A Boy Named Sue...but not a boy named Willow

I was reading one of the adoption forums lately and quite the interesting debate came up. Someone posed the question....if you were to receive a referral of a boy, would you accept the referral or reject it based on the fact that you wanted a girl? And further than that, if you knew you would not get another referral if you rejected the boy, would you still refuse. It actually turned into quite a debate. Many of the people who participated had a lot of strong opinions, as is usually the case when it involves international adoption. In general though the consensus seemed to be that No, most would not reject/refuse the referral, even those who specifically requested a female only.

This brings up an interesting point though. Most people who are not involved in China international adoption do not even consider the fact that boys are available for international adoption. Sadly even some who are involved with international adoption seem to be oblivious to this fact...which I totally don't understand. There are boys in orphanages in China, certainly not even a fraction of the number of girls there are, but there are boys. A large number of the boys are special needs children, but not all. Some of the male abandonments presumably come from unwed mothers or extremely poor couples who can not afford to care for even one child.

As prospective adoptive parents, we had the option of requesting a female child and requesting an specific age range of our child (based on guidelines of the youngest adoptive parents age). But it is just that....a request. Nothing is guaranteed! In nearly all cases, adoptive parents who have requested specifically only a female child, have received a female child....but not all. There are some parents who have said that they solicited the CCAA specifically for a female child, but were referred a male, much to their surprise!

Needless to say....we would be in TOTAL SHOCK if we were referred a boy! Tom was the one who had a preference for a girl, I did not have a preference. We did specifically request a daughter, as young as possible. All of our plans have been for a girl. Everything we have purchased has been for a girl. The nursery is decorated for a girl. Even the furniture is girl furniture...I don't even think we could get away with it for a boy! Of course with all of that said, if we received a referral for a boy, would we accept it? Without a second thought! I believe if we were to receive a referral for a son, there must be a reason, it must be bigger than us, it must be fate! We would just have to change everything we planned on for the past 2 years! And someone would end up getting a really good deal on a beautiful bedroom set for a girls nursery! Oh....and we would have to pick a new name.