Big Year For Adoptions In Iceland

Last year was the biggest year for adoptions in Iceland since 2013, Vísir reported this morning. This information was made available in new figures from Statistics Iceland.

There were 49 adoptions in 2019: 31 step-adoptions and 18 primary adoptions. This is more than in 2018, when there were 46 adoptions.

The term primary adoption refers to the adoption of a child who is not the child of the applicant’s spouse. There were only 4 primary adoptions from abroad in 2017 and again in 2018, compared with 2005 when 41 primary adoptions took place. In recent years, most adopted children have been from the Czech Republic.

Though adoptions in general were higher in 2019 than 2018, there were more step-adoptions in 2018 than 2019: 41 compared to 31. In all 31 step-adoptions which took place in 2019, the stepfather was the adoptive parent; however, this has always been the most common way around.

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