I’m Sad

It’s always eas­i­er to focus on oth­er peo­ple’s prob­lems than our own, and some­thing I read this morn­ing is weigh­ing on my mind.

Some­one sent a mes­sage to a home­school­ing list this morn­ing, with the sub­ject line of “Any­body Want a Baby?” I fig­ured she was kid­ding, but she isn’t—not at all. 

The aunt of a baby she’s adopt­ing (a sor­ta-dis­tant rel­a­tive of her own) vis­it­ed her yes­ter­day. She’s preg­nant for the third time. 

When she was preg­nant with the sec­ond child (now 6 months old), she’d spo­ken to an adop­tion agency, telling them she want­ed to place the child for adop­tion. After he was born, they told her they had­n’t actu­al­ly looked for a place­ment, because black boys “aren’t very adoptable.”

She wants to give this child up for adop­tion, but won’t do so unless he or she def­i­nite­ly has a lov­ing home lined up. She’s about 4 months along in the pregnancy.

I def­i­nite­ly think she’s doing the right thing. But I’m upset that ours is a world in which an adop­tion agency says we don’t have a place­ment for your healthy infant because of his gen­der and the col­or of his skin! If I were in a place to adopt both of those chil­dren, they’d be mine.

Edit: If you’re seri­ous­ly inter­est­ed in offer­ing a home for this child, give me an email address and I’ll for­ward the email so you can con­tact the family.