OTTAWA, March 5, 2005 — When Allison Darke goes out in public with her adoptive son, Ethan, people notice certain things.

"They notice he's a baby and cute," she said. "They think my husband is black."

Ethan was born to black parents in Chicago, but will spend most of his life growing up with Darke and her second husband, Earl Stroud, a white couple living in the Canadian capital.

The State Department says the number of Americans adopting babies from overseas has more than doubled in the last 10 years, with couples often citing a dearth of American babies.

But there are plenty of American babies who need homes — African-American babies. And more and more of those children are finding homes abroad, especially in Canada, according to people who work in the U.S. adoption field.

"I just don't understand why American couples go to China and Romania and places like that," Stroud said, "when they have kids in their own back yard