More than 110 thousand children with special needs are waiting for homes and adoptive parents in the United States. It’s no surprise that it’s harder to place such kids for adoption. But some people continue changing the lives of special-needs children for the better by taking them into the family.
A great example is Benjamin Carpenter from the United Kingdom. Currently, the single gay parent is an adoptive father to 4 children with additional needs. And he doesn’t want to stop there, willing to take another child into the family.
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Carpenter has always dreamed about becoming a dad. And since he didn’t care about the biological link, he decided to adopt his first child when he was just 21 years old.
For him, being a good parent is more than just sharing a gene. Benjamin makes sure he attends all school plays and supports his children when they are sick or upset.
He also believes that he’s lucky to have adopted so many children because not everyone is able to conceive naturally, including LGBT people. Benjamin is unique in the sense that he’s a single parent. But still, more and more gay couples are adopting kids, which marks new, progressive policies.
Actually, Carpenter faced some difficulties when adopting his first child, but they mainly related to his age. Since then, the process has been significantly quicker.
According to the proud father (who was, in fact, named ‘Adopter of the Year’ back in 2016), it’s always easier to adopt ‘a blonde-haired, blue-eyed child.’ But in reality, no kid is perfect. As Benjamin says:
It’s about thinking outside the box and asking yourself if you could realistically take on a child with an additional need. For me, that’s what it’s about.
Surely, Carpenter is not the only father who has adopted children with special needs. A few years ago, Jeremy Green (a father of 3 biological children) made headlines when he and his wife had adopted 6 special-needs kids with different conditions, ranging from autism to blindness.
Real heroes!