Finally, a boy!

My husband loves food. He loves to cook, and is a very good cook. He loves Korean food, Japanese food, Mediterranean food, Italian food, and (I'll stop here, because I really can't think of any food he doesn't like) Indian food. One of his/our favorite Indian restaurants here in town is a place we used to frequent a lot. Fairly recently, however, Sheref stopped going there. Food poisoning? Bad service? High prices? No. Actually the reason he stopped going there is the sexist owner. Sometimes we went there together, all five of us, but mostly Sheref went alone. Apparently every time he was alone, this owner would ask him when he was going to try for a boy. The last straw was when the guy told Sheref something to the effect of "girls, they're ok, but really they're no good. You need a boy." So Sheref, who never ever gets mad, got mad and decided we were boycotting the place. Consequently, I am really craving vegetable korma or chicken tiki masala, but I suppose ethical standards need to be defended.

I bring this up, because one thing that somewhat bothers me is the suspicion that people will think we chose adoption in order to specify gender of our child. Which we did not. When we decided to adopt, we did discuss gender. I honestly did not care at all if we were matched with a boy or a girl, but I did offer to Sheref that we could request a boy if he wanted. It didn't take us very long (like 2 minutes) to conclude that choosing gender just felt wrong. I could spend a lot of time describing why parents choosing gender, whether in biological or adopted children, just rubs me the wrong way, but I won't. It's just my opinion anyways. I know a lot of really nice families who have specified the gender of their adopted child.

However, I will write that prospective adoptive parents' preference for girls is part of the reason why currently there is an excess of boys in Korea (and I think other countries as well, but I can't vouch for it) awaiting adoption. At least in Asian countries, American parents' preference for girls has been well documented. Last week 4 new babies were listed on our agency's photolisting for waiting children (kids with some sort of medical need or high risk issue, ranging from super minor things that are essentially non-issues to really major life-long or life-threatening medical needs). Three are boys and one is a girl. All have reasonably similar type issues, as far as severity goes (none of the kids has really severe needs -- all of the children have the potential to develop 100% "normally"). So far the girl is no longer up for adoption (i.e. enough people are interested, so her file is closed for now), while none of the boys have interested families. This is one small example of what has been widely documented and confirmed: Americans seeking to adopt in Asian countries have a preference for girls. This phenomenon is further reflected in the fact that our agency just issued a "statement" of sorts that there are an excess of little boys needing families and consequently the wait for boys is shockingly short right now. The wait for a girl, on the other hand, is still very long.