Adopting a child is not as easy as one may think. It comes with many interesting challenges that you would not usually expect in everyday life, especially when the child might be a different race.

This family from North Carolina recently dealt with this eye-opening situation. Keia Jones-Baldwin and her husband Richardo Baldwin — along with their three children — are all black. However, Princeton, the newborn baby boy they welcomed into their family, is white.

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You would think that would be it, right? The family adopted a child — that’s it, end of story. Sadly, that is not the case.

On multiple occasions, Jones-Baldwin has been questioned by the police and accused of stealing the boy. She took to TODAY Parents to explain exactly what had happened, and her story is legit. If anything, it just goes to show how sad it is that these terrible accusations are still happening today in 2019.

Back when she and her husband were thinking about adoption, they were only considering older kids. That is, until Princeton entered their lives. He was born prematurely to a drug-addicted mother in 2017 (Jones-Baldwin on the other hand, is a therapist). When the baby boy was born, he weighed only one pound.

“My foster care supervisor called and said, ‘Is there any way you can go to the hospital and do skin-to-skin with a baby?’” she told TODAY.

She went on to explain that she bonded with Princeton almost immediately and began visiting him every day. When he was finally healthy enough, he moved in with the Jones-Baldwin family and he now had three wonderful siblings — Zariyah, 15, Karleigh, 16, and Ayden, 8.

They only intended to have Princeton stay with them for three months, but they decided to adopt him permanently because they loved him so much.

“We get a lot of stares,” the mother shared in regards to the difference in race. “I’m frequently asked if I’m Princeton’s babysitter … I get, ‘Why didn’t you let him stay with a family of his own race?'” Shockingly, people have even called the police to report a kidnapping — on two separate occasions.

“We were vacationing in Tennessee and we went to do an old time, Western photo shoot,” the mother told TODAY. “The girl behind the camera would disappear and then come back. Finally she asked, ‘Is that your baby?’ I told her he was. Then she said, ‘I just took picture of this baby with his family two weeks ago.’”

After that, authorities arrived and Jones-Baldwin had to present papers to prove that the baby was in her custody.

There was another time when the mother had to pull over because she had a flat tire. She was stuck outside of a man’s house. “I knocked on his door to explain why I was on his grass. He called the police and said I stole my car and the baby,” she said.

It is absolutely heartbreaking that people still make these assumptions. The Jones-Baldwin family should be able to travel and do things together without being accused of stealing their own baby!

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Source: Shareably