On Monday John Bacon at USA Today reported that in Arizona, caseworkers are reporting an “encouraging new trend” in adoption — older couples looking for school-aged children. Quoting the Arizona Republic (azcentral.com), “Many of the couples already have children who are headed off to college. They want kids around but feel ‘too old and too tired to do the late-night feedings and diaper changes.'”

The increase is attributed to improved recruitment efforts by agencies to 30-50s across the country, and increasing difficulty for this age group to adopt babies from overseas (USAT also reported that a judge has ruled against Madonna’s application to adopt a three-year-old from Malawi, who is now living in an orphanage).

This is terrific news for AZ children ages six and older who are “hard to adopt” because of their age have a better chance at finding their forever family. Let’s hope this trend moves to other states as well!