… single mom, that she really wanted to give you, and she had to give you up for adoption,” Campbell said.
There are about 108,000 children available for adoption in the U.S. as of July 2015, according to the National Council of Adoption. African-American children are overrepresented — they make up about 24 percent of the children waiting for adoption. The African-American population in the U.S. is 13 percent.
Non-white children, and black children, in particular, are harder to place in adoptive homes, a representative for the Department of Child Services in Illinois says. So the cost is adjusted to provide an incentive for families that might otherwise be locked out of adoption due to cost, as well as “for families who really have to, maybe have a little bit of prodding to think about adopting across racial lines.”
The fees typically cover administrative costs, but also costs associated with taking care of the mother, like travel, rent, health care and counseling services. Now, some states and agencies are using a different formula to make adoption more affordable for families, with a sliding scale based on income rather than skin color. In that system, lower-income families pay less to adopt. Some agencies are also moving toward a uniform cost system where all adoptive parents would pay the same fees.