A nonprofit organization in Osaka recently launched what it touts as an easy-matching adoption website, triggering criticism from experts that adoptions should be made more carefully.
The group posts the age, job, place of domicile, annual income and assets of prospective parents on the website but does not disclose their names. Based on the data, parents who are looking to put their child up for adoption can select who they would entrust with their babies.
The organization, Zenkoku Oyako Fukushi Shien Center (National Parents-Children Welfare Support Center), said its simplified online system will help increase the number of adoptions.
"If the adoptive parents are ranked, it will be easier for biological parents to choose," said Genta Sakaguchi, who heads the group. "I wanted it to be systematic, like logistics, by not conducting interviews to judge their character beforehand."
The group began arranging adoptions in 2014 and set up the new members-only website in October. It has so far arranged 30 adoptions but is hoping to increase this to 3,000 a year.
Prospective parents, who do not need to be interviewed by the group in advance, are able to join by paying a monthly fee of ¥3,000. They are then ranked on the website, and only interviewed once they have been chosen by the biological parents.
The group said the members-only website currently has about 100 prospective parents and more than a dozen biological parents as members.
Some other adoption placement organizations, such as Nihon Kodomo Engumi Kyokai (Japan Child Adoption Association), have said the Osaka group should interview prospective parents multiple times to determine whether they are really fit to raise children.