Why Ginger Babies Weren't Adopted

It was the year 2011 and redhead babies in the United States had an extremely low adoption rate and sperm banks did not want redheads either. Some people even say redhead babies were classified by orphanages, adoption agencies and sperm banks as being “special needs”. This wasn’t a situation in the USA only.

In the same year, Telegraph, a a UK news outlet, reported that the world’s largest sperm bank started turning down redhead donors because of a lack of demand. “There are too many redheads in relation to demand,” Ole Schou the sperm bank director told Danish newspaper Ekstrabladet, continues The Telegraph. “I do not think if you chose a redhead, unless the partner–for example, the sterile male–has red hair, or because the lone woman has a preference for redheads. And that’s perhaps not so many, especially in the latter case.”

Then, something changed in 2017. International sperm donors network, Co-ParentMatch, said their sperm bank was receiving a surge in demand for women wishing to raise redhead children with the redhead gene. Only 2% of their donors are natural redheads, and they needed more. In the present day, we are happy to report that sperm banks are classifying redhead donors as “must need”.

We think the change occurred because the idea of the “perfect family” was pushed pretty hard in the media from the end of WWII (mid-1940s) through the early 2000s across the world. Many preferred a baby that “looked like it belonged” in their family. Since red hair is a recessive gene and only 1-2% of the world’s population has red hair, not many brunettes/blondes were wanting a redhead baby; only if one or both of the adoptive parents had red hair did the redheaded babies have a much better chance of being taken home. If neither parent had red hair, the redheaded babies often got overlooked.

We can’t imagine a world where people would even put “no redhead babies” as a preference when filling out sperm bank/adoption preference forms. But, we’re happy the world has progressed and redhead babies are deeply desired.

What are your thoughts?

Rock it like a Redhead!

READ: Why Is Red Hair So Rare? 3 Facts You Might Not Know