Interesting, Irritating, Idiotic

Links to three recent articles, all of which are interesting for a variety of reasons, at least one of which is irritating for at least one reason, and one of which is idiotic just for idiocy's sake! In no particular order:

From Peggy Drexler at Huffington Post, Adopting a New Attitude:

They used to tell adopted children that they were special because they'd been chosen. I've told my adopted child that I don't believe that. Neither adoption nor birth conveys status to a child. What makes any child special is the love developed in the act of caring for -- and being cared for by -- someone. It's not the process of adoption, but the process of living together that matters, that establishes a special bond with mother and child, or with child and anyone else who adopts a mothering role.

From Jean M. Geren's blog at Foreign Policy, A foreign policy must-have: an ambassador for children:

As a member of the Policy Planning Staff under Secretary Rice, I developed an initiative that would have improved interagency coordination and created bilateral partnerships and a trust fund at UNICEF to help countries strengthen their own child protection systems. Though there was wide support including from the Secretary herself, the initiative was derailed by petty turf issues, scarce resources and resistance to new approaches -- all common bureaucratic dysfunctions. Opposition to international adoption also played a role. A USAID officer told me that he maintains a firm wall between international adoptions and any assistance he oversees for orphans to keep it from being "tainted." The problem is that the same authorities in developing countries in charge of adoptions are also in charge of other vulnerable children. The bureaucratic wall helps no one -- not the abandoned child languishing in an institution even though a family is willing to adopt him or the government official trying to stop bad adoptions and place children safely into families in her own country. It needs to come down.

From Voice of America, Children's Charity: Most 'Orphans' Do Have Living Parent:

According to research by Save the Children, over 90 percent of the children thought to be orphans in Central and Eastern Europe, Indonesia, and Ghana are not actually orphans but have at least one living parent. In Liberia, the figure is said to be 88 percent.

In a new report, the charity describes how children are treated as commodities in an industry that recruits children in order to profit from international adoption and child trafficking.