Single Black Women and Adoption

Single Black Women Step Up and Adopt

There is a well documented racial imbalance in the child welfare system in the United States. A Black child is many times more likely to be in foster care or state custody than a white child. (For example, in New York, a Black child is 10 times more likely to be in state care; in Chicago, 95% of the children in care are Black.) And though scholars like Dorothy Roberts have shown that this racial disparity is a result of children of color being removed from their families at a much greater rate than white children living in identical circumstances, the fact remains that a disparate number of Black children are in need of adoptive parents.

Into this breech step a growing number of single Black women. Many are well educated professionals who have not found the right partner with whom to begin a family. Some have the same fertility troubles as the general population of professional women who’ve delayed child bearing. All are committed to motherhood and their children, however they arrive and whatever the sacrifices required by single parenting.

What’s stunning to me is the criticism these women are facing for becoming single parents by choice. As with single mothers everywhere–by accident or choice, rich or poor–these women find themselves criticized for going it alone.

CNN profiles Kaydra Fleming, a 37-year-old social worker in Arlington, Texas, adoptive mother of Zoey:

“Zoey was going to be born to a single black mother anyway,” Fleming says. “At least she’s being raised by a single black parent who was ready financially and emotionally to take care of her.” In Fleming’s case, too, the adoption was arranged by Zoey’s birth mother and is open, giving both women, and Zoey herself, more loving family yet. And more loving family–biological, adoptive, single, married, rich poor, Black or white–is in the best interest of any child.

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I don't agree with the slant of this article. I admit that I'm not of an age to face infertility issues, so I don't mean to be insensitive to women who have those challenges. But seriously, when did single become synonymous with bearer of burdens? We get so much slack for not being married: we are questioned about our financial practices, when people assume that a single woman has more disposable income (even though people overlook the fact that there is only one income, and not two like in a marriage); we are questioned about how we spend our time, when people assume that we go home at night and have numerous hours to spare that married women don't have; and we are questioned as to how we spend that time, because surely, in our free waking hours we should be doing all that we can to find a man.

I applaud any woman who decides that motherhood is one of her chief aims and that she does not need a mate to enter this union with a child. I was raised by a single mother and have no desire to follow in my mother's footsteps or subject a child to a one-parent household. I think I was raised exceptionally well, but I did not have the baggage of a father who left me or a mother who was desperate to replace him. However, it is not easy to observe your mother struggle financially when you know what it means to have two parents in the home. So at 29 I can't honestly say that adoption would be the route for me if, in 10 years, I have not married.

I read CNN's profile of this topic, and of course they did not disappoint:

Some of the infertility issues may be related to advancing age or health issues, she says. But the result of not being a mother for many older African-American women is the same: panic.

"Their doctors, friends and family are telling them the same thing: 'You're not getting younger; you better hurry up,' '' Oliver says.

The unfulfilled desire to be a mother can damage a woman emotionally, Oliver says. Her agency provides counseling to prospective mothers who have invested so much of their self-worth into being mothers.

"In many cases, it [the pressure to be a mother] begins to set up feelings of unworthiness, poor self-esteem and the feeling that 'I'm not fully a woman,' " Oliver says.

That pressure can cause some African-American women to rush into a marriage with a man they should not partner with, says Kenyatta Morrisey, a 34-year-old mother of three adopted children in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Morrisey wants to be married, but says she'd rather become a mother now and wait for God to guide her to the right man.

"I am not going to settle and get married just for the sake of being married," Morrisey says. "I'd rather trust God to fulfill all of my dreams instead of relying on a man to fulfill my dreams."

I guess for Morrisey, and women who follow this same logic, God can fulfill the dream of motherhood more easily than the dream of marriage.

It just irks me to no end that getting married is now a 'dream' for black women. How did we get to this place? When will things get better for us?

On top of these questions, the CNN article implies that single black women are turning to adoption as a cure for loneliness. Adoptive mothers will always have someone to love, someone to care for and someone to love them in return, the author writes. That doesn't make the prospect of adoption more attractive for single black women; on the contrary, its almost like you could insert a pet into the equation and save money on clothing and daycare. And I find it telling that no one questions the mental and emotional stability of children that are removed from their homes. Surely, if the home is not a safe environment for a child to live in, so much so that child and protective services must step in, then that child has scars that the new mother must attempt to heal.

I prompt my single sistas to look closely at these recommendations that others deem to make on our behalf. My heart goes out to the children trapped in the foster care system who are desperate for homes. But at the same token, there are only so many burdens that us single women care bare. Choose your burdens wisely ladies. And choose them for you, not based on outside pressure from family and friends who don't always have your best interest at heart or can empathize with your situation.