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Black Boys Less Likely To Be Adopted, Study Shows
Filed under: In The News, Weird But True
Adoptive parents prefer white or Hispanic girls over African-American boys, a new study reveals.
Researchers at the Centre for Economic Policy Research found that the probability that a non-African-American child will attract an adoptive parent is at least seven times as high as the probability that they will chose an African-American baby, The New York Times reports.
The study of both gay and straight parents also finds that adoptive parents prefer girls to boys, which is an interesting societal phenomenon considering that in so many cultures (China comes to mind), the biological preference is for a son. However, the study posits that adoptive parents may harbor fears about dysfunctional social behavior in adopted children. Parents may feel girls are a better choice if that is the case, the Times reports.
Susan Caughman, editor and publisher of Adoptive Parents Magazine, agrees that, in her experience, most adoptive parents are looking for girls.
"It is very clear and very documented that adopted parents strongly prefer girls," Caughman tells ParentDish. "And when we interview people at adoption agencies about it, they tell us that it makes them absolutely crazy."
In fact, a recent story in Adoptive Parents Magazine quotes Susan Myers, director of the Lutheran Adoption Network, as saying that 80 percent of prospective parents will choose a girl. Domestically, according to the magazine, trying to adopt a specific gender causes a quandary for everyone involved, especially when parents are looking for a newborn. Most prospective parents are matched with a birth mother well before the child's gender is known.
So why the want for girls? Caughman speculates that the influence of overseas adoptions, specifically China, has allowed parents to be picky when it comes to gender. There is an abundance of girls available for adoption in that country, she points out. Typically, women are driving the adoption process and anecdotal evidence shows that women tend to want daughters, Caughman adds.
Another factor could be that many parents looking to adopt have already been through the physically, emotionally and financially draining process of in-vitro fertilization -- and failed. And this time, Caughman says, they want control. "Women feel like, 'I went through this whole thing, I should at least be able to control the gender.'"
As for the racial preference revealed by the study, Caughman says there is less data. "We've never been able to prove that people prefer white kids," she said. "But I can't say it surprises me."
The study's data set included mostly white parents, which could account for the results; adoptive parents prefer children who look similar to themselves, past studies revealed.
Prospective parents looking for a specific race and gender may find themselves looking at a pricey adoption: "[T]he increase in desirability of a girl relative to a boy can be compensated by a decrease of approximately $16,000 in adoption finalization costs," the authors write. "Similarly, the increase in desirability of a non-African-American baby with respect to an African-American baby (both of unknown gender) is equivalent to a decrease of at least $38,000 in adoption finalization cost."
Foreign parents were less likely to exhibit gender and racial biases, the study says. The study also found that same-sex parents are more likely to submit an adoption application, and that gay adoptive parents are more "selective." According to the Times, gay couples and single women appeared to exhibit even stronger prejudice in favor of girls and against African-American babies than straight couples.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
1-26-2010 @ 1:14PM
mom2 said...STOP watchin so many videos boys are boys regardless black are white. And when the parents are dysfunctional the children are the dysfunctional. And as far as gays being pickie with adoption, thats a joke... And if parentdish has nothing else to write about. Do me a favor and save your ink
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1-26-2010 @ 2:28PM
CLM said...I have to say, that this article directly contradicts my personal experience as well as the experiences of my friends who have adopted. None of us had a gender or ethnic preference. Only one of us ended up with a girl. All of us are thrilled to be parents. I can't believe we are really that different from the norm.
IMHO this study appears to have some basic flaws: 1) the information was obtained from a single online adoption facilitator; 2) the study involved a grand total of 800 infants over a five year period; 3) the study appeared to involve only infants, rather than children of different age groups; and 4) the potential parent pool was admittedly nearly entirely Caucasian. I'm sure there are other problems with this study, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind (and I am pressed for time). How did this thing pass peer review to get published?
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1-27-2010 @ 11:16AM
c said...I would like to respond to CLM's comment. I dare to disagree. From my view this is a carefully designed study with very interesting results.
(1) The fact that this commentator and his/her friends have adopted gender and race blind is surely less of a reliable sample than 800 cases. Out of curiosity: how many of these friends are Caucasian and how many AfroAmerican children have they adopted?
For full disclosure: I am Caucasian and adopted an AA baby boy. But most of my friends adopted Caucasian or foreign children.
(2) this is the first time anybody has collected and looked at such a large longitudinal data set on domestic adoptions in the US. As you know adoption agencies are not releasing any data and I am amazed that these researchers were able to find a facilitator which provided so much personal information on parents and children. This is very impressive indeed.
(3) the vast amount of domestic adoptions happen at birth so it seems only natural that they would look at infant adoptions rather than at older children. This is what their data provided. And why would one expect the findings to be different if the sample were older children? In contrary I would expect even more of a race and gender bias.
(4) The vast amount of adopting parents are Caucasian - so again I don't understand the other commentator's point.
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1-27-2010 @ 9:24PM
CLM said...My friends who are adoptive parents are all over the map - AA, Asian, Caucasian, South-Asian, gay and straight. None of us (so far) has adopted a Caucasian infant. At least three of us adopted AA or multi-ethnic children (in my case twin multi-ethnic boys). So far, only one of us ended up adopting a girl (of Hispanic descent). One was a single Caucasian mother who adopted internationally (a boy) and is now working domestically to adopt an older AA child through the foster care system (she has not specified a gender). And lest you think geography plays a part, these friends live in NY, TX and IL.
I disagree that my friends and I are any less a reliable sample than the data in this study. In fact, that's kind of my point. By obtaining data from only one source, the researchers have no way of knowing to what degree their sample is skewed to a particular socio-economic demographic. Further, given the costs listed in this study, it sounds like the source is a private agency, which would further skew the data pool, even if only by income. For this study to be viable, I would argue that it would need to have a larger pool of adoptive parents, of varying ethnicities, and include those working through both public and private adoption facilitators, as well as those adopting through the foster care system. That would provide a more comprehensive picture of biases on the part of potential adoptive parents.
1-27-2010 @ 1:44PM
SKL said...What would they find if they only analyzed adoptions by black parents? Would they choose nonwhite seven times as often as white? Or more?
Some non-minority parents don't feel as qualified to help a minority child through life versus a non-minority or relatively-privileged-minority child.
The girl thing - well, most single adoptive parents are women, and they might feel it would be more difficult for a boy to grow up well without a father, versus a girl without a father. In addition, as far as international adoptions go, in many of the countries that Americans adopt from, orphaned/destitute girls are at a significant disadvantage compared to boys in the same country. A boy may end up on the street or with a crappy job, but a girl may have these same problems plus be raped, prostituted, kept out of school, or otherwise be abused/neglected, with no legal recourse.
I don't know where they got those adoption cost comparisons. I have done my fair share of adoption research, and those amounts are similar to the highest-cost adoptions available. Basically, for that to be true, the cost to adopt a boy would have to be half that for a girl (or less), while the cost of adopting an African-American child would have to be near zero. If it's true that we're talking about infants, I find that hard to believe. (Or are we now selling white girls??) The only way it makes sense is if nearly all the infants adopted out of foster care are black. And if that's the case, isn't that more worthy of a study/article than the shocking fact that adopted kids roughly match their adoptive parents demographically?
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