If you were to ask a person what they are looking forward to most about their future, the two most common responses would be, “Having a career doing what I love” and “Starting a family." For some people those are scary concepts to think about. But, for people such as myself, it’s a very thought-provoking idea to think about since it seems so far away but yet so close; I know what some of you might be thinking, “How do you even know you are going to have kids?”. The answer to that is I have absolutely no idea whether I’ll have kids of my own but I do know that I plan on adopting a child that is in the foster care system at some point in my life. I bet some of y’all are shocked reading a twenty-year-old college student say that he’s already making plans to adopt a kid, but stay with me here as I try to explain this whole thing that led to this decision at such a young age.

Let’s start with some statistics so that I can lay my foundation; According the US Department of Health and Human Services 2015 AFCARS Report (as of June 2016), there were 427,910 children between the ages of 0-17 that were in the foster care system (30,427 of those children being from the state of Texas). That is 26,668 17-year-old teenagers that would age out of the system when they turned 18 within that next year. By age 26, only 4% of those that aged out of the system will have earned a four-year degree; that is drastically low compared to the 36% that their general population counter-parts put up. This is a result as time goes by, the prospects for landing in safe, loving, permanent homes grow dimmer for foster youth because many people would rather adopt a younger child than an older child. Many will simply “age out” of the system when they turn 18, without a family and without the skills to make it on their own. We, as a society constantly overlook these children, so the world is constantly stacking the odds against these kids. I know I’m nowhere close to being settled in enough to even take on that responsibility but hopefully by writing this I’ve at least called attention to the issue and have made you think about it. I want to adopt not simply to have a child, I want to adopt because I want to be in the corner for those that have had to fight for a voice for so long.

Life isn’t just about living for yourself; it’s about living a life of putting the good of others before your own selfish gain. In high school, I volunteered a lot around the community so I was exposed to just a small piece of what the foster system was like and I knew that in the future if I could do anything to keep at least one child from having to go through some of that I pain, I'd take action in a heartbeat. I’m not writing this for anyone to think any better of me nor am I trying to make myself seem better than anyone. I’m simply writing this to shed some light on one of the issues that we, as a society have overlooked everyday because we are so often consumed with ourselves. I hope that you have at least learned one thing from this article and that you take action and spread this article to others because we have a moral obligation to help with the progression of our society because the children of today are our country’s future.