II. Are There Lots of Babies to Adopt?

About the first question people want answered when they start thinking about adopting a child is, “What are our chances?” And like so much else in life, the answer is, “It all depends”. In this case, it depends mainly on two things:

Are you suitable as prospective adopters? and
How many children are there available who would fit into your family?

You almost certainly think you are suitable as adopters, or at least are wondering whether you might be, or you wouldn’t be reading this. I hope to help you come to an informed decision about proceeding with your search or, alternatively, finding some other way to fill the gap in your lives.

Children as a Commodity in a Market Economy

There is no getting away from the fact that like much else in the world, adoption can be looked at in terms of supply and demand: the supply of children for adoption and the demand for children by prospective adopters.

Too many children, and you wind up with children’s homes warehousing their charges until they dump them on the streets at 16 or 18. (And let’s be honest, “warehousing” describes what really happens in institutional child care better than the terms usually used; and “dump them on the streets” describes what really happens to most of their inmates when they reach adulthood). In some other countries you wind up with even very young children living on the streets.

Too many adopters for the children available and you wind up with a market where children, as a scarce commodity, are more or less auctioned off to the highest bidders or the owners of glitzy houses, with scant regard for the new parents’ suitability or their marital stability, which is what happens too often in some countries.

That is, unless you have a highly controlled non-market system of apportioning children. And that is what we have in the UK, because with all its problems, this country has managed to construct one of the finest adoption systems in the world, where children are found new families based almost solely on who is best for whom, and where financial considerations are virtually irrelevant. There are definitely faults in our system, but compared to most countries we and our children are extremely well served by our adoption laws.

So, are there enough children to go around? The simple mathematical answer is probably not, if you count all the children in Britain who need new families and all the people who might like to adopt. But like so many simple answers, it’s not the whole truth, because most people only think of adoption in terms of little babies, and there are nowhere near enough of those to fill the demand from childless couples. There are in fact lots of children available for adoption; it’s just that not very many of them are healthy babies. At one time there were more than enough healthy young babies to go around, but that hasn’t been the case for decades.

Four main factors are responsible for the decline: