There is nothing more noble than to lovingly raise a child in a family. Part of loving that baby is to place its needs above your own wants, desires and needs.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is a senator and a lawyer, and has held many elected offices, including Texas State Treasurer. She has accomplished all of this, earning many awards on the way, but did so at the expense of her dream of having a child. Sen.
Hutchison and her husband, Ray, have recently adopted a baby girl to fulfill that desire. Unfortunately at their ages, 58 and 68 respectively, raising a baby is not in the best interest of that child. Their desire to have a baby should not take precedent over the best welfare for the child.
People in their retirement years do not have the energy that they did when they are young. It is difficult enough to see a 25-year-old woman struggle through midnight feedings required by a newborn, let alone a woman who is 58 years old. A 70-year-old should be watching the grandkids every now and then, not caring for a child full time. Because caring for a newborn child is difficult and requires a lot of energy, adopt.org states that the acceptable range of ages for parents wanting to adopt is 25 to 50. This is not to purposely exclude anyone, but only to maintain the best welfare of the child.
Ray Hutchison is a partner at the law firm Vinson and Elkins in Dallas, and Sen. Hutchison is a member of the Senate, sitting on four committees. Both of these jobs can be very difficult and taxing physically.Having two parents who spend much of their time in different cities with separate full-time jobs is not in the best interest of any baby.
All children need loving parents, and every child who does is lucky. No doubt that the Hutchisons could give that love to a new baby. The problem is that thousands of other couples are already waiting to adopt. The wait to adopt a newborn baby is about seven years, according to the Website adopt.org. For every baby given for adoption, there are often six or seven couples wanting to adopt that child. All couples on this seven-year waiting list go through an extensive home study and a series of meetings with social workers. The Hutchisons bypassed this and adopted directly from the baby’s birth mother.
A better alternative for the Hutchisons would be to become foster parents or to adopt an older child. By adopting an older child, the Hutchisons would still have a young person to share their love and to nurture, but their age would not be as detrimental of a factor.
According to the Adoption Institute, there are over 117,000 children over the age of one that are waiting to be adopted. The average time they wait to be adopted is 46 months.
The Hutchisons do not even meet the age requirements, which are there to help provide the baby with the best possible situation. If the Hutchisons truly feel the need to share their love with a child, they should pick one of the 117,000 that are waiting for a home. The child’s best interest involves many things, and one of them is having a parent that has the time and energy to keep up with them. As the Hutchisons reach their 60s and 70s while working long hours in stressful jobs, they may not be able to give that to the child.
Tom Campbell is a senior agricultural journalism major.