The Buck and Mike Blog

Today marks the official end of National Adoption Month, as designated by President Bush, and November 15 was National Adoption Day, so this post is late. But it’s never too late to consider the alternative of adoption.

So many successful people in our history were adopted. Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs.

One adoptee was Wendy’s restaurant founder Dave Thomas. To show the importance of adoption, he created the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. The Foundation’s web site has great materials for those considering adoption.

The U. N. Declaration of the Rights of the Child outlines the basic guarantees every child should have before and after birth. A stable home is one of the best guarantees that a child can have those protections and guarantees. Adoption affords those protections.

In the U.S., an unwed mother used to give up her child for adoption because society thought it was in the best interests of the child to have a stable home with a father and a mother. Given the stigma of being a single mother, it’s no wonder that was the path single mothers chose. That stigma is not nearly as strong today, so most mothers keep their children.

Foreign adoptions used to be easy, but now many countries do not want their orphans to be adopted because they fear losing them to alien cultures or unacceptable religious backgrounds. Illegal adoptions—sometimes with stolen babies—further complicated foreign adoptions. So that avenue is not as open as it used to be.

There is much talk today about abortion as a moral and political issue. Although I support a woman’s right to decide what to do with her own body, I really hate abortion. I have friends and relatives who are trying to adopt children and having a very difficult time. I believe there should be a national effort to encourage young women to carry their unwanted babies to term in order to put them up for adoption. Young single women who become pregnant should be educated about the difficulties of raising a baby, how it will interfer with the mother’s education, how raising a child when you are a teenager does not allow you to have some of the important experiences of growing up. This would be a welcome cultural shift, providing stable and loving homes for children while reducing the demand for abortions.

Although the red tape is horrible and the financial cost for adopting is shamefully high, many parents keep trying to get children. Yet there are children awaiting adoption everywhere. Getting through the red tape quicker would reduce the financial burden on adoptive parents. Right now, only well-off people can afford to adopt. The assumption that rich people will be better parents is certainly false.

I know it’s a difficult issue for some, but I really believe qualified single people and gays and lesbians should have full adoption rights in all states. Most states have full adoption rights, but in others the religious right has been able to stop adoptions. In the November election, residents of Arkansas voted to stop gays and lesbians from being foster or adoptive parents. As it is retroactive, the results are horrid. In one case, a woman who was terminally ill asked her brother and his partner to take in her two sons several years ago. The woman has since died and the children are teens. But the teens are being yanked from their home and put into the state’s foster care system. There are similar stories in every state where such restrictions exist. The belief that a child is better off in an orphanage than with a loving single person or same-sex family is a sad one.

I know a very successful unmarried woman who has all the money she could ever need. She is a CEO of a corporation, is well educated, very religious, and has the financial resources to provide a wonderful home to several adoptive children. But she will not adopt a child because she believes all children need two heterosexual parents. When I asked her if a child was better off starving to death in Africa than living in a single-parent or same-sex adoptive family, she said Yes. That is religious zeal pushed to the level of absurdity.

Finally, I pay tribute to the many people we know who are adoptive parents or who are in the process. One of my brothers adopted 5 of his 6 children. One nephew and his wife have adopted 4 children to add to their 3 biological kids. My own birth father and his wife adopted 13 children over the span of 30 years. Some of the adopted kids of these familes are foreign, different races, special needs or emotionally damaged, or physically handicapped. These families are true heroes.