I remember back about the time we really got going in earnest with “this whole adoption thing” that there was a sudden media surge regarding adopting from China. Maybe this was one of these things where you see what you’re looking for, and it was just that I was more attuned to media stories about this, but I don’t think so. The event I remember most clearly was Oprah having Lisa Ling on as a guest and discussing her National Geographic documentary “China’s Lost Girls”. I looked this up to confirm, and it was the beginning of December 2004 when this segment first aired. Tina and I watched this episode together, and later bought a copy of “China’s Lost Girls” on DVD. It was very influential in forming my original thoughts and opinions regarding adoption from China. I pictured us as one of those couples traveling in a large group, being herded into a conference room and having our name called out then handed a baby girl. It seems a strange fantasy now, and one that I am glad never actually happened.

As December rolled on, Tina started spending more and more time on her computer, getting involved in different online adoption forums and Yahoo Groups. I just sort of watched this activity from the sidelines at first. She would show me various posts and discussions, but I didn’t belong to any of these groups myself. It appeared to me at the time (and still does really) to be a woman’s thing. Even blogging like this, in the adoption community, is really done almost exclusively by women. Of the sixty or so adoption related blogs I subscribe to, about three of them are written by men. So I started out just sort of peeking over Tina’s shoulder.

Then Tina seemed to take quite an interest in our agency’s Waiting Children list. She seemed to be constantly showing me pictures of these little kids with various special needs. It really didn’t mean much to me at first. I understood Tina was curious about the program, and had a soft spot in her heart for these little ones, but I couldn’t picture any of them as being “ours”. I would look at them and nod politely, but I didn’t feel any pull there. This went on for some time, and I actually found it to be a bit annoying. “Yes, I get it, there are all these kids out there waiting for homes. But we’ve got lots of work to do to get our dossier completed and logged in, and then the CCAA will send us a referral, and that will be our little girl, and that is all going to take about a year, so looking at all these pictures of waiting kids just doesn’t mean anything to me!”

And then she showed me some pictures of a little boy. Here, let me show you one…

And she told me how this little boy had been waiting on this list for quite a while. In fact, almost all the other kids on this list had already been chosen by other families, and a new list was coming out soon. Kids with much more severe special needs were picked instead of him. And I was just sort of shocked, but then I learned this is pretty typical for boys in the adoption world. They are less desirable. Which is just so crazy to me, because this is the whole problem for baby girls in China, and why they are so readily available for international adoption there. In China boys are wanted more, unless they have special needs, then they are wanted even less, and that’s true for these little guys even if they make it onto a Waiting Children list with an adoption agency in the U.S.

So I’m looking at these pictures of this beautiful little boy that no one seems to want, and I start to question just exactly what it is we’re doing. We’re going to bring an infant girl into a house with two teenage boys. How exactly is that supposed to work? Have you looked through the leftover toys that have survived them? I can tell you none of it’s pink. And diapers? And formula? And all that stuff? I’m 43 years old, how much more of that do I really want? And suddenly I’m the one who is advocating for a two-year-old little boy.