NY Court Vacates New Yorker's Adoption of Cambodian Boy

From the AP:

A four-year adoption fight between jet-setting Manhattanites over an ailing and abandoned orphan from Cambodia is ending, at least for now, with the boy able to see the only father he's known.

New York's top court on Tuesday overturned the adoption by Johnson & Johnson heiress Elizabeth "Libet" Johnson, closing a case that wended through international law and involved what the adoptive father's lawyer called a "stealth adoption" by Johnson.

One of Manhattan's richest women, Johnson has been fighting over the adoption of the 7-year-old with her former lover, Dr. Lionel Bissoon, the one-time weight-loss
guru to the rich of Manhattan, West Palm Beach and Beverly Hills.

"It means they will be able to have the father-and-son relationship they had since
he was just a few months old and not have it cut off," said Bissoon's attorney, Bonnie E. Rabin. "The irony is that this child was orphaned and they tried to take away the only father he ever had ... this child loves his father."

The child continues to live with Johnson in her multimillion dollar Manhattan apartment, although the decision gives Bissoon legal standing he sought to see the child he helped rescue.

OK, ignore all the "rescue" references for now, I want to talk about the legal aspects. If you want to read the full opinion, click here.

The facts of the case are pretty confusing, as the prospective adoptive parents tried several different avenues to adopt the child who was originally brought to the U.S. on a humanitarian visa to get heart surgery. They thought the U.S. moratorium on adoptions from Cambodia would prevent them from adopting the boy, so the dad reestabalished his citizenship in Trinidad-Tobago, and sought to adopt the boy there, with the intention of having the mom so a second-parent adoption in New York after the adoption in Trinidad. Cambodia granted permission for the dad to adopt in Trinidad, after mom told them that she would no longer be pursuing an adoption of the Cambodian boy in New York. Unfortunately, the couple had not fsctored Trinidad-Tobago law into the mix -- that country would not allow adoption by a single man.

When mom learned later that she might be able to adopt the child under New York law, dad agreed to help out, even though the romantic relationship between them had ended. He wrote the Cambodian government saying he was not going to adopt the child after all, and requested that the mom be allowed to adopt him. Cambodia gave mom the same letter it gave dad, granting mom permission to adopt. Dad still thought that he would be parenting the boy after the mom adopted him, because he and Mom still had cordial relations after their breakup. That didn't last, though, and the mom eventually petitioned the New York court to adopt the boy without providing any notice to the dad. That adoption was uncontested, and granted.

The legal issues are three-fold: 1) Is the dad a legal father who should have been given notice of the mom's adoption petition, and who had to consent before the mom could adopt the child; 2)does the doctrine of international comity or the act of state doctrine require New York courts to recognize the Cambodian adoption; and 3) what is in the best interest of the child?

The court concluded that the letter granting permission to dad to adopt the child was actually a valid Cambodian adoption, thereby making the dad an actual legal father. The only way that the child could be adopted by the mom, then, was with the consent of the father or because of a valid termination of the father's parental rights. The court concluded that the father's rights were not terminated in accordance with New York law, nor was consent validly given in accordance with New York law, just because the father wrote to the Cambodian government to disavow his intention to adopt the child.

This merges with the issue of international comity, the doctrine that requires a U.S. court to recognize foreign decrees of adoption, unless some exception applies. This is on its face a bit contradictory -- the court recognizes the Cambodian adoption, but won't recognize Cambodia's conclusion that the dad disavowed the adoption. The court explains the difference this way:

But once parental rights have been validly established under New York law, between an adoptive parent and child who continue to live in New York, the choice of law governing the parental relationship is much less difficult: New York law applies.

Under established conflict of laws principles, the applicable law should be that of "the jurisdiction which, because of its relationship or contact with the occurrence or the parties, has the greatest concern with the specific issue raised in the litigation." (citation omitted). New York's interest in a parent-child relationship between two of its residents is plainly greater than the interest of Cambodia in a relationship between an adult who never lived in Cambodia and a child who, with the approval of the Cambodian government, has been adopted by a non-Cambodian and taken to live elsewhere. When New York parents have acquired, by virtue of a foreign country adoption, parental rights that are recognized in New York, those rights can no longer depend upon the vagaries of a foreign country's law. The rule [mom] seeks would create unacceptable uncertainty for every New York parent raising a child he or she has adopted in a foreign country.

So, New York will recognize a foreign decree of adoption, but after deciding that a parent-child relationship has been validly created by that foreign decree, the choice of law to be applied is not Cambodian law, but the law of New York.

The court disposes of the "act of state" doctrine, which says that a U.S. court will not question the acts of a foreign government when done within that foreign government's territory, by simply saying that even if it was an act of state, to terminate the dad's parental rights and issue an adoption decree for the mom, those were not acts that occurred within the territory of Cambodia. Neither of the parents were Cambodian citizens, all three parties -- father, mother, child -- were in New York at the time of these acts, so the act of state doctrine did not apply.

The court's decision to apply New York law is likely to favor adoptive parents, and further disempower sending countries who might want the return of a child, or some say in the custody of one of their child citizens.

Finally, the mom claimed that the lower court erred in failing to consider the best interest of the child before vacating the adoption decree. The court responded:

The best interests of a child, important though they are, do not automatically validate an otherwise illegal adoption. In particular, the parental rights of a child's father cannot simply be ignored because a court thinks it would be in the child's best interests to be adopted by someone else. The courts below were clearly correct in declining to hold the best interests of the child to be dispositive in this case.

This is not, however, the way a lot of courts rule. In many jurisdictions, even when there is an illegal adoption, the court will require a hearing on the best interest of the child. The argument for not returning children to birth parents is usually along the lines of "how can we remove this child from the only parents she's ever known to turn her over to a stranger?" And often a court will answer that question, "We can't." That's one of the reasons adoptive parents will delay and dodge and fight in a contested adoption -- they (and their attorney) know that the longer the child is with them, the more likely the court will say it's in the child's best interest to stay with them.

The court gives a nod to that best interests argument, saying, "For all the legal complexities in this case, no one dealing with it can forget that its subject is a child, now seven years old, and that that child has lived for virtually his whole life with [the mom], who he no doubt thinks is his mother." Their comfort level in disavowing the need for a best interest of the child hearing was probably aided by assurances given by the father:

[The dad] assured the courts below, and has assured us, that his own first concern is[the child's] best interests, and that he has no intention of removing the child from the only home he has ever known. Indeed, [the dad's] brief in this Court says that if [the mom] accepts his status as father, he is still willing to agree to a second-parent adoption by [the mom]. [The dad] does maintain that, as [the child's] father and only legal parent, he is legally free to prevent the boy's adoption by [the mom], and to remove him from [the mom's] home, if he wants to. But since he says he does not want to, neither we nor the courts below have had any occasion to decide whether [the dad's] rights are as extensive as he claims. That question is academic, and we hope it will remain so.

All in all an interesting international adoption case.

Florent Amodio: International Adoptee and Olympian

We watched this amazing French figure skater, Florent Amodio, in the men's short program tonight. Zoe was cheering for him because he's from France and Mimi's from France! But after a few seconds of watching, she asked, "Are you sure he's not from China? 'Cause he looks Chinese." I reminded her that he could be Chinese-French, just like she's Chinese-American.

Just then one of the commentators said he was born in Brazil and said something about his being one of the street kids of Brazil, or something like that. The story went on that was "discovered" at age 4 at a public skate in France, and has had the same coach since that time.

I was curious how he made it from Brazil to France, how long he was on the streets in Brazil if he made it to France in time to be discovered at age 4. A touch of the google provided the answer -- he was adopted as an infant by a French couple. Doesn't sound like he was living on the streets in Brazil, but abandoned as an infant on the streets in Brazil. According to his website, he left Brazil at 1 month of age.

So, Florent Amodio is not Chinese, but he and Zoe and Maya have one thing in common -- they are international adoptees!

P.S. Apparently we weren't the only ones confused as to Amodio's ethnicity or curious about how he got from Brazil to France. Sitemeter showed me a number of searches about Amodio that brought people to this blog:

Florent Amodio Asian

Florent Amodio ethnicity

Florent Amodio abandoned

Florent Amodio orphan

. . . and quite stereotypically:

Florent Amodio gay

Ethiopia Adoption: U.S. Agency Buys Child

From CBS News, a story, including video, of the adoption of three sisters from Ethiopia who were old enough to know that their father was paid money to release them for adoption:

Three children, sisters from Ethiopia are shown in a video - ages, you are told, 7, 4 and 6. Their mother is dead, their father dying of AIDS. A life of prostitution is all but assured - if not adopted - saved - by a loving American family.

It was just such a pitch that spoke to Katie and Calvin Bradshaw, reports CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian. They adopted all three girls through a U.S. agency, Christian World Adoption.

"Aside from the gender of the children, everything else proved to be a complete lie," said Katie.

In truth, the three sisters, Journee, Maree and Meya - were actually much older: 13, 6 and 11.

* * *

Adoptive families allege that many children brought to the U.S. are not even orphans, that prospective parents are misled about a child's health and background, that local families are recruited - and sometimes even paid - to give up their kids.

Which the Bradshaw sisters say is exactly what happened to them.

"Your dad was paid," Keteyian asked Meya.

"Yes," she said.

"From Christian World Adoption," Keteyian asked.

"Yeah," she replied.

"For you to be adopted?"

"Yup."

"You were sold?"

"Yeah," she said.

I've never been fond of the hyperbolic "adoption is slavery" meme, especially when applied to legal adoptions -- but what else is buying and selling human beings, if not slavery? Not just illegal adoption, but slavery.

Beyond Chinese New Year

Yes, that's an homage to the Beyond Culture Camp report from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, motivated by the inclusion of quotes from Adam Pertman, director of the Institute, in this Chicago Tribune article titled, Between 2 Worlds: Parents help adopted children bridge 2 cultures:

Tricky questions of ethnic identity are surfacing as the babies who arrived in the U.S. during the peak of Chinese adoption are entering grade school. The attendance at the New Year's events shows that experts and parents continue to move away from the old model of downplaying foreign culture so their children don't feel different.

But in a sign of how complicated these questions can be, there is growing worry that focusing on cultural symbols such as food and music can sometimes delude parents into thinking they do not need blunt conversations about the deeper implications of race and culture. Children should know that differences aren't always celebrated and often lead to prejudice, experts say.

* * *

Americans have adopted an estimated half-million children from overseas in the last four decades. During the early period of international adoptions, most parents believed their children's lives would be easier if they shed their native culture, said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on improving adoption practices.

Parents believed that their children were a "blank slate" that should be filled in exactly the same as biological children, Pertman said. This sort of evenhanded treatment would be a buffer from any possible discrimination — or so parents believed.

* * *

Now that a consensus has formed that cultural immersion is useful, a debate has started within some segments of the adoption community that some parents are taking misguided approaches.

"The traditional culture — fan dances, tea ceremonies and holidays — is more accessible, more alluring, than the actual, complicated experience of being Asian-American," journalist and author Mei-Ling Hopgood, who was adopted from Taiwan, wrote in an op-ed piece in The Boston Globe last year.

The Donaldson Institute spoke to the challenges when it published a significant study last fall called "Beyond Culture Camp." The study, which surveyed 468 adults who were adopted from South Korea, quantified the conflicted racial identity that many feel.

The study found that nearly 80 percent of respondents said that as children, they considered themselves white or wanted to be white. Pertman said it wasn't the "taught stuff" — language classes, dance troupes — that adults say they found most effective as children. It was experiences such as being with other children and adults who were Asian-American.

"I hope that we're finally getting it, that this isn't a one-shot deal, but an ongoing process," he said.

* * *

Andrea Louie, an associate professor of anthropology at Michigan State University who has researched the experiences of Chinese adoptees in the Midwest, shares the worries that some parents are avoiding difficult questions by looking backward into Chinese tradition. But she said more and more parents are forming a nuanced and realistic understanding of how racism affects their children.

Louie hopes that adoptive parents are not criticized excessively, especially when few Americans find these sorts of subjects pleasant.

"They are trying their best," she said, "but the truth is, no one likes to talk about race or acknowledge race."

We do our fair share of the "pretty and perfect" Chinese culture stuff. It's FUN to dress up your girls in a Chinese silk qi pao and eat Chinese food. It just can't be ALL you do, unless you want your children to have a "let's play dress-up" relationship to Chinese culture. And I wholly agree with those who say "culture" isn't enough. Our kids need to know about racism in America (now and in the past), anti-immigrant sentiment in America, the model minority myth, the perpetual foreigner meme, gendered stereotyping of Asians . . . and the list goes on and on, far beyond a Chinese New Year celebration.

"I wouldn't want a Chinese mom"

The girls and I have been talking off and on about the Jim Crow era since I blogged about it. Maya has said several times that she was glad the era was over and that I was allowed to adopt her. She added something new the other day: "I wouldn't want to be adopted by a Chinese mom, she wouldn't show us all the wonderful things you have in America."

Wow, where did that come from? How to answer that? Multiple choice time! What would you have said?

A. "Well, you could have been adopted by a Chinese-American mom, and she'd show you wonderful things in America."

B. "There are wonderful things in China, too."

C. "Actually, you have a Chinese mom -- your birth mom!"

D. All of the above.

E. None of the above.

F. Other.

I'll give y'all a chance to answer the pop quiz in the comments, and then add a P.S. to tell you what (if anything!) I said.

P.S. You're all right -- I said D, all of the above, though I can't vouch for the order in which I said it! A was about reminding Maya that not all ethnically Chinese people live in China. B was about helping her value China and things Chinese. I wish I had been as eloquent as Mei-Ling, but I did make the point that being adopted in China would have been good, too. And since Maya was focusing on the wonderful things I've shown them in America, we talked about all the wonderful things I've shown them in China, too. C was about reminding Maya of her Chinese roots, that she has a Chinese mother, that she is ethnically Chinese. We actually talked quite a bit about B & C, because it's a recurring theme for Maya that she doesn't want to be different, which I'm always concerned will turn into dislike of all things Chinese, including herself.

Valentine's Day/Spring Festival: Culture Clash in China

What to do when Chinese New Year (the first day of Spring Festival) and Valentine's Day fall on the same day? That's the question posed by Xinhua News:

As Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, coincides with Valentine's Day on Feb. 14, many young Chinese have struggled to choose between their family and their lover.

"In light of Chinese traditions, I should make my way back home and savor the moment of family reunion on the first day of the Lunar Year of the Tiger," said 27-year-old Chen Xin, a business analyst in Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong Province.

"But it will be a great pity if I spend Valentine's Day without my girlfriend," Chen said, adding that the couple's hometowns were about 200 km away from each other in north China's Hebei Province.

* * *

The coinciding of the two festivals is a kind of culture clash, and it would understandably present young Chinese, who have been greatly exposed to western culture, with a hard choice, said Li Hao, vice-secretary of the Shangdong Folklore Society.

Despite all the reluctance, most young Chinese still put Spring Festival ahead of Valentine's Day.

According to an online poll conducted by Sina.com and MSN from Jan. 29 to Feb. 8, 59 percent of about 1,500,000 voters said they would be with their family on Feb. 14 while 29 percent of them planned to be with their lover.

The tiger-eye heart combines our wishes for you -- Happy Valentine's' Day on this first day of the Year of the Tiger! Wishing you lots of love in the Lunar New Year!

Welcoming the Year of the Tiger

At Chinese School today, Zoe and Maya and friends welcomed the Chinese New Year, which starts tomorrow. In case the masks didn't clue you in, it's the Year of the Tiger! Surely you would have figured that out when you heard Maya's class sing the Two Tigers song.

Can't tell which one is Maya? Here's a hint -- she's wearing one of the dresses her foster mother made and sent for her second birthday, and her foster mom is quite expert with beading and embroidery. Foster mom sent two dresses, one for Maya and one for Zoe, which was really sweet. I so appreciate that she always includes Zoe in the annual gift she sends. Maya has outgrown her dress, but she can still wear the one made for Zoe.


I had to miss the performances -- my cold has transmogrified into strep throat. I've started antibiotics, but I'm still contagious! The girls recreated their performances for me and Mimi and Grandpa this evening (we're at Mimi's & Grandpa's house tonight since we've lost power, the joy of an unprecedented snow storm in Texas!).

Zoe's class sang a Chinese New Year song, and then each shared a new year's wish-- that's what's written in Chinese characters on the pieces of paper each student is holding.

Zoe says her favorite part of the celebration at Chinese School was eating dumplings and doing calligraphy. Maya says her favorite part was playing with the Chinese yo-yos. In lieu of attending, my favorite part was napping on the couch and having a kind friend bring the girls home -- thanks, Sue!

Asian Americans, Adoption & Jim Crow

Between Martin Luther King's birthday in January and Black History Month in February, my kids always have tons of questions this time of year about how Southern segregation would have affected them in the era of Jim Crow. I don't mean to co-opt Black History Month for Asian Americans, but my girls are quite convinced that they are the center of the universe, even at this time of year!

Zoe, motivated by a story read in class, asked her reading teacher last week where she would have had to sit on the bus in Rosa Parks' day. Answer from the teacher -- "That's a good question. I don't know the answer, though." I bet most would have to answer that way; we usually only think of Jim Crow as separation along the black/white divide. And the application of Jim Crow laws and customs to other races differed from state to state and from area to area in the states. To complicate things even further, a lot of Jim Crow was based on custom, unwritten rules, not statutes.

This site, the History of Jim Crow, has an overview of the Jim Crow laws, but it's not that detailed (or that easy to dig out!). But it is fascinating to see the application of legal race separation for Asians. Outside of the South, many Jim Crow laws applied to Asians, also called "Mongolian."). In California, for example, Chinese and Japanese specifically and Asians or "Mongolians" in general, were prohibited from going to school with white children or marrying whites. Laws disallowing marriage between whites and Asians were passed in Oregon, Idaho, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, Not a big surprise to see Western states specifying Asians in their racial classifications, since most Asians came to America via California, and migrated east as discrimination and oppression in the West grew.

Many of those Asians fleeing the west headed to the South. So in some southern states, the segregation laws were not just black/white, but were white/non-white. Thus, in Georgia, it was against the law for a white person to marry a "Negro" or "Malay" or Asian. South Carolina and Missouri also prohibited marriage between Caucasians and Asians. Virginia added Asians to their prohibition on blacks and whites marrying in 1930. Mississippi disallowed marriage between a Caucasian or Asian, with Asian defined as anyone with 1/8th or more of "Mongolian" blood. And speaking of blood -- Louisiana required donated blood to be labeled "Negro," "Caucasian," or "Mongoloid," and if it wasn't so labeled, it could not be used.

No explicit answers here for where Zoe would have had to sit on the bus. Most of the description of the statutes calling for separation in public accommodations like buses didn't mention Asians specifically. But in those states that included Asians in their intermarriage statutes seem to have operated along the white/non-white divide, which would suggest Zoe would have to sit in the back of the bus.

The first time we talked about her position in the Jim Crow bus, Zoe said, "You mean I couldn't sit with you?!" That tickled me, because she obviously hadn't connected any of the race separation talk to adoption, that I probably would not have been allowed to adopt across the color divide.

Indeed, adoption was a topic of Jim Crow laws. Kentucky forbade transracial adoption in 1951. Same for Lousiana and Missouri. Maryland and Oklahoma required that race of petitioners and child be disclosed on adoption petitions. South Carolina passed a law in 1952 making it a crime to place a white child with a black person (this would have applied to foster care, guardianship, and custody after divorce (if a mixed-race marriage ended in divorce, the children and parent who looked most alike racially was given custody). Outside the South, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota required the race or color of adopting parents to be included in the adoption petition. In Indiana, Ohio, New Hampshire , Massachusets and Michigan, the law required judges take "due consideration of race" in adoptions. I suspect that the information and "due consideration" states approved very few transracial adoptions. What makes this approach Jim Crow is that it was motivated by race separation and keeping each race in its place.

And suppose somehow I had managed to adopt Zoe and Maya in the Jim Crow era? Could we sit together on the bus? Well, in Florida, where separation of races was required on all streetcars, a statute gave Caucasian women the right to have their children attended in the white section of the car by an African-American nurse. So some accommodation was made for child care issues. But an African-American woman did not have the right to have her child attended in the African-American section by its Caucasian nurse, so we weren't that accommodating. And might interpret the rule to say white children in the white section, non-white children in the non-white section, and not fitting for white caregiver to be in the non-white section. That separates us again.

As I've been typing this, Zoe has been reading over my shoulder, and has had many questions. I've explained it a bit more simply to her, and she just got tentative answer to the bus question. Zoe and Maya say they are happy we don't live in the Jim Crow era, because they would miss me if they couldn't sit with me on the bus. But at least they'd be together!

They'll have to come to grips later with the fact that we might not have been allowed to be a family at all. . . .

Snow! In Texas! Really!

Zoe, Maya, and our neighbor, Harper, managed to make a snowman that was taller than at least one of them! That's unprecedented for us -- we usually have to scrape up every little bit of white stuff just to make an 18-inch snowman.

Not a thing adoption in this post. Sorry. Couldn't help myself!

Mexico/Texas Cross-Border Trafficking for Adoption

Another birth-mother-as-portable-incubator story, reported at Amarillo.com:

A Texas man and his girlfriend were sentenced to nine years in prison for recruiting Mexican women to give birth in the U.S. and sell their babies to couples there, a judge said Wednesday.

Amado Torres of Harlingen and Maria Isabel Hernandez of Mexico paid women up to $3,000 for their newborns, Tamaulipas state Judge Jose Luis Bazan told The Associated Press. He handed down their sentences for child trafficking Jan. 29.

Bazan said the pregnant women were smuggled into the United States to give birth so their babies would be U.S. citizens, making them more easily adoptable.

Torres and Hernandez received up to $13,000 from U.S. couples for the babies, court secretary Mario Alberto Cervantes said.

This isn't an uncommon tactic in the border states, even absent the smuggling of and payment to birth mothers. Even adoption agencies have been known to "encourage" Mexican women to cross the border to give birth in the U.S. so that the simpler domestic adoption rules can be followed instead of the more difficult international adoption rules.

Cowboy Adoption

Schott's Vocab, a New York Times blog about modern words and phrases, notes that "cowboy adoption" has entered the lexicon thanks to the Idaho 10 in Haiti. The blog cites a BBC report:

“In these kinds of situations, there are all types of charities and church groups with, to be fair, good intentions,” says Richard Danziger, head of counter trafficking at the International Office of Migration (IOM).

“But that’s not the way to go about it – it doesn’t help an already messy situation.
Children with no documentation get whisked away, and their families don’t know what has happened to them.”

Mr Danziger describes it as “cowboy adoption.”

Seems a fitting description, but I wish it were a phrase that hadn't entered the lexicon. And come to think of it, is it fair to give cowboys such a bad name?

I've tried to coin my own descriptive term for the debacle. I'm trying out "Idaho 10" here -- but is it fair to blame Idaho? the number 10?! How about "vigilante adoption?" My favorite is still "Bumbling Baptist Baby-Snatchers," which is nicely alliterative. But as Dawn Davenport notes in response to my comment to her excellent post, most of those snatched were older children, not babies, which ruins the whole alliteration thing.

Sometimes it's easier to focus on the minutiae instead of the full scope of a truly horrible story. . . .

Zoe loves me sooooooo much. . .

. . . that she gave me her terrible, awful, horrid, no good cold! And as usual, it has hit my old body much harder than it hit Zoe. Frankly, I'm miserable enough that I'd take brain surgery again over this; at least they give you really good drugs with brain surgery! Okay, I'm not really serious about trading this in for brain surgery. . . probably.

The girls were very sweet "taking care of Mama" after school. I got to veg on the couch while they covered me with blankets . . . and then abandoned me to go play Barbies in their room.

But I really shouldn't joke about the brain surgery; since that episode in 2007, every time someone in the family gets sick, Zoe or Maya or both with ask me if that person is going to die. And sure enough, Zoe asked tonight if I was going to die. I didn't tell her what I wanted to say -- no, but death would be an improvement to how I'm feeling now! I didn't think they'd appreciate the levity. Instead, I told her that people don't die from colds, and reminded her that she had the cold first, and she's alive and well.

And then we all snuggled together in my bed, and strangely enough, I started to feel better, with my girls cuddled up next to me! It's hard to feel sorry for yourself when you're the middle of a Zoe & Maya sandwich.

Realistic Assessment of Skin Color

This has been puzzling me for some time -- years, in fact. I think my kids see their skin as darker than it really is. They will use a dark brown crayon for their skin on a self-portrait, even when other colors are available that seem to me to be a more accurate match. When comparing their skin color to skin color in the book the Colors of Us, they'll declare a match for colors far darker than they are. In making an avatar for a computer game, again they go darker. And yesterday, Maya was telling me that she didn't like the color of her skin and wished she had skin like mine and Zoe's. I wasn't surprised to hear her say she didn't like her skin -- that's part of her don't-want-to-be-different thing (that's a subject for another post). But wanting skin like mine and Zoe's, as if Zoe and I have the same skin?! At one point in the conversation, I said she did have skin like Zoe's, and she said that her skin was far darker than Zoe's. Nothing could be further from the truth -- Zoe is in fact darker than Maya.

So. What does this mean? Is this a problem? Is this common for children of color?

My worry is that the girls have internalized the "lighter is better" message that society promotes, and thus see themselves as darker in comparison. And if "lighter is better," are they seeing themselves as "darker is bad?" Or am I falling for the "lighter is better" trope, and seeing them as lighter than they are?

And I don't know how to deal with this directly -- which is unusual for me, since I'm willing to talk about anything! I don't want to suggest that they are in fact lighter than they think, because it suggests that I think lighter is better. And no way was I going to tell Maya she's lighter than Zoe for the same reason. I once had a Japanese student look at pictures of Zoe and Maya and be very dismissive of Zoe as "dark" and obviously an ethnic minority, while praising Maya's light skin and confidently declaring her to be Han Chinese, and of a higher class. I don't want to promote that kind of within-race color stratification that has been so notorious.

The girls generally seem to have pretty good self-esteem when it comes to their skin and hair and eyes (despite Maya not wanting to be different). Zoe went through a phase where she wanted her skin to be light, but she's mostly out of that phase now, it seems. We talk often about how beautiful their skin color is, but hearing it doesn't mean they've necessarily embraced it . . . .
Any suggestions? Thoughts? Anyone seeing the same thing in their child? In themselves? Does anyone know of any studies about self-assessment of skin color? Any help would be appreciated.

P.S. Kantmakm suggested this video link in the comments (thanks!). In addition to young Asian American women discussing standards of beauty, the filmmaker reproduced the famous doll study from the 1950s, where African-American children invariably picked a white doll as more beautiful than a black doll (an experiment recreated in 2006, sadly, with the same results). Using a white, blue-eyed, blond doll and an Asian brown-eyed, black-haired doll, he asked 20 children which was prettier. Fourteen out of the 20 picked the white doll. Wow.

But where are you really from?

Schema Magazine, a Canadian website that says it's about "being more than ethnic," brings us 6 "But where are you really from?" stories from 1.5 and 2nd generation immigrants. Here's a snippet from the introduction:

A seemingly innocent question, one that many people would never even imagine to
contain layers of subtext or carry with it a history of exclusion and authenticity. "But where are you really from?" rarely appears in a conversation all by itself. It's the sum in a complicated equation that reaches deep into personal identity, diversity and belonging.

Many of us know that feeling, that combination of anger, resentment, hesitation and confusion that bubbles up from your gut whenever someone asks you the question, "Where are you from?" Yes, it's a simple question, and, yes, you know that the answer can be simple as well, but that's not the problem. Before you even open your mouth to respond, a very familiar thought runs circles inside your head, "No matter what I say, this person will not understand."

The six stories are numbered VI-I on the right. No adoptee stories (but that could change, see below!), but the "cultural navigator" stories of these young adults are quite interesting. For what it's worth, my favorite is number one -- what about you?

The magazine is also seeking more submissions to its "But where are you really from?" series. Looks like they could use a story from a Canadian international adoptee (hint, hint, Mei-Ling!)

"I don't want her to be sad"

The overwhelming desire of parents to protect our children from all harm, all hurts, all disappointment, all sorrow has reached mythic proportions --Mama bear protecting her cub. Helicopter parents. Mother hen. Overprotective dad.

And for adoptive parents, sometimes that protective instinct applies to our children's feelings about adoption. An adoptive mom told me once why she didn't want her daughter attending an adoption workshop -- "I don't want her to be sad about her adoption." Another adoptive mom had told her of her daughter's experience attending the workshop two years earlier -- she reported that her daughter sobbed for days afterwards about the loss of her birth mother.

My friend thought she could protect her daughter from that sadness by keeping her away from the workshop. It never occurred to her that the other child, and maybe even her own child, was already sad, that the workshop had done no more than provide permission to express those feelings of sadness.

When waiting for Zoe's referral, I read a book excerpt in a magazine at the hairdressers. I think the book was Ten Thousand Sorrows -- I didn't read the whole thing, just the magazine excerpt, but one thing always stuck in my head. No, it wasn't the horrific story of this young Korean girl seeing her birth mother murdered, or being abused in an orphanage there, or her abusive marriage. I had to look at the book description to remember all of that. What stuck was a simple anecdote about her adoptive mother -- she said that her adoptive mother completely ignored her unless she smiled. She never wanted to see her with any other facial expression. How awful. That may not be the worst thing her adoptive mother did, but it's the one that really struck me.

No, we don't want our children to be sad. But we can't control whether they are sad, about adoption or anything else. We can only give them the opportunity to express those feelings, and teach them tools to deal with those feelings. Far more than the sorrow, grief and loss in adoption can harm them, we as parents harm them with insistence that they express no other feeling but joy.

And we harm them by "shielding" them from information about adoption -- the fact that they had birth parents, that they lost them, that there were reasons like death and poverty and disease and war and stigma and oppression that might account for that loss -- that might make them feel sad. They can learn these things from someone else, or we can tell them as lovingly and truthfully as we can, in ways that they can understand at whatever age they're at. And if they are sad, we can hold them while they cry.

Is the Tide Turning? Do We Have the BBBS to Thank?!

In the immediate aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, the adoption blogosphere was shouting about how important it was to get the orphans OUT of Haiti and get them out NOW. Yes, there were some notable cautionary voices, but the majority seemed to favor Operation Pierre Pan, the plan to airlift 400,000 Haitian children to the U.S. Anyone speaking against it was surely anti-adoption. All the child welfare organizations speaking against it -- UNICEF, SOS Villages, Save the Children, World Vision -- were anti-adoption, too.

If the Bumbling Baptist Baby-Snatchers (heretofore known as the BBBS) in Haiti accomplished nothing else, they seem to be responsible for the tide turning. They are now the poster children for why it's so important, especially after a disaster, to follow the rules for international adoption. Some of the biggest names in the mainstream media are using the BBBS to talk about the situation in Haiti specifically and international adoption in general.
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The Economist weighed in with an article titled, International Adoption: Saviours or Kidnappers? , with the BBBS highlighted in the first paragraph. Time Magazine trumpeted, Haiti's Children: Help Them, Don't Just Take Them, with the prerequisite mention of the BBBS, and a hope that their arrests "might get more foreigners to recognize that perhaps the best way to help Haiti's children isn't by plucking them out of their country but by helping to rebuild Haiti so they'll have a safer place to grow up in."

The editorial in yesterday's Boston Globe makes no bones about using the BBBS as the what-not-to-do example, stating bluntly:

Perhaps it was compassion that motivated the church-going Americans who were detained in Haiti for trying to bring 33 children across the border to the Dominican Republic without the proper paperwork. But officials’ discovery that many of the children were not actually orphans highlights the dangers posed by undocumented international adoptions, especially in a time of disaster.

* * *

International adoption can seem needlessly cumbersome. Yet even when the rule of law has eroded in a country, it is crucial to adhere to the rules that protect children from being sold away from their homes and into illegal labor or sexual exploitation. They also prevent mismanaged adoptions that leave birth parents without any say in their children’s fate. Parents who have been separated from their children in the recent earthquake need the opportunity to find their sons and daughters. Missionaries and adoption agencies alike must respect that right even as they seek to help.

Ironic, isn't it? Such a gung-ho, pro-adoption group as the BBBS being the wake-up call that America needs to understand that taking children for illegal adoption is child trafficking, that not everyone an adoption group claims to be an orphan is actually an orphan, that poverty and desperation is often the untold back-story in international adoption. Do you think they'll appreciate going down in history for that?!

P.S. And maybe it's not the tide turning, but the waters parting! Check out this piece by a Baptist minister: Prosecuting missionaries good for Haiti, families, church.

Thank You!

I owe a few thank yous -- to the group blog Grown in My Heart, for including this blog in their list of 101 best adoption, infertility & loss blogs! It is an awesome list, with lots of my old favorites and lots that look to be new favorites. They've broken the list down into categories, including Informational/Adoptee Rights, Domestic Adoption, International Adoption (further broken down into locations), Foster Care/Adoption, Adoptees, and First Parents. If you don't usually read blogs that are outside "your category," I challenge you to read at least one blog in each category -- I promise it will be amazing fun! And be sure to look at the individual blogs of those who also blog at Grown in My Heart -- they were nice enough to exclude themselves from the list of 101, where each of them surely belongs.

And thanks to my "Followers" (it sounds so cultish, but it only means you've used the little Google thingie to the right so it will be easy for you to find this blog!). We've reached 100! I appreciate looking at your little pictures, and give thanks every day for everyone who reads (and if you haven't done it yet, if you were to "follow," I'd know you were reading, too, and could give thanks for you, too! Hint, hint. . . .)

And as always, thanks to all who comment. There have been some exceptionally sweet comments lately, and I've really been touched. And I'm always impressed with how well-thought-out comments are, and how people "play nice" even when they disagree. Keep up the good work! If you haven't commented yet, come on in, the water's fine! You could comment here, for instance, and tell us a little about yourself -- and this goes for frequent commenters as well as first-time commenters.

So one hundred and one thanks to you all!

Ignorantia Juris Non Excusat

Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

We all know this old saw, right? Well, I was playing around with a post about the Bungling Baptist Baby-Snatchers in Haiti, explaining that their criminal stupidity could not provide them a defense. We presume that everyone knows the law, just so people charged with a crime can't claim lack of knowledge -- something we'd all be tempted to do. There'd be a strong motivation to bury one's head in the sand so that one could claim ignorance. In law, we actually talk about it as "willful blindness" or "the ostrich defense."

And this group can't claim ignorance based on the fact that they were in a foreign country; no matter how transient your connection to a place, we presume you are aware of that country's laws. Nor can they claim ignorance because they were engaged in activity beyond the ken of most ordinary persons; we presume that you will inform yourself of the laws when you're doing something outside the norm.

But now it seems completely unnecessary to explore the defense of "mistake of law" as more facts are developed -- they weren't ignorant at all! They consulted a Dominican Republic official who told them their plan was criminal. There's even the suggestion that they bribed a Haitian police officer, which seems inconsistent with claims that they had no idea what they were doing was wrong.

Sometimes "mistake of fact" can be a defense, if you were ignorant as to certain facts that made your conduct criminal, and if that ignorance was reasonable. But that won't help them, either, it seems. They lied about where the children came from -- only a few came from a destroyed orphanage, as they first claimed, while most came directly from the arms of their living parents. And there's little doubt but that they knew the children weren't orphans -- they were actually THERE when the children's living parents handed them over.

Even the group's Haitian lawyer says at least the leader of the group knew:

The group's Haitian lawyer, Edwin Coq, who attended Thursday's hearing, portrayed nine of his clients as innocents caught up in a scheme they did not understand. But Coq did not defend the actions of the group leader, Silsby, who helped organize the mission to Haiti and has spoken for the Americans since they were detained last Friday.

"I'm going to do everything I can to get the nine out. They were naive. They had no idea what was going on and they did not know that they needed official papers to cross the border," Coq said. "But Silsby did."

(Nothing like having your own lawyer throw you under the bus! Looks like Silsby needs her own lawyer!)

Given all of this, it isn't surprising that the Haitian authorities have charged them with kidnapping.

But it seems to me we should be able to charge them with moral failings that would condemn their souls. The most chilling thing to me is that this group KNEW the villagers from whom they took most of the children. They KNEW these parents were giving them the children because the parents were homeless, living in tents, with no money and little food. How can these 10 able-bodied Baptists NOT say, "Let's rebuild these homes so families can stay together?" How can they NOT take the money they intended for this ill-fated adoption scheme and buy food so the families could stay together?

It isn't criminal to fail to act, unless one has a legal duty to act. No one is legally obligated to provide relief to these Haitian families. But in these circumstances, it certainly is a sin. And you'd think these missionaries would care about that. If only they hadn't be so blinded by their image of themselves as "child savers" instead of "family savers."

China: Boy Chained While Father Worked

Here's a sad testament to the child trafficking problem in China, as well as the difficulties of migrant workers:

Unlicenced rickshaw driver Chen Chuanliu told the Chinese wire service Xinhua News he chained his son Lao Lu to the post while he picked up customers because he feared kidnappers would steal the boy.

Chen's four year-old daughter was stolen earlier last month. His wife was unable to care for Lao Lu because she was "mentally disabled."

"I have to work to support my family," the 42-year-old told Xinhua News.

"I don't even have a picture of [my daughter] to use for a missing person and ... I cannot lose my son as well."

Shoppers saw the boy outside the Huaguan Shopping Mall near Liangxiang, 20km southwest of Beijing, before contacting authorities. Chen was ordered to remove the shackles.

The boy cannot be taken to a local nursery because the family is from another province and therefore does not qualify for state help.

Chen, who earns just $8.10 a day, said he could not afford childcare. He has also refused "many good offers" to put Lao Lu up for adoption.

"To chain him is better than losing him," Mr Chen said.

Adoptee = Perpetual Childhood

In the video Vital Records, an adult adoptee recounts a conversation she had about open records with a legislator. He kept talking about how the child shouldn't have access to the original birth certificate, the child can't do this or that, the child, the child, the child. She refuted his argument, and said she was an adult, not a child. As she tells it, he then shook his finger in her face and said, "You are a child."

That conversation replays in my mind each time I think about reform efforts to allow adult adoptees to have access to their own records, their own original birth certificates. If you'd like to help change the rule of sealed birth/adoption records, go to change.org and vote to return to adult adoptees the right to their original birth certificates.

But that perpetual childhood for adoptees applies to other issues, too. In an interview with Jane Jeong Trenka about her latest book, Fugitive Visions, and her first memoir, the Language of Blood, she had this to say:

Q: How is “Fugitive Visions” different than (or similar to) “The Language of Blood?”

A: “Language of Blood” extends the adoptee’s (my) timeline into the past, to connect with the Korean family. Fugitive Visions extends the adoptee’s timeline into the future, into middle adulthood. I’m saying that it’s an extension of a timeline because adoptees are usually thought of within a very short timeline — the span of time in which they live in their adoptive homes — which they only inhabit from the point of separation from their birth families or countries to young adulthood.

Is that right? When we think "adopted," do we inevitably think "child?" Consider the Evan B. Donaldson report on adult adoptees-- there were children on the cover, an insight I have to credit to Sang-Shil's Land of the Not-So-Calm blog.

I've noticed this tendency in some adoptive parents who have adopted transracially, particularly when it comes to race. I know readers sometimes think it's weird that I'm already worried about Asian Fetish Man, about Asian American standards of beauty, about makeup tips for Asian women with monolids. After all, my kids are only 6 and 9!

I tell my kids that they are my babies, and that they will always be my babies. But the rest of the world won't see them as my babies forever. So I feel that I really need to be thinking about preparing them for an adulthood as a member of a racial minority. While my kids are with me, they are clothed in my white privilege much of the time. But that will end when they leave my house.

Not only do I have to make sure they develop a moral compass that helps them choose right from wrong even when I'm not at their elbow, not only do I have to make sure they develop academic and critical thinking skills to that they can succeed in college and in their work lives, not only do I have to make sure they develop life skills like exercise and healthy eating and learning to relax and have fun, I also have to help them develop a healthy racial identity and life skills to handle racial discrimination and stereotyping. Whew!

One of the things we learned from the recent Evan B. Donaldson report on adult adoptees is that adoption issues do not end with the end of childhood: "Adoption is an increasingly significant aspect of identity for adopted people as they age, and remains so even when they are adults." Duh! Adopted persons still have to work to develop healthy adoptive identity and healthy racial identity into adulthood. Adopted persons do not stop being adopted after their reach adulthood. And reach adulthood they will, despite all desire to keep them children forever.

So, we need to stop thinking about adoption as just a childhood issue, we need to acknowledge that adopted adults are just that -- adults -- not perpetual children, we need to extend the timeline of adoptees beyond the time they live in their adoptive parents' homes. We adoptive parents need to keep that vision in our minds -- our children as adopted adults -- as we parent them as children.