What Do You Think About Single People Adopting?

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

What do you think about single people adopting?

If a single man or woman stumbles across a little kid in a third world country who has been thrown away, or whose mom and dad have been slaughtered, then, Yes! Take him, and care for him, and, if necessary, grow him up and be his dad or mom.

Yes, it's better to have one parent than no parents.

But, I've got to add this: I don't think that's the same as a single woman or a single dad in America having their career, reaching 35, discovering they're not going to get married, having a parental instinct, and just wanting to have more self-fulfillment.

In other words, motives matter here, not just the welfare of the child. And I think children can be used to gratify impulses that are probably selfish.

So I want to be cautious. If somebody comes to me and says, "What do you think of me adopting such and such?" my answer is not going to be, "That's a given. It's obviously a good thing to do." Because, if you've got to make a living, this kid is going to be with whom all day long? And how old are they? And who will they be with? What kind of caregiver will there be? How much energy will you have for this child when you see them 3 hours a night before they disappear and go to bed?

So there are just a lot of factors.

But the principle here—what makes me open to it—is that there are many desperate children in the world. And there are possibilities for singles to make a life better for them than they would have otherwise.

Add to that the church. If the church as a whole loved kids and said, "We want to be totally behind adoption," then maybe caregiving would become a corporate effort, not just an isolated person effort.

So say you have a single guy or a single mom, and they want to be there for the child as much as they can be. How can the church help? Well, maybe a family who can't adopt a child could keep the child 8 hours a day. Neither is ideal, but it's better than what the child had.

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