Profiles of Children of the Householder
Demographic PatternsIn the last several years, legislation has been passed which increased financial assistance for adoptive families (e.g., Adoption Tax Credits, the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program) and removed some of the barriers to international and interracial adoptions (e.g., Child Citizenship Act of 2000, Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994). The fact that Census 2000 collected the current age of the adopted child and not the age at adoption prevents determining if the number of adopted children has increased over time. However, the presence of approximately 42,000 adopted children less than a year old living with householders means, that at least this number of infants were adopted in the 1-year period prior to the census (see
Table 3).
The number of stepchildren was larger at each single year of age until age 14. In comparison, the relative lack of variation in the number of biological children at each age reflects roughly equal numbers of annual births during the preceding two decades. The relative increases by age shown for adopted children and stepchildren reflect the length of the adoption process for adopted children and the intervals between parental marriage, childbearing, divorce, and remarriage for stepchildren.
In addition to different age patterns, the sex ratio (i.e., the number of males per 100 females) shows variations among adopted, biological, and stepchildren. For children under 18, the sex ratio was highest for biological children (106), followed by stepchildren (101) and adopted children (90). The sex ratio for biological children reflects the fact that there are more male births than female births, and that, at older ages, girls leave home earlier than boys, reflecting in part the earlier average age at first marriage for women than for men.
More girls than boys are adopted, for several reasons. First, women in general express a preference for adopting girls,
and single women more frequently have adopted girls than boys.
Also, a majority of the children available for adoption from other countries that are leading sources for adopted children are girls.
Figure 4 displays the sex ratio of biological, adopted, and stepchildren of the householder by age. Age is shown in single years up to age 17, and then in two age groups: 18 to 24 years and 25 and over. The sex ratio, the number of males per 100 females, has a value of 100 when there are equal numbers of boys and girls; a value above 100 indicates there are more boys than girls and a value below 100 indicates more girls than boys.
Figure 4 shows that, for all ages under 18, there were more adopted girls than boys at each year of age, particularly for children under 6 years, for whom the sex ratio was 90 or less. For adopted children aged 18 and over, the ratio was greater than 100, indicating that adopted children who continued to live in their parents' households were more likely to be boys than girls, paralleling the case for biological and stepchildren. The sex ratio for biological children was fairly constant for children under 18 years, and then jumped dramatically, showing that boys were more likely to live in their parents' households as adults.
The sex ratio for stepchildren under 18 hovered relatively close to 100, in contrast with that for biological and adopted children.
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Credits: CENSR-6
by Rose M. Kreider
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