ABSTRACT
In 1970 less than 1% of the adoptions in the United States involved single parents, but today single-parent adoptions are legal in all 50 states and the percentage varies between 8%–33%, depending on the state. Even so, public and private adoption agencies still give a preference to married couples, public agencies more so than private agencies. Th at should not come as a great surprise since the mission of child welfare agencies is to take each child’s long-term care into consideration and the statistics of child-rearing makes it clear that a child with two parents has better odds of success in life than a child with one parent.
