Should supply and demand determine the cost of adoption? Tariq sent me this article about a campaign by Rev. Ken Hutcherson in Washington state. Hutcherson is taking on the adoption industry. Here’s a quote:
When a couple seeking to adopt a white baby is charged $35,000 and a couple seeking a black baby is charged $4,000, the image that comes to the Rev. Ken Hutcherson’s mind is of a practice that was outlawed in America nearly 150 years ago — the buying and selling of human beings.
The practice, which is widespread among private adoption facilitators, of charging prospective parents different fees depending on the race or ethnicity of the child they adopt is one that Hutcherson is fighting to change from his Redmond, Wash., church. The Antioch Bible Church has established its own adoption agency, and is lobbying state legislators to change Washington’s laws.
I don’t have time to write about this in detail, but this article outlines some of my concerns about the adoption industry and American’s views on children in general. Read the article, and tell me what you think.
While this is troubling, I don’t think it compares to slavery. If all adoptions cost the same, it wouldn’t be more like slavery, although money would still be changing hands.
On a practical level, as the article says it’s often harder to get black babies adopted. That’s tragic, but if there was no financial incentive it’d be even harder, and I know that there’s already quite a bit of hand-wringing over how more black babies don’t get adopted. Purely pragmatically, I can’t bring myself to object to any policy that has an evening-out effect on who gets adopted, even if it does make me a bit squeamish.
So my thoughts are that the article illustrates a problem (black babies appear to be less desirable to adoptive parents, in general), but the differential in costs doesn’t seem to me to be a problem in and of itself, if the ends justify the means (which, when it comes to getting more kids adopted, I think is true).
It is disturbing to see money being charged for something like the adoption of a child. Surely that should be an act of love, not commerce.
But on closer examination, we see that the fees being charged are not (by and large) going to birth mothers or to the adoptive parents, but to the people facilitating the process – negotiating the web of laws and regulations states have created around this sensitive topic. Those people provide a service and do a lot of work, so it is reasonable that they be paid.
Which leads us to inquire as to the reasons for the differences in the fees they charge. And there we see that old bastard supply and demand rearing his head once more. Facilitators can charge more for their work in placing a white baby, and so they do.
The reverend in the story finds this problematic. He wants the fees to be equalized in the short term, and eliminated in the long term. Leaving aside the impracticality of staffing the entire adoption industry with volunteers and focusing instead on the short term, the question that needs to be asked is this: will raising fees for black babies and lowering them for white babies cause an improvement in the outcome for black babies?
I don’t see how it could. The differential in demand – for whatever reason – is real. Raising the “price” of black babies above what people will pay will not cause an increase in the desirability of black orphans; quite the contrary. Those children will languish in the system even more than they already do. From the point of view of the child’s interests, a low “price” makes him or her a better prospective adoptee – and increases the size of the universe of potential adopters. Adopting the reverend’s suggestions would most likely lead to an increase in the problems that black children have being adopted, not the reverse.
Good intentions, bad outcomes; somebody oughta write a book.
Of course it’s not slavery. Parental rights aren’t property rights; parents, adoptive or otherwise, hold no property rights in their children. Rev. Hutcherson, & those of us who share his dismay, have to find a more exact way of expressing it.
What’s ghastly, of course, are the preferences that underlie the price difference. If it were eliminated through price controls, the incongruence between prospective parents’ racial preferences & the racial composition of the population of adoptable children would remain. As Robert notes (in so many words), the market wouldn’t clear & both children & adults would be worse off. If the market were abolished altogether, some other allocation mechanism would have to be found, & it would also ineluctably have to deal with the underlying racial preferences.
Much of what decent people dislike about markets is really displaced abhorrence for the underlying preferences & distribution of resources. Given the latter, markets can be efficient allocation mechanisms. If adoptive parents didn’t racially discriminate among children, the price difference would disappear & no one would query the operation of the market, at least on these grounds.
For sophisticated arguments about commodification of this & other things, incl. others frequently discussed here, see Margaret Jane Radin, Contested Commodities (Cambridge: Harvard UP 1996), and Martha M Ertman & Joan C Williams, eds., Rethinking Commodification: Cases & Readings in Law & Culture (NY: NYU Press 2K5).
I go into this knowing that there’s already a glaring strike against the theory I’m about to propose, but here it is anyway: Blind adoptions.
It’s babies we’re talking about. I was adopted as a baby. These aren’t children with established patterns of conduct or pre-existing biases – physical conditions should be disclosed, of course – but babies. A parent not willing to look past their potential child’s skin color shouldn’t be adopting in the first place.
The strike, of course, and it’s probably an insurmountable one, is that this requirement would lower the pool of willing parents even more than the conditions the Reverend is decrying. But I just can’t help thinking that, despite being caucasian, I’m very glad that (to my knowledge and understanding of the circumstances, anyway) my adoptive parents were not the type of people that would “invest” an additional $31,000 in getting the race they wanted. The fitness of such parents has a giant mark against it.
physical conditions should be disclosed, of course
I’d be open to arguing this point, too, but I think that would lower the parent pool to zero.
Auguste, I think refusing to disclose a child’s race to prospective parents is a nice idea, but it falls short in reality on numerous levels. Being willing and able to adopt a child does not mean that a set of parents are prepared for the issues which may arise if they are made to adopt any child. If we were a colorblind (and classless) society things may be different, but even small realities rear their heads and make it clear that there are always going to be matters that are specifically race-related that parents of transracial adoptees will not be equipped to handle and the child is the one who will suffer as a result.
It could be relatively small matters like hair care or ethnicity-related food issues (such as the prevalence of lactose intolerance amongst non-Caucasian peoples which would definity impact how a child eats on a daily basis) or the larger issues like the segregated nature of many communities, particularly higher income communities, and how that would create an “othering” situation for many transracial adoptees raised in such communities.
That doesn’t even address the very meaningful sentiment expressed by many older transracially adopted kids that their white parents sought a transracial adoption because non-white kids are “easier to get” because they’re less valuable or in order to assuage liberal or white privilege guilt (and therefore not having chosen the child on zir individual merits but foremost because toting around a child of color would give the parents anti-racist or egalitarian “points” with their peers. This doubles the adoptees’ load: not only do they end up questioning what was wrong with them that their biological parents gave them up, they end up questioning the motives behind their adoption and start to feel commodified. That isn’t to say that this doesn’t happen in same-race adoptions, but the stakes are much higher when you add racial politics into the mix.
The system, as it stands now, ensures disparities that should be very distressing, not only regarding race, but class. A childless white couple who wishes to adopt and does not want to adopt transracially for whatever reason (good or bad) is going to have a hard row to hoe unless they have substantial cash assets available to them. A childless black couple who wishes to adopt is automatically going to be presumed to want to adopt a black child, and is going to need less cash on hand to do so, but I have heard many tales of black couples who lose homestudy points and therefore, have a harder time being approved to adopt, not because of any deficiencies in their character but because their homes are in predominantly black neighborhoods which are judged to be less safe and to provide fewer opportunities for a child than even white neighborhoods which are directly adjacent. It’s institutional racism at its finest.
The problems in adoption aren’t going to be fixed by changing the fee structure. The problems in adoption aren’t going to be fixed by eliminating parents’ right to choose the child who becomes theirs for eternity. The problems in adoption are direct mirrors of problems in our overall society. If we want to fix adoption, we need to fix ourselves.
(Obligatory disclosure: four of my children are adopted, so I’ve navigated this process several times over the years.)
In some respects, white babies don’t “cost more”: nobody is making more profit; nobody is making more white babies to satisfy the demand, etc. There is not a “premium” placed in white babies. They are slightly harder to find and require more advertising, but that’s not the explanation for the extra $25,000.
What there is, is a subsidy being given to nonwhite babies to make them cheaper. Yeah, I know, it’s the same thing from the perspective of an adopter. But the moral basis and reasoning behind it is different. If you removed the subsidy (or subsidized everyone equally) then everyone would be the same price.
Anyway.
Right now, the only people who adopt a white baby are those with a strong preference for adopting a white baby. Otherwise, there’s no rational basis for paying more, waiting longer, and jumping through the additional hoops that exist because of the limited supply.
We can’t say the same about those who adopt a nonwhite baby. We don’t know if they would adopt a nonwhite baby at any price (and are essentially getting a “free bonus” from the subsidies); if they are neutral (and therefore ‘driven’ by the price difference); or is they have a small preference for a white baby which is outweighed by the price difference.
What a price equalization would do is to benefit those folks who are willing to engage in a race-blind adoption. In other words, those folks who currently adopt a nonwhite baby, but who would also be willing to adopt a white baby, would have a larger pool of children. And that could be a nice benefit (though I think that’s a tiny minority of adopters).
I haven’t quite kept up with the preferred policies on placing babies, but I believe that most agencies and most states (and most people) think that, all things being equal, it’s better to place Black and Hispanic children with, respectively, Black and Hispanic families. So long as this doesn’t prevent children from being placed with loving families, I think this makes sense, considering the importance racial identity can play in American society. So the disparity probably does reflect the fact that, most likely, there are more white families seeking babies, as well as the fact that, on average, whites have higher incomes than Blacks or Hispanics, and “competition” for an adoptive baby is likely to escalate beyond where it would in other groups. Equalizing the price won’t help non-white babies, and it might hurt them, as well as the parents seeking them, who probably would be better off using the extra money to fund something else, like a downpayment for a house or a college fund. Note that the escalation in the price for white children is also very unfair to less affluent white parents, especially if they (as they used to be) are foreclosed from adopting non-white children.
I think profiting from children is sick. First I understand there is cost for administrating, but shouldn’t it be based on cost rather than what they can get for a child?
Second why is it okay for the state to sell babies but not for the mother to sell a child to someone who wants to adopt it? Why can’t they have mediators, who are between mom and adoptive parents, and let her have some of the money?
Or have some of the money used to pay any unpaid medical bills, because last time I looked it cost money to have a child. It is n’t free.
RR
Roberta, many adoptions do provide the mother with birth related expenses. It probably depends at what point the adoption is undertaken, and also, some states provide closer supervision than others and prohibit the payment of outlandish fees. I honestly don’t know enough about the agency to comment on whether it is unfairly profiting from placing babies for adoption, but most agencies are non-profit and use all funds to advance their services, and not to pay dividends or profits to an owner. Agencies compete with private attorneys to place babies, at least in most states, so it’s hard for them to behave in a completely altruistic manner. The flipside of all this is that birth mothers are generally treated better than they used to be.
As to the position of the mother versus the agency in “selling” babies: No agency will say that they are selling babies. they are using funds to do things like run criminal background checks, hire social workers to interview the biological mother and the prospective parents, and to conduct home studies, as well as attorneys and others who help publicize the agency’s services, and make sure that they are provided on the up and up.
But on closer examination, we see that the fees being charged are not (by and large) going to birth mothers or to the adoptive parents, but to the people facilitating the process – negotiating the web of laws and regulations states have created around this sensitive topic. Those people provide a service and do a lot of work, so it is reasonable that they be paid.
Do they do more work when the baby is white? Arguably they do less work since such babies are usually easier to place.
they are using funds to do things like run criminal background checks, hire social workers to interview the biological mother and the prospective parents, and to conduct home studies, as well as attorneys and others who help publicize the agency’s services, and make sure that they are provided on the up and up.
All that can be done for $4000? Or do black and hispanic children get parents who have been less extensively screened? And if $4000 is adequate, what does the rest of the money paid by adoptive parents of white babies go towards?
All that can be done for $4000?
No. They lose money on black babies and make it up on white ones.
The whole system bothers me, especially when you look at it as ‘selling babies’, but I honestly can’t think of a solution that wouldn’t make the problem worse, other than ‘Destroy Racism,” which is a kind of long-term goal (though no less worthy for it).
—Myca
This reminds me of the people who profit from selling cadaver tissue donated by the deceased or the family. The natural aversion to making money from the dead means that the virtuous go unremunerated, while the facilitators rake it in. $35,000? These are not covering overhead costs. People are getting rich from this.
$35,000? These are not covering overhead costs. People are getting rich from this.
Be really, really careful here. How do you know that people are getting rich? Just because you perceive $35,000 to be a lot of money on its face doesn’t mean that the subsidy to black babies is insignificant. It is likely that the relative desirability of black babies vs. their quantity produces this skewed effect.
This strikes me as one of those things where the people doing this work should be paid by the government, and adoptive parents shouldn’t be paying fees. That woudl solve the problem and increase the parent pool.
Otherwise, my two cents are that I’m in an adoptive family, and I agree with Auguste
This strikes me as one of those things where the people doing this work should be paid by the government…
Yes, I definitely want to see all MY dealings with adoptive and step children to be administered by government officials. That would be delightful. Then let’s stick needles in our eyes and inject salt water! And watch “The View”!
That wou[ld] solve the problem…
No, it would just relocate any profit-seeking from the realm of economics (where at least we can see and measure the motivating factors) into the realm of power. Cf. public choice theory.
As an adoption specialist, I have an inside perspective on this. When you come to our agency, you don’t have to pay any money to adopt a child other than a $50 processing fee. The result? We have no waiting black babies. Not one. In fact, we have lines of outstanding black families waiting for years for their baby, but the competition is stiff. The good thing is, babies aren’t waiting. In my opinion, all agencies should work like ours. Families should be able to open their hearts and homes without emptying their wallet.
In Atlanta, I do not know of black babies being adopted for $4,000 – the price is more typically $20,000 after the agency fees and the attorney fees are factored in. So in conclusion I will say this – black babies have plenty of potential homes out there in black families. Black families adopt disproportionately more children than white families so we know they are out there. But we make adoption out of reach for them with fees that more white families can afford. After all, even black families who are college educated and professionals often do not have the benefits of generations weath to booster their wallets – so $20, 000 hits them hard. Black babies are wanted and desired, but those who want them are not because they often do not have the kinds of disposible income agencies are looking for.
Ken Hutcherson, an african american, “is best known for his opposition to gay rights” and organizing the “pro-traditional marriage ‘Mayday for Marriage’ rallies”.
Who pays your bills?
From the Antioch Bible Church website:
I think this guy wants to do more reforming in the adoption industry than merely adjusting the prices on these kids’ heads.
thanks adoption worker, thats what I was trying to say; elimiate the fees, elimiate a lot of the problem
Who pays your bills?
If adoptionworker works for the state, as I suspect, you are. Think of it as an investment: children adopted and raised in a stable family are less likely to need costly incarceration later in life.
It seems to me that what we need for this argument is some data. For example, how much does it cost to investigate parents, pay the birth mother’s medical costs, and otherwise prepare for adoption? Do children adopted through private agencies do better, worse, or no differently from those adopted through state agencies? Do state agencies have restrictions that keep obviously qualified parents from adopting (ie only married couples allowed, invalidating a number of perfectly qualified gay couples and single parents), creating the necessity of private adoption agencies? Do state agencies allow open adoption, which lessens, to some extent, the extreme trauma that the biological mother goes through in giving up her child? Do private agencies? Are the private agencies properly regulated such that they don’t give children to abusive or neglectful parents simply because they are, for example, of the “right” religion or economic group?
Some states do fund private adoption agencies, but it’s not the norm, and it does not bypass private adoption by attorneys and others. There are also adoption agencies funded by churches, but their bias is usually displayed in ways other than the financial. It’s hard to eliminate all bias, that’s for sure.
Dianne,
I completely agree with you. I’m going to look for some data. There may not be any realiable data.
RS
Dianne, there are a lot of reasons why different agencies have been created. In some cases, agencies want to discriminate — usually on religious grounds, and in some cases birth mothers are seeking what those agencies are offering. The same is true for open adoption, adoption for gay families (or not), and so on. Since abortion has been legal, the “power broker” in an adoption is the birth mother. I suppose the state could take that power away, but a lot of people, including me, think that the birth mother should have some say in who is permitted to adopt her child. After all, she is voluntarily relinquishing her rights and may experience an even greater degree of trauma if she feels that her child is being placed in a home she doesn’t approve of. It’s an even greater loss of control. But that does mean that certain classes of people are definitely NOT as a rule preferred (though this could change as society changes) — single women or men, gays, older couples. That’s why those in the less preferred classes are more likely to adopt through state foster to adoption regimes, adopt older children (where parental rights have been involuntarily terminated), or adopt internationally, where birth mothers have almost no say in what happens once they give the baby up.
There are a lot of studies on the mental health of adoptees, most of which relate to his or her interaction with adoptive parents — when they were told, how they were told, etc. The kinds of studies that you are looking for might be doable, but it depends on the state. In many cases, state agencies are really administered through private parties according to state rules, and they typically encompass children whose parents’ rights have been involuntarily terminated.
I should amend a bit: The power broker in a voluntary adoption is the birth mother. In a foster to adopt program, usually, it is the state.
for one I glad I cam upon this website, for years I always wanted to know why the prices of adopting children was section by race and why the prices was different. It really hurt my feelings as a black women that the prices was so much higher to adopt a white or hispanic child and so low to adopt a black child. I thought to myself are we less worthy, less disirable race? Why does some many people have a problem with adopting a black child? it is as if the price of adopting a black child is death. When I see things like $35,000 to adopt a white child and $4,000 for a black child I say to myself wow are we scum of the earth. I dont’ really know much about the adoption agencies but I have been doing alot of research and I will continue to research about this sensitive topic. I will say that being black to me is a wonderful thing, and any person who is thinking of adopting shouldn’t just go by skin color, one race isn’t better than the next is just a skin tone, all kinds deserve to have a happy home, not just white or hispanic babies.
I don’t know enough about adoption to comment intelligently (and without sticking-foot-in-mouth). I read what everyone had to say with great interest, thank you.
But I do know that Rev. Ken Hutcherson of the statement: “I know about discrimination, I don’t care who it’s against, it’s wrong” is a really scary kind of guy.
This is also the guy who said “God hates soft men . . . God hates effeminate men . . . If I was in a drug store and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end.”
(http://awaypoint.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!C0984D45E2D3590C!677.entry)
and is a co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center certified hate group Watchmen on the Walls. (http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp#s=WA)
I am an African American and I am highly offened that white babies are worth $35,00 and black babies are worth $4,000. I know I am worth more than $4,000 what has our society come to we are treating people different because of how much melanin (pigment) they have seriously how childish. Us blacks could have treated the white people just like they treated us for many years but we didn’t we are civil people who chose not to and wanted for everyone to be free not just to get back at people for not treating you wrong. All of you who call yourself christians need to think to yourself whould God really want me treating other people whi are humans to with disrespesct because of there skin tone. And all of you have hated another race, or religion justice will be served.
Sincerely,
A smart 9th grader who doesn’t believe in racism
curiousgyrl:
What problem?
The fact that the market for adopting white children supports charging higher fees than the one for black children certainly seems distasteful. As Myca says, it’s a reflection of society. But how is it a “problem” that requires – or even justifies – government involvement and putting a charge to the taxpayers?
Adoption is a costly process, as has been pointed out, and someone has to pay for it. The baby cannot; usually the birth mother cannot. The costs are high enough that charging the adoptive parents the full freight would severely limit the pool of adoptive parents (to rich people), which is not in the best interest of the babies, especially if some of them go without homes.
Does all this feel like buying a baby? Perhaps. But the end result is in everyone’s best interest. And does the price differential trouble you? Let us say that blacks are 11% of the population. Everything else being equal, that should mean that 11% of the infants up for adoption, and 11% of the families seeking to adopt, should be black. If that were true there would be no problem. That there is some difficulty would indicate some underlying structural problem.
Like RonF, I fail to see how involving the government will solve it.
It’s placing a monetary value or perceived value (based on how that particular entity prices the market of supply and demand in a White Supremacist oriented society) of a human being’s life based entirely on race, pure and simple. It kind of almost reminds me of the mantra of when police officers said NPI after shooting a Black or Latino person, no person involved. But what can you say? If there’s a corner to life in this country where racism hasn’t permeated, it has yet to be uncovered.
So True. African-Americans as a demographic are more disproportionately represented and by quite a bit. Know a lot of folks in that demographic who went or attempted to go that route. Adoption and waiting for adoptions is a very difficult process for many including those who are biologically related to the child (but not the parent). And there’s often disproportionate wealth too.
But it’s not just the money that can be a barrier in the process. The “subsidiary” might not be needed or it might not “help” with costs since institutional racism still plagues the adoption process. For example, the fact that middle class or more affluent African-American couple and families do exist is still something that many folks have to wrap their minds around. And that’s just for starters.
But what I learned about adoption in the African-American community wasn’t much as it wasn’t my beat but I learned enough to know that there does need to be changes to make it fairer including the erasure of some incorrect assumptions.
Then sometimes there are shady adoption practices including by some religiously oriented “adoption” or “placement” organizations where biological parents or grandparents who are African-American lose their children to prospective adoptive parents who are White. Before I left the newspaper I worked for, I had about seven sets of biological grandparents, single parents or aunts and uncles who who filed complaints against two adoption agencies run by a religious group. I think there was one in Northern California and one in Nevada or Utah. I didn’t have much time to look into it and had to pass it along but what I did find out was enough to raise red flags.
The adoption cost differential is disgusting. But I’m not sure that it can be “fixed,” on its own: it’s the result of a lot of very large social phenomena and there doesn’t seem any good way to deal with the end result without possibly causing more problems.
And as disgusting as it may be for the market to make a value judgment on the worth of black and white babies, it would be even worse for the government to do so. That pretty much precludes government solutions.
The government’s already been doing that for at least 250 years in its various forms including pre-colonial. Including with the use of the “one drop” ideology including with babies. Not too mention defining babies as slaves or not based on matrilineal lines in an otherwise patrilineal society.
Somethings unfortunately never really change.