The best day of my life occurred in 2012. It was the day that my brother Brezlun became an official part of my family. I felt like he was a gift that fell down from heaven to help my family achieve a complete life. He was the best gift that I have ever received. Well, actually, he really wasn’t a present at all. My baby brother was adopted. This means that we purchased him like a book at a store. I feel like adopted children should be an actual gift, but if I am being realistic, the costs associated with adoption feel like anything but a gift. Private adoptions cost a lot of money, but adding a child to your family should be free or as close to free as possible because children are gifts, not objects. Reducing the price for adopting families would allow the adoptive parents to welcome their new family members as gifts without the added frustration and stress created by the financial demands of the process. The insensitive price of private adoptions could be resolved in many ways. Some of which may include focusing on the children in need, decreasing the adoption system’s pricing, having the government pay for the expenses, helping society to better understand that children in the system are losing their childhood which is an incredible cost to them and their future contributions, or by doing more intense interviews for adoptive parents so that money doesn’t need to be relied upon so intensely as a qualifier in the process. There needs to be a change in the adoption system pricing because I do not appreciate the fact that so many deserving families are unable to adopt due to their inability to come up with large sums of money. Brezlun was in need of a loving family and my family decided to take a chance. We were lucky enough to find a glistening diamond in the rough and we were lucky enough to be meet the financial obligations of adopting. The thing that many people forget though, is that there are still so many more diamonds waiting to be found.

There are many treasures concealed in the foster care system. The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) included a report entitled “The AFCARS Report” on the number of kids living in foster care in the United States. After this organization did their study they posted it on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website in June of 2016 and this study stated that about 428,000 children are living in foster care across the United States. This is devastating news to hear as this means that all of those children are still waiting for their forever home. While 428,000 is a large number of children, the good news is, that the same source reported that over 670,000 children were living in foster care in the United States just a year earlier. This decrease in the number of children waiting to be adopted is a great start, but the number is still way too high. The adoption system has a lot of kids currently, but this doesn’t mean that nobody wants to adopt them; many families in the United States want to adopt children, but most of the time, the price to adopt a child is very spendy. The arbitrary price of adoption is holding over 428,000 children in captivity when those deprived children could be pursuing their lives with a loving family instead of living in a mediocre foster home. My adopted brother, Brezlun was the best thing that has ever happened to me and it scares me to think that Brezlun might not have joined my family if my parents couldn’t afford the overpriced cost of adopting a child.

Adopting a child is very expensive and the system’s pricing is a building block to the problem. An article called “How Much Does It Cost To Adopt A Child?” from the website American Adoptions stated in 2018 that the average price for adopting a child is between $44,000 and $48,000 in the United States. With this hefty price tag, only a limited number of people are experiencing the gift of adoption. The Public Broadcasting Service Organization posted an article called “Off and Running” in September of 2010 and this informative article included many educational adoption statistics. One of the major facts that this organization provided was that about 135,000 children are adopted in the United States each year. This is the average amount of children that receive a family each year, but this number could dramatically increase if the price to adopt decreased. Adoption agencies have a lot of expenses to cover, but some of the expenses could be reduced or paid off in different forms. Adoptive parents have to pay for many things some of which include traveling fees, home study fees, birth mother counseling fees, document preparation and authentication fees, and other expenses. I am not oblivious to the fact that everything costs money, but I do think that the money could come out of the government’s pocket instead of the wallets of adopting parents.
The government pays for many public services, and it is time for the government to realize that finding children loving and supportive families through adoption should be a public service. According to a recently released article entitled “Government Revenue: the Sources” from the U.S. Government Current Revenue website, the government makes about 3.7 trillion dollars from taxes each year. Since the government has such a huge budget, I believe that the government should pay for some of the adoption fees. The government can’t cover all of the necessary expenses for every adoption, but they could help relieve some of the pressure that the cost of adopting a child puts on parents. Many children are living their lives in foster care and that is completely unfair to them. One of the main reasons that children get stuck in a deep hole that is better known as the adoption system is because of the fact that it costs too much money to dig these children out of that deep crevice. If the government started pitching in on some of the pricy adoption fees, more people would be able to afford adoption and in return, more children would have an opportunity to get adopted. Taking money from the government would have a downside, of course. If we were to make the government pay for some of the adoption costs, the government would have less money for its other expenses. Even though the government may have to limit their spending in other areas of public service, I am willing to take that risk, because so many more people would be able to experience the gift of a child. Children are gifts and if the price of adoption was lowered through the government's helpful actions, then adopted children would be thought of as gifts instead of as expenses. And with this money from the government, we could help prevent more children from losing their childhood.
Children in the system are losing most of their childhood because of the overpriced costs of adoption. The website Children’s Action Network posted an article entitled “Foster Care Resource Center.” This article included a statistic on adoption which stated that the average age for a child living in foster care is nine years old. It is painful for me to think about all of the children that have to spend nine years of their life without knowing where they are supposed to belong or if anyone loves them. Thinking about the children in foster care that are losing their childhood is a devastating thought, but an even worse thought is to think about the children that never find a family. An article written by Chapin Hall in 2017 was posted on a website called Foster Club. This article was called “A Reason, a Season, or a Lifetime: Relational Permanence Among Young Adults with Foster Care Backgrounds” and this article contained a study that stated that approximately 20,000 young adults age out of foster care each year. This overwhelming statistic tells us that roughly 20,000 people grow up without a forever family each year. My adopted brother means the world to me and I can’t even comprehend not having him as part of my family, so it really bothers me to find out that over 20,000 children never find their forever home. It is bad enough that these children have to grow up without a family but it is even worse to discover what their future has in store. According to an article published in 2018, labeled “Aging Out of Foster Care” from the National Foster Youth Institute, roughly 20% of children who aged out of foster care will become immediately homeless. Additionally, less than 3% of these young adults that age out of the foster care system receive any form of a college degree. This fact leaves more than 97% of those young adults with a high school degree or less. These kids are being deprived of their right to a loving family and in most cases, they are also being stripped of the education necessary for a successful future. The luxury of a carefree youth is being taken away from children and young adults because of the fact that the price to adopt is way too much for an average adult to pay. Many people can’t afford to adopt, and unfortunately, that leaves thousands of children blocked off from a loving and nurturing family and a fun-filled childhood that they deserve.

Children all around the world are losing their childhood due to the extreme cost of adoption. The fees and expenses that adoption requires can be good for measuring if the soon to be parents are capable of providing a financially stable and comfortable life for a child, but I feel like the system could measure the parents' success in another way. Most adoptions cost somewhere around $40,000 and that is a lot of money to spend on one thing. Adoption agencies make the price to adopt a child high on purpose because it allows them to see that the future adopting parents are capable of providing for their soon to be child. I acknowledged the fact that this payment could be useful in determining if these potential parents are worthy for the job of being a parent, but we could measure these adults’ ability to raise a child in another less expensive way. $40,000 is a relatively large amount of money and I believe that paying this money for a child is unnecessary. Instead of paying that fee to the adoption agencies, I think that it would be more beneficial for the adopting parents to keep that money and use it to provide for their child. Using money as a way to receive the gift of life is also dehumanizing these children; there is a certain sense of being purchased with this kind of currency exchange. I believe that the money that is normally spent on an adoptive child should be used to benefit that child in other ways. Adopting parents could put the money that they would have spent to receive their child into a saving account for their child instead. This way the adoption agencies know that the parents are still willing and able to support their child. Critics might say that the fees are a measurement of the qualification of the adopting parents and are therefore necessary, but there are many other methods of determining if someone is qualified to do something as important as adopting a child. Social media is a major part of our lives these days and to a certain extent can and should be used as part of the background check process. Adding the search and investigation of potential parents’ social media accounts is a new and relatively inexpensive way to help to determine if an adult is capable of raising and providing for a child. Combined with the social media evaluations, even more, intense one on one interviews could be another way to relieve the unfair pricing of adoption. While potential parents undergo extensive interviews prior to adoption, there is a limit to how long and how many interviews are conducted. I feel that without dramatically impacting the interview process in a negative way, we can improve the intensity and thoroughness of the interview process. Parents who are willing to give up more of a cost in their time will save more out of their pockets. Decreasing the cost for the adopting parents could then potentially increase the number of children that get adopted.

If more children got adopted they would have so many more opportunities and they would be able to experience being part of a family. Many children in the United States and other countries are in desperate need of a loving family, but with these extreme costs and expenses, the number of children that are actually able to be adopted is very limited. I believe that if we can reduce the price for adopting parents we can create more families and ultimately, a better future. The adoption price is the main reason why people choose not to adopt. Lowering the price for adoptive parents would allow parents to see their children as wonderful gifts without the distraction of the financial burdens. There are several solutions that can help to improve the adoption pricing issue. Some of which include focusing on the children that are in need, decreasing the adoption system’s pricing, having the government pitch in on some of the adoption expenses, helping people to better understand that children are losing their childhood to the adoption system’s pricing, or by performing more intense and in-depth interviews so that the money doesn’t have to be a measurement of qualification for adopting parents. If the United States puts families first and starts prioritizing the adoption process, we will have the opportunity to find more diamonds in the rough. Children should be considered gifts no matter if they are born or adopted into a family. My little brother Brezlun was adopted and he was the best thing that my family ever bought, but I shouldn’t have to say that. I should be able to say with pride that my brother was the best gift that I have ever received because he was most definitely a gift to me.