media comments of a person trying to conceive — usually when announcing they've had a miscarriage, stillborn, or unsuccessful IVF round — you'll see the question, "There are so many kids out there who need homes. Have you considered adoption?"

You might make the comment because you knew someone who was adopted as a baby between the 1960s and the 1990s. What you don't realise, is the number of adoptions in Australia has declined by 98 per cent since then, and mostly for good reason.

The international Hague Adoption Convention was made effective in 1995 to protect children and their families against the risks of illegal, irregular, premature, or ill-prepared adoptions abroad — issues that ran rampant under a largely unregulated international adoption landscape. In Australia alone, 250,000 were affected by policies and practices of forced adoption, mostly between 1950 and 1975, and many children placed for adoption were members of the Stolen Generations.

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It's a dramatically different situation today, where only 207 people were adopted in Australia in 2023-24 (when data was last published) — 84 per cent of which had a pre-existing relationship with their adoptive parent/s.

There were 88 adoptions by carers, representing less than 1 per cent of the 45,000 children currently in foster care (the primary goal of the foster system is reunification with a child's birth parents), and only 26 local adoptions where the child had little to no previous contact or relationship with the adoptive parents. Of the local adoptees, only eight were under 12 months old.

Intercountry adoption in Australia is only possible through one of the nation's established partner countries, which organised 34 adoptions from 2023-24: 19 children from Thailand, nine from Taiwan, five from South Korea, and one from Colombia. Of these 34 children, only two were under 12 months old, and most children were aged between five and nine.

The avenues for adoption in Australia are even more limited as of 2026 and require significant compromise.

Thailand is currently not accepting new applications from Australian adoptive parents, except for applications for children over four years old and/or who have special needs.

South Korea is also not currently accepting applications, but normally, the country only allows heterosexual married couples to adopt, and there are significant health requirements, including being able to 'go about your daily routine' without needing glasses. The wait time is three years, and the fees are AUD $27,000.

To adopt a Taiwanese child under the age of four, applicants are unlikely to be considered if not willing to adopt a child with complex family backgrounds and special needs. The wait time is three years, and the cost is up to AUD $20,000.

Non-Colombian citizens can currently only adopt children from Colombia with special needs or groups of siblings.

Australia's only other partner countries are Chile and India. Chile requires both adoptive parents (they only accept married couples) to have a basic level of Spanish, and India only accepts heterosexual applicants from Queensland or the Northern Territory. There were no adoptions of children from either country finalised in Australia in 2023-24.

And that's all putting aside the fact that adoption is not an answer to infertility, nor is it the same thing. To quote Jennifer Aniston in a recent interview, "I don't want to adopt; I want my own DNA in a little person. That's the only way, selfish or not, whatever that is, I've wanted it."

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If you feel tempted to ask someone about adoption, first consider if you're genuinely trying to help, or if you're just making their pain easier for you to sit with. Resist the instinct to reach for tidy solutions that may sound compassionate but aren't grounded in reality and instead offer a sympathetic ear.

I can guarantee the person in your life who's struggling to conceive knows better than anyone that adoption in Australia is a tightly regulated and narrowly accessible pathway that bears little resemblance to the system people remember from half a century ago.