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Flying Solo

Single Parent Adoption

Part One

By National Adoption Information Clearinghouse

Some men and women feel that they can provide a better life for the children living in institutions or foster care or in countries that cannot provide them with the basic necessities. One teacher said, "Because I continually saw children in my special education classes who lived in institutions or went from foster home to foster home, I decided that even as a single parent I could do more for a child."

Loneliness may be another factor in deciding to become a single adoptive parent. As Dorothy Dooley, adoption director at the New York Foundling Hospital, said, "Loneliness cannot be your only motivation for adoption but it certainly could be part of it. The need to share is a complex human response. If you care enough about children to want to share your life with one of them, that's a healthy need."

A number of factors have encouraged the acceptance of single parent families. Perhaps most is the growing number of one-parent houseolds due to divorce and to unmarried women having and keeping their children. A recent New York Times article reported that more than half of the nation's 9.8 million African-American children under 18 years of age, nearly one-third of the seven million Hispanic children, and one-fifth of the Nation's 51.1 million Caucasian children live with a single parent. While women are the primary caregivers for most of these children, there are also one million single fathers in this country. With so many children living in this type of home environment, adoption agencies have been more willing to consider unmarried men and women as prospective adopters.

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