Re: Over 100,000 kids waiting for permanent families

Nobody wants a older child because they might be damaged. They have ISSUES, and a past, and a you can't pretend that no one else was their mother/father at one time.

I don't know why this is so questioned. It is obvious that if you are going to create a relationship that is going to last for all the parents', previous children's, future children's and the adopted child's lifetimes, you want to know what kind of person you are engaging with in that relationship. A baby or toddler solves it by allowing you to intervene early; it goes more and more difficult the older the children are. Is it selfish? To a point it is; but it has a large enough chance of failure, and a large enough cost of failure, including for the adopted child, that I really cannot blame anyone for wanting a baby or toddler over an older child. It's pretty much the same as marriage too; maybe very few marry their school sweetheart and live forever together, but I doubt there'd be many success stories if people started marrying strangers (and I do mean strangers, as arranged marriage also has rules and conventions).