Adoption and the Single Guy

Steven Arauz, a Central Florida elementary school teacher, is one of a tiny but growing number of single men in the United States who are adopting children from foster care. Mr. Arauz, now 30, adopted his son, Quinton, whom he met as a student in his fourth-grade class at Indigo Christian Academy in Daytona Beach.

At the time Mr. Arauz decided to foster Quinton, who had been bounced around through five different foster homes since the age of 5, he had no intention to adopt him.

“He was a mess,” Mr. Arauz said, recalling that Quinton, 10 at the time, was 25 pounds overweight, riddled with anxiety, destructive, resistant to verbal and physical affection, pulling out his hair and eyebrows and failing in school. “He had no idea what it was to be loved or to return…Read the entire article by Lisa Beach on NYTimes.com