Every child we help is a victory. Older children and boys are hardest to place, with baby girls being the most desired. In the international adoptions Elmer sees, girls are preferred, almost 2 to 1. Everybody wants little girls. There are lots of little boys available.
China is the exception to the boy surplus, however.
There, orphanages teem with girls because of a restriction on number of children a family can have and a cultural preference for boys, who traditionally care for aging parents. Everywhere, children 3 and older are hard to place. Sometimes older children come with emotional problems, Elmer said. They don't know how to trust people or depend on them because they never have been able to. That's 46 percent of the total number.