In 1997, then-president Bill Clinton signed the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) into law. This law marks a shift away from the theory of “family preservation”—the belief that efforts should be made to reunite abused or neglected children with their biological parents—and toward “permanency planning.” The goal of permanency planning is to find permanent adoptive homes for abused and neglected children as soon as possible.

Prior to the enactment of the ASFA, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 guided American adoption policies. This act emphasized family preservation and regarded adoption as an action that took place only after reasonable efforts to reunify a family had failed. The term “reasonable efforts” has come to describe programs designed to help disadvantaged or troubled parents take care of their children. These include education, job...