It's hard to determine the increase in transracial adoptions over a longer period of time because states have only recently begun to record such information. Last year, nearly 37 percent of Texas adoptions, both public and private, were transracial, according to official statistics. That's about a 5 percent jump from the year before. One statewide trend easier to detect is the steady increase in private agency adoptions. Those who choose the private agency route versus the protective and regulatory department usually want infants or toddlers.
Children placed in foster and adoptive homes by the state tend to be older.
For this reason, those seeking infants are generally limited to private agencies, which is why cost usually comes into play. It's a national problem. While Ruth McRoy, an adoption research expert at the University of Texas-Austin, agrees that healthy white infants are in short supply, she doesn't agree with the assessment that black babies are harder to place, she said. But the reality is that healthy African-American babies are very easy to place. Adoptions were divided almost evenly between Hispanic, white and black babies last year in Texas.