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How Much Is a Hispanic Baby Worth?
When my wife and I decided to adopt, we were stunned to learn that our agency based its pricing on race
We sat across from each other at our favorite Mexican restaurant. All of our most important decisions seemed to happen over tequila. Our first kiss came after tequila shots. Want to get married? Tequila. Should we buy a house? What do these tasty margaritas have to say about it?
Should we start a family? Definitely a tequila question.
My wife didn’t know what I had in my pocket, and I wasn’t quite ready to tell her yet, so I began with, “Perhaps we should just consider a black or biracial baby?”
Adoption is a strange process, and perhaps the oddest part of our experience was the pricing. While many adoption agencies had a “retail value” for the child, and discounts based on family income, our agency — and it was not alone in this — based its pricing on race.
Not our race, of course. They were more than happy to take our white money! And I’m sure they were more than happy to take brown money, black money, and any other color so long as the check cleared.
The price of the adoption was based on the race of the baby. White baby? $44,000. Hispanic? $37,400. A biracial baby was $28,600, and a…
