Talking about adoption, birthparents, abandonment, race, and China with my kids. That's not all we talk about -- but reading this blog, you'll think it's all we do!!!!!
There's been a lot of press in England because new adoption figures show that adoptions "from care" (foster care) dropped 5% last year (see here, here, and here). The most frequently quoted statistic seems to be that only 60 babies under age 1 were adopted from foster care last year. This article in the Guardian suggests "adoption parties" as a solution:
Next week, somewhere in the Midlands, around 30 children and 30 adults will meet up for a fun afternoon of circus skills, craft activities and soft play. To the casual onlooker, it will probably look like any other kids' party. There will be invitations, balloons and party bags, lots of laughter and running around. But if you were to take a closer look, you might begin to sense that this was no ordinary children's party.
This is in fact an "adoption party", a pilot project in the UK for children in care for whom all other family-finding methods have failed. The adults are either approved adopters or well into the process of approval, while the children all desperately need adopting. Neither the adults nor the children have met before, but the hope is that once they do, connections might be made.
These parties are controversial. They have been described by critics as "cattle markets" and "shopping expeditions". But they have formed part of the adoption fabric in the US for decades and in some states the matches made at these events represent almost half of all placements.
This seems like a good time to repost a link I posted about six months ago -- this commentary in the Christian Science Monitor by an adoptee who attended "adoption parties" as a child and concludes:
Adoption fairs are ineffective, set the wrong expectations, and are damaging to the children. They should be eliminated. Instead of speed dating, kids would be better off if states used “arranged marriages” to place them in homes with certified “professional parents” – parents ready to handle all the challenges and joys that adoption brings.
When I posted about this issue before, I asked: "So what do you think about adoption fairs? Photo listings? "Wednesday's Child" features? [I could have added "Test-Drive-an-Orphan" programs?] Up side -- may work to find a family for a child in need of adoption. Down side -- smacks of marketing, commodification, objectification; invades a child's privacy. On balance, is it worth it?"
Wondering about your Asian child's future relationships? Dating? Marriage? Check out this study:
Overseas adoption from South Korea is a widespread phenomenon in the West. Adoption studies have focused on early development and post-adoption adjustment during childhood and socioeconomic success during adult-hood. However, few studies deal with dating experiences and marital status of Korean adoptees, while these as-pects are a key factor determining subjective well-being and sociocultural integration. Several studies and popu-lar media highlight the status inferiority of Asian males compared to Asian females in the heterosexual Western courtship system. We therefore hypothesize that male Korean adoptees have more difficulties finding a partner than their female counterparts. Using a dataset stemming from a survey conducted among 290 adult adoptees living in the West, we indeed found that, after controlling for the effect of age and current income, males ex-pressed more difficulty in finding a partner and were more likely to be single than their female peers in their adoptive Western country. This gender disparity may have implications for policy makers who are concerned with general well-being of transracial adoptees and Asian minorities in the West.
Seeing as how Zoe and Maya are 10 and 8 I have at least 20 years before I have to worry about it, since they're not allowed to date until they're 30!
The New York Times reports the firings, though the officials were apparently cleared of charges that the workers engaged in "baby trading," and exonerated the orphanage of paying kickbacks to the goverment officials:
Twelve government employees have been fired and stripped of their Communist Party membership after an investigation into allegations that family planning officials kidnapped children in an impoverished rural area in the southern Chinese province of Hunan, People’s Daily, the party’s official newspaper, reported Thursday.
While investigators concluded that the government workers did not engage in “baby trading,” they did find “severe violations” of regulations, according to the newspaper’s Web site, People’s Daily Online. As a result, eight babies or toddlers were illegally adopted from the city of Shaoyang between 2002 and 2005, the article said.
In a scandal that has drawn widespread coverage, parents and grandparents claim that officials from Longhui, a county supervised by Shaoyang, illegally seized at least 16 children between 1999 and 2006 because of alleged violations of family planning rules. The Chinese news media have reported that some of the children were later adopted by foreigners.
Government investigators examined 14 cases. In one case, parents voluntarily surrendered their child because they were unable to provide care. Five other children were deemed abandoned because the facts about their parentage were hidden by “involved persons,” the newspaper said. No further details were given.
Investigators found no evidence that the city’s orphanage, called the Shaoyang Social Welfare Institute, paid kickbacks to officials who delivered babies, the newspaper’s report said.
At Scooping it up, I just read a post describing a post, since taken down, from prospective adoptive parents trying to adopt a child from Uganda, despite the fact that the child has a family and the family does not want her to be adopted. They've apparently spent hours trying to convince the family to relinquish the girl; they are showing the family pictures of their big house and describing what the child's life will be like in America. They've hired lawyers and are petitioning the embassy to issue her a visa. And you can read more about it from Semi-Feral Mom, including the fact that this prospective adoptive family referred to the child's grandmother throughout the post as "Grandmother from the Slums.”
I won't comment, since I didn't read the original post. But the discussion and comments at both Scooping it up and Semi-Feral Mom are important reads. It's always exciting to find other adoptive parents who get it. . . .
An Ottowa radio station is having a "Win a Baby" contest -- the lucky winners get a course of fertility treatments. Lord. I think this commenter has it right:
“I think we're crossing some morality lines with this contest ... imagine telling your child, you were a prize from a radio station because we had problems conceiving,” wrote Casey Schofield on the station’s Facebook page.
I don't often post about infertility stuff, but this kind of thing harms adopted children as well -- it turns all children into objects that can be bought and sold and given as prizes in contests . . . .
The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends household family members and close contacts of children adopted from countries with high rates of hepatitis A virus (HAV) be vaccinated. The policy statement, "Recommendations for Administering Hepatitis A Vaccine to Contacts of International Adoptees" in the October 2011 issue of Pediatrics (published online Sept. 26), expands previous recommendations to only immunize travelers who are seeking to adopt children from countries with medium to high HAV infection rates. The new policy recommends routine administration of the vaccine for all household members and close contacts, including babysitters, during the 60-day period after the arrival of the adopted child. The first dose of the two-dose series should be given when the adoption is planned, ideally, two or more weeks before arrival. The second dose should be given at least six months after the first dose in order to provide long-term immunity from HAV infection.
“I’m not sure I could ever love an adopted child as my own.” ……..j3i2oqrfanslkjdf3s If I have to explain this one you are both a royal asshat and an idiot.
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What’s your nationality/heritage/culture?” OK, first off—nationality, heritage, and culture all have different definitions. Let’s get that straight and take a second to look those up and get comfortable with them. Secondly, after American, I’d probably say Italian. You wanna mess with me? I’ll punch your lights out! You’ll wish I was kidding.
“So, what’s it like being adopted?” Um, a lot like being your mom or dad’s kid. Really. I swear. I don’t constantly stare in the mirror and wonder why we look different, if that’s what you’re wondering.
Any adoptees out there want to add to the list? Post in the comments, please!
From John Leland, the journalist who reported recently in the NYT about adoptive parents' reaction to trafficking stories from China, an account of one adoptive mother's attempt to answer those questions about her daughter:
The original article asked, What if your adopted child had been forcibly taken from her parents and sold into adoption?
For this woman the question struck very close to home.
* * *
The prospect of finding a birth mother in China is highly daunting. According to records provided by the orphanage, the girl’s parents had left her at 2 days old in a public place, where a man found her and took her to the orphanage. It is illegal in China to abandon a child, so couples do so in secret. But still, the girl cried at night. The woman contacted a service in Salt Lake City called Research-China.org, run by an adoptive couple, which for $40 offers an overview of an orphanage and assesses the likelihood of finding birth parents.
What they found was bad news: the orphanage’s outplacement patterns were similar to those of six orphanages in Hunan Province that had been discovered buying babies from other orphanages and placing them with foreign families, said Brian Stuy, a founder of China-Research.
The pattern — a rapid uptick in the number of children placed with foreign families, followed by an even more severe falloff after the Chinese government cracked down on traffickers — was “a very telling indicator that the orphanage was involved in trafficking,” Mr. Stuy said. The chances of finding a child’s birth family under such circumstances were slim.
* * *
In April, with Longlan Stuy, Mr. Stuy’s wife, she traveled to Guangdong Province, knowing the name of the man who was registered as having found the abandoned baby. The man turned out to be a director of a local civil affairs department — another bad sign, Mr. Stuy said, because it was too convenient.
At a restaurant in Qujiang, the women asked the man about finding the baby. They showed him photographs. He said she was very pretty, the woman said. Finally, the man told them that he had not found the girl, that his name was listed on the official report because he was a friend of the orphanage director, Mr. Stuy and the woman said.
“He said, ‘They bought those babies, mostly from Hunan,’ ” the woman said. “I was speechless and nauseous.”
Adults often struggle with effectively communicating their angry feelings. For children, this challenge is doubly difficult; kids don't want to get in trouble for expressing themselves aggressively, but they often lack the skills for communicating assertively.
Parents can help their kids develop specific skills for assertive anger expression, beginning with these three primers:
1. Acknowledge that Anger is OK
From the time they are toddlers, children are often coaxed to deny or quickly dispense of their feelings of anger. Well-intentioned messages like, "Don't be angry" give kids the message that this most basic of human emotions is something to feel badly about or guilty over.
* * *
Rather than hammering away at all of the things kids should not do when it comes to expressing their anger, it is most helpful for parents to show empathy for their child's emotions experiences and to acknowledge that anger is okay.
* * *
2. Talk it Out
True emotional intelligence and self-control has everything to do with learning how to put feelings into words. You can help your child cope with often-overwhelming feelings by consistently encouraging him to talk about them.
* * *
3. Be Willing to Receive Anger
A final key in helping your child learn to accept and manage anger well is to be willing to receive your child's anger. For parents, it can be quite difficult to be on the receiving end of anger-especially when you are not its rightful target. Nonetheless, when adults demonstrate for kids that they are willing to listen to their respectfully-expressed anger, they send the powerful message that the child's feelings are valid and that assertive anger will be rewarded with the gift of a listening ear and non-punitive response.
A South Korean adoptee won a seat in the French Senate in the country's parliamentary election on Sunday, becoming the first ethnic Korean to advance to France's top political body, reports Yonhap News Agency.
Jean-Vincent Place, 43, who was adopted by a French family in the 1970s and grew to become a politician, was elected as a French senator after running in a constituency of the province of Ile de France on the leftist Green Party ticket.
Born in Seoul in 1968, Place was adopted by a French lawmaker and his wife at the age of seven and became a naturalized French citizen two years later. He majored in economics in college, and began his career as a financial auditor.
* * *
Less than a month prior to Sunday's election, Place was embroiled in a racist controversy as Alain Marleix, a lawmaker of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative Union for a Popular Movement, accused him of being a "Korean national" and warned him of "paying a price," prompting the then-leading candidate to consider a lawsuit in response, according to local media reports.
Despite Mexico City legalizing gay adoption last August, so far just one same-sex couple has taken advantage of the new laws.
Over a year since the landmark legislation was passed, two women from the capital have finally become the first lesbian couple to adopt a child in Mexico, according to the city’s Family Development Agency.
In December 2009 Mexico City’s legislative assembly legalized gay marriage by 31 votes to 24, in the face of vocal criticism from the Catholic Church and the conservative National Action Party (PAN). After legal challenges, the Supreme Court then upheld the law recognizing gay couples’ rights to adoption in August 2010.
This proved equally controversial, with a study in late 2010 by the National Survey on Discrimination revealing that 80 percent of Mexicans above the age of 50 are opposed to adoption by same-sex couples.
More than 1,000 gay couples have wed in Mexico City since the new laws were enacted, six percent of whom were foreigners. It is surprising then, that more have not filed for adoption.
This may be because even non-gay adoption in Mexico is a difficult process involving years of red tape, with orphans usually adopted by a relative anyway. Thus, despite the legislation, it remains unlikely that same-sex adoptions of unrelated children will ever be numerous.
With everything she had to do that morning, Marshall McClain could not believe his wife was wasting time making the bed.
"What are you doing?" he gasped from the brown recliner where he spent his nights.
Tracey McClain was killing time, waiting for the lawyer's call, waiting to hear whether the adoption was a go and 11-month-old Alyssa would finally be theirs.
Alyssa's mother had long since given her consent, but attorney Dale Dove hadn't been in a particular hurry to locate the biological father. In the case of absentee fathers, he told the McClains, the longer the child can bond with the prospective parents before an adoption notice is filed, the better.
"Time is your friend," Dove had said.
But time had suddenly become the enemy.
An infection raged through the 61-year-old Army veteran's withered, 115-pound frame, and the intravenous antibiotics couldn't keep up. Doctors said he had just a couple of days.
But the man who'd survived 60 combat missions in Vietnam had one more task to complete. He wanted to give his name to the little girl who'd been the light of his life these past six months. More importantly, he wanted Alyssa to have the right to collect his benefits after he died.
This isn't what the story is about, and you should read the whole thing for a well-written and dramatic adoption story, but I want to address the advice the attorney gave here.
I hate to say it, but the advice from the attorney -- let time pass -- is good advice for prospective adoptive parents who have possession of a child they wish to adopt. Dragging things out in the courts in the case of a contested adoption always favors the person in possession. Even if the court ultimately decides there was some fatal error in the adoption process -- consent of the birth mother was invalid, the relinquishment affidavit was void, the birth father should have received notice of the hearing, whatever -- many jurisdictions will still hold a hearing to determine if it is in the best interest of the child to be returned to the birth family. And the longer the child has been with the prospective adoptive parents, the more likely the court will say it is in the child's best interest to simply stay there.
Of course, this story illustrates the dangers of waiting as well as the benefits of waiting to finalize an adoption. Things change, people die, people split up. If this happens while you wait, the child's rights aren't being protected. . . .
Here’s what matters most: Aronson told the adoption lobby that adoption is notthe solution for the world’s needy children. She asks:
Why did we create such a marvelous bureaucracy to improve international adoption practices and not pour some of that money into the welfare of mothers in these countries?
Substitute “families” for “mothers”—some of those children are living with grandmothers, sisters, or cousins—and that’s the right question. Although UNICEF is often quoted as saying that there are 163 million orphans today, few people understand that the vast majority of those have lost only one parent—and most of the rest are living with extended families. In much of Asia and Africa, when children are living in institutions, it’s not because their parents are dead; rather, it’s because their families are too poor to keep them alive, or have no childcare during the long days of bringing in the harvest. What we might call “orphanages” are usually child-welfare centers, places for the families to be certain that children are fed, housed, and educated.
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But here’s what Aronson overlooks: The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, the “marvelous bureaucracy” of which she speaks and that was created to respond to growing reports of adoption-related fraud, coercion, and kidnapping, doesn’t merely put in place regulations to oversee adoption agencies. It also requires that its signatory countries create a healthy social- welfare infrastructure that assesses what kinds of help families might need to care for their children—and if those families are abusive or incapable, finds the right kind of homes. The Hague Permanent Bureau sends teams to evaluate and improve that infrastructure. So does UNICEF—which is, you may be surprised to know, hated by a large part of the adoption community. So do UNAIDS, PEPFAR, USAID, and a variety of dedicated nonprofits and NGOs—none of which work on adoption. Many different actors are working to help families keep their children home. Needless to say, none are adequate.
It is a real-life tale of Three Men and a Baby. Yet, instead of rich guys in a plush Manhattan apartment, three poor, elderly men in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, have been raising an orphan girl for 19 years.
Chen Yizhao, a farmer in the city's Sanliqiao village, discovered the child in a cave in 1992 and took her home.
Since then, he and his 75-year-old father Chen Huaren, along with his 51-year-old brother Chen Yicai, have cared for the girl, who they named Chen Jun.
Neither Chen Yizhao nor his brother married because they were too poor.
With her adoptive family to support her, Chen Jun studied hard at school and recently passed the national college entrance exam. She was enrolled at a university in Yangzhou on Sept 3.
From China Daily, the story of an orphanage caretaker who was orphaned herself:
Being an orphan who lost both legs hasn't stopped Xu Yuehua from having a room full of her own children.
The 55-year-old, who gets around by walking on a pair of stools, is "mother" to more than 100 children from an orphanage in Xiangtan, Hunan province.
"She's got a way with kids after all these years nursing and caring for the children, many of whom are disabled or mentally challenged," said Li Yilong, deputy director of Xiangtan City Social Welfare Home.
The home has around 80 children in its kindergarten.
"She is always cheerful playing with them and never gets upset with the mess she has to deal with," Li said.
An orphan herself, Xu has been taking care of the children in the welfare home for 38 years.
* * *
"She taught me to be open-minded and optimistic," said She Shengli, who was once an abandoned baby born with cleft lip and palate and abandoned as a baby.
Shengli was found on the street in March 1973 and became the first child Xu looked after at the welfare home.
It's not easy to feed a baby with such a defect as they usually have problems sucking and swallowing. But Xu managed to feed the infant drop by drop.
When Shengli underwent surgery at Xiangtan Center Hospital, Xu was by her side day and night nursing her.
In the eyes of Shengli, her "mother" is always spirited.
"She taught me to face life with a smile," said Shengli, who is already the mother of a 15-year-old boy.
Now Shengli takes her son to visit "grandma" regularly, like other children Xu has brought up.
A September 18 NY Times article by John Leland sensitively highlights recent trafficking of babies in China. The article includes interviews with American parents of adopted children from China, focusing on how it feels for a parent to think that their child might have been bought and sold. The complex issues about how to speak to one's child about such matters in the future are excruciating, but not impossible to handle. That said, most parents who adopt from abroad rarely know the real facts of that desperate moment when their child was abandoned or relinquished. We have hopefully learned not to glorify birth parents and to respect what we do know and what we don't know in an honest and loving way when we speak with our children. Those conversations change and become more sophisticated as children grow and develop.
Trafficking is rare in international adoption. It is not because of trafficking that international adoption has gone south. I don't dismiss the importance of trafficking and I hope that the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption in cooperation with each country will continue to work hard to prevent the violation of the rights of birth mothers and to protect the rights of children. That will never happen however, unless there is a financial and educational investment in the sending country's social welfare infrastructure.
* * *
I ask myself a bigger and more philosophical question about the millions of orphans when I read articles like this. There is a Global Orphan Crisis. When I started out helping parents manage the health issues of children adopted from abroad, I knew very little about the social conditions that dominated the communities of developing countries. For over two decades I have traveled abroad on medical missions and learned about the despair and hopelessness in countries all over the world where there are no social workers or community workers to openly engage in discussions with women who are pregnant and poor. Economic strengthening is limited and women have little access to education and medical care. Why did we create such a marvelous bureaucracy to improve international adoption practices and not pour some of that money into the welfare of mothers in these countries? It seems immoral to me to accredit US adoption agencies and to not empower women from sending countries to make international adoption a well-thought out choice for a birth mother no matter what her economic status.
I agree with Dr. Aronson that there is a global orphan crisis; but that really has little to do with international adoption. It can't be solved by international adoption. And there's no logic in her claim that the global orphan crisis has somehow caused the recent declines in international adoption. But I whole-heartedly agree that our focus should be on empowering women so as to reduce abandonments & relinquishments. The only way to solve the global orphan crisis is to prevent children from becoming orphans in the first place.
Illegal immigrant children are often unknowing and unwilling criminals in the United States. I know this because I am one.
I was illegally adopted by two U.S. citizens who were deceived the same way that I was. In 1984, my adoptive parents bought me from a corrupt adoption attorney in Tijuana, Mexico, who had me smuggled into the country illegally when I was 4 days old.
Between 2006 and 2010, I had a Social Security number, a work authorization card and a driver's license, with a green card application being processed in hopes of becoming legal in the country that I grew up in believing I was a citizen.
Today, I am 26 years old and an illegal immigrant who has never had a home in Mexico and I can't speak Spanish. By the end of 2010, I had received a rejection notice for my green card because as an infant, I illegally entered the country.
Yet another list of things not to say to adoptive parents at ChicagoNow:
1. What happened to her real parents?
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2. Is she American? (code for, is she white?)
* * * 3. How much did she cost?
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4. Can you have kids of your own?
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5. Have you told her she’s (look both ways furtively and drop your voice to a whisper) adopted?
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6. Does she have any problems?
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7. Does she ask about her real mom?
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8. Do your other kids treat her like their sister?
* * * 9. Did you hear about so and so’s adoption horror story?
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10. Wow, you got lucky. She’s normal.
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So how many of these have you gotten? How did you answer? Go here to see the answers the author suggests. Would you use these answers? Why or why not? Discuss thoroughly. Extra points for snark. (Sorry, for a minute there I lapsed into teacher mode!)
At Hollywood.com, Brad Pitt exercises his savior complex:
The actor and his partner are parents to six children - three biological kids and three who were adopted from various countries around the world.
The couple adopted Zahara, now six, from an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2005 when she was just six months old, and Pitt is convinced the youngster would not have survived if they had not taken her in.
He tells Parade magazine, "I have seen children suffer far beyond what we experience in America - like our oldest daughter. I know she would not be alive (if she had not been adopted). I know what care was available to her, and it was nil. I cannot imagine life without her."
First, unless he is more god-like than I ever knew, he cannot "know" she would not be alive. Second, EVEN IF IT IS TRUE, saying it sets up that whole gratitude thing -- adoptee, you have to love us and be happy with your adoption because we saved your life! No complaints, now! Third, a bit self-aggrandizing, no?
The Armenian government is planning to make fresh and potentially far-reaching changes in its rules and procedures for international adoptions of children from Armenia following an RFE/RL report suggesting that they may still be riddled with corruption.
Relevant proposals drawn up by Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian’s office aim to increase the transparency of the process and reduce the role of obscure local middlemen working for Western adoption agencies. They are also meant to make it easier for Armenian families to adopt or bring up orphans.
An April 2011 report by RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) said that U.S. adoption agencies seem to continue to make thousands of dollars in informal payments to Armenian officials dealing with foreign adoptions. In particular, it cited a sample contract signed by one such agency, Hopscotch Adoptions, with Americans wishing to adopt Armenian and Georgian children.
The contract, offered to a potential client in the United States in 2007, explained that almost $5,000 of more than $30,000 charged by Hopscotch for every adoption would be spent on “gifts to foreign service providers and government functionaries performing ministerial tasks as an offer of thanks for prompt service.” It claimed that such gifts are “customary” in Armenia and Georgia and do not violate U.S. law.
“Gifts and gratuities” were also a separate spending category in a sample agreement that was offered by another U.S. agency, Adopt Abroad, at least until last April.
Officials at the Armenian Ministry of Justice as well as anti-corruption campaigners in Yerevan agreed at the time that such payments amount to bribes and are therefore illegal in Armenia.
And then there's this part of the article about an American adoptive parent behaving badly:
Another major proposal from Prime Minister Sarkisian’s staff would increase from three to six months the minimum period of time, after an orphan’s inclusion on the database, during which he or she cannot be eligible for international adoption. This requirement, meant to facilitate domestic adoptions, appears to have been violated in at least two cases in 2007.
In one such example, an American couple living near Washington, DC adopted a little Armenian girl through Hopscotch in May 2008. Sonia Vigilante, the adoptive mother, revealed on her blog that the girl was less than one month old when she and her husband were first shown her pictures and offered to adopt her in October 2007.
Vigilante reacted to the RFE/RL report with a litany of abusive e-mails sent to Ara Manoogian, an Armenian-American activist and blogger who privately interviewed her and several other U.S. adoptive parents and shared their experiences in Armenia with an RFE/RL correspondent. Using a fictitious identity, Manoogian posed as a childless man from Texas interested in adopting an Armenian child.
“The girl is mine mine, mine!!!” Vigilante wrote on May 31. “I win, Armenia loses. Hahahahahahahaha!!!” “I don't give a shit what the Armenian crooks think of me anymore,” she said in a subsequent note.
Boy, won't her daughter be delighted to find this when she's older. . . .
There is a ray of sunshine in the dark gloom of female foeticide and communities still discriminating against the girl child in many parts of India.
According to the apex adoption agency in India, the number of girl child adoptions in the country has been on a steady rise over the past few years.
Anu J Singh, member secretary of the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), credits this happy trend to a change in the mindset of people at large.
“Whether it is because of social advertisements, movies or real life incidents, the mindset is definitely changing,” Singh said.
“People want to adopt a girl child.”
For instance, 1,819 of 2,990 children adopted in 2008 - both in-country and inter-country - were girls.
In 2009, 1,436 of the 2,518 adopted were girls. The number did come down last year when only 2,638 of the 6,286 children adopted were girls. But there are reasons behind it.
“Adoption of a child of a particular sex also depends on availability,” Singh said. “So if a couple wants a girl child but we do not have one, they are left with the choice of a boy.”
The difference in numbers between 2009 and 2010 also shows a big jump in adoptions in general.
“On the whole, I can say that the trend has definitely reversed and now people want a girl child,” Singh said.
The New York Times reports on adoptive parent reactions to the recent adoption scandals in China:
On Aug. 5, this newspaper published a front-page article from China that contained chilling news for many adoptive parents: government officials in Hunan Province, in southern China, had seized babies from their parents and sold them into what the article called “a lucrative black market in children.”
The news, the latest in a slow trickle of reports describing child abduction and trafficking in China, swept through the tight communities of families — many of them in the New York area — who have adopted children from China. For some, it raised a nightmarish question: What if my child had been taken forcibly from her parents?
And from that question, inevitably, tumble others: What can or should adoptive parents do? Try to find the birth parents? And if they could, what then?
* * *
Adoptive parents and adoption agencies have powerful incentives not to talk about trafficking or to question whether a child was given up voluntarily, especially given how difficult it is to know for certain. Such talk can unsettle the children or anger the Chinese government, which might limit the families’ future access to the country or add restrictions to future adoptions. And the possible answer is one that no parent wants to hear.
Most parents contacted for this article declined to comment or agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity. Several said they never discussed trafficking, even with other adoptive parents. To a query from The New York Times posted on a Web forum for adoptive parents, one parent urged silence, writing, “The more we put China child trafficking out there, the more chances your child has to encounter a schoolmate saying, ‘Oh, were you stolen from your bio family?’ ”
Such reticence infuriates people like Karen Moline, a New York writer and a board member of the nonprofit advocacy group Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform, who adopted a boy from Vietnam 10 years ago. “If the government is utterly corrupt, and you have to take an orphanage a donation in hundred-dollar bills, why would you think the program was ethical?” she said. “Ask a typical Chinese adoptive parent that question, and they’ll say, my agency said so. My agency is ethical. People say, the paperwork says X; the paperwork is legitimate. But you have no idea where your money goes.
Speaking of age, yesterday was the day we celebrated Maya's 8th birthday! Notice how I said that? It's the day we celebrate her birth, but it might not be her actual birthday. It doesn't seem to be a big deal to Maya, but she knows she has an estimated birthday. It bothers her more that she doesn't know the TIME of her birth, since her sister knows (assuming the note the orphanage director told me was left with Zoe is accurate). But she didn't dwell on it, more interested right now in presents than details of her birth.
The fruit bouquet is what Maya brought to school as her birthday treat to share with her classmates. A couple of weeks ago, I suggested it and Maya thought it was a great idea. Then, Wednesday she started to change her mind: "Everyone brings cookie cake. Maybe I should bring cookie cake. . . ." (Maya's big on being like everyone else.)
I told her it was her birthday, so she could bring what she wanted -- birthdays aren't the time to make the "it's ok to be different" speech! But Zoe intervened: "Cookie cake? Everyone brings cookie cake or donuts, cookie cake or donuts, that's so boring! I'm going to bring a fruit bouquet for my birthday!" Well, that was enough for Maya; she could handle being different, so long as she could be the same as her sister!
And it helped that the fruit bouquet was a big hit with her classmates!
Interesting (at least to me, a criminal law attorney!) case where age matters for a Sierra Leone adoptee charged with a crime -- if he is 17, he's less than two years older than the victim of statutory rape and not guilty; if he's 19, he's guilty:
Prosecutors say they have charged a 19-year-old man with a pair of felonies for having sex with his underage ex-girlfriend and taking nude photos of another teenage girl he was dating.
But Samuel Josiah Benda says he's actually 17.
Benda, who was adopted from Sierra Leone without an official birth certificate, shouldn't face an adult sex charge because he is not more than two years older than the alleged victim, his defense attorney argued this week in Dakota County District Court.
* * *
In Benda's case, Dakota County District Judge Robert King this week began considering the question of Benda's age after his defense presented a copy of his birth certificate from Sierra Leone, stating he is 17. In court Wednesday, King questioned the document's authenticity and suggested the defense find his original birth certificate, his parents said.
But finding original records from war-torn Sierra Leone is difficult, they said.
"I don't know if such a document exists," Martin said.
Benda, who was adopted in 2005, arrived in Minnesota four months after his adoption because the U.S. State Department needed to investigate the adoption before issuing him a visa. At the time, a spokesperson from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the process was to ensure there was no fraud or child trafficking in the adoption.
Benda's adoption documents said he was 11 years old, which would make him 17 today, Martin said. Records from Social Security, his immunizations and his Minnesota citizenship show that age. However, Benda later obtained other records saying he's 19.
A 2005 Pioneer Press report about the adoption reported that Benda was 11.
The mix-up happened shortly after the adoption when Benda told his parents he was 13, not 11. Martin now believes Benda, who suffers from multiple behavioral disorders, said he was older because he was being bullied in school and wanted to advance grade levels.
"We believed him," Martin said.
A doctor evaluated Benda's bone density, pubertal development and height to estimate his age at the time, Martin said. The doctor stated Benda was between 13 and 14 years old.
However, the defense argued that bone-density tests are not always accurate.
Great post about dealing with school issues for adopted kids:
“I am calling because your daughter burst into tears in class today,” my daughter’s teacher said hesitatingly. “That really isn’t like her . . .”
The topic in school that day? Immigration. Beginning a new social studies unit, the teacher innocently asked her students where their ancestors had come from. As the only black child in her class, my daughter is herself an immigrant, moving to Canada from Haiti several years ago when we adopted her.
My mind swirled with all the complications that a question like this presented for a child in her circumstances, with the story of how African people first ended up in Haiti combined with the limited knowledge available about her birth family. Does she identify with the ancestors of her birth family or with those of her adoptive family? So many big questions for a nine year old to navigate! She felt overwhelmed, not surprisingly.
This is one example of the potential minefields waiting for foster and adopted children when they go to school. Other examples include inquiries about their “real” parents, the classic family tree diagram exercise and assignment to bring in a baby picture when foster/adoptive parents don’t have any. These children face a myriad of challenges that many other children do not face in school, on top of potential behavioural challenges due to being institutionalized and/or being abused or neglected.
At LIFEclectic, a parenting site, a Caucasian adoptive mom talks about attending an Ethiopian festival with her 2-year-old recently adopted from Ethiopia:
I was having a good time, but there was a teeny tiny part of me that felt a tad out of place being there. I didn’t have any real reason only my insecurity at being a white mom of an Ethiopian child. It felt like I was eavesdropping on a private conversation and it made me wonder what the other attendees were thinking, at least those who looked at us.
I'm usually snarky and mean, right? You expect me to rip her, right?
Nope, not gonna happen! How YOU feel doesn't matter, so long as you go outside your little comfort zone for your child, and that's what she did. Feel as awkward as you like, but don't use it as an excuse to avoid people of your child's race.
And remember those few moments you feel awkward in a crowd of people of another race? That's only a few moments. Likely your child lives that ALL THE TIME.
A little-noticed provision in the sweeping tax credit overhaul slated for debate today in the Missouri Senate would eliminate a state subsidy for international adoptions.
The goal, say those pushing the change, is to shift foreign adoption tax credits — up to $2 million a year — toward abused and neglected children in Missouri.
Specifically, the money would increase the pool of tax credits available for parents who adopt children in the state's foster care system and donors who give to certain social services agencies geared to children.
We use taxes for more than just revenue -- we seek to encourage or discourage certain behaviors with tax credits or high taxes. Cigarette taxes are designed to discourage smoking by pricing people out of the market. Tax credits for electric cars or solar panels.
Adoption tax credits are obviously designed to encourage adoption. Should states limit their tax credits to children adopted from foster care? Arguably a state receives no financial benefit when its residents adopt internationally. The only way they gain is if foster children no longer need state support because they are now receiving support from their adoptive families.
What do you think? Is Missouri on the right track? Or off the rails?
I posted an article last week about Cambodia trying to limit orphanages in order to limit "orphan tourism." A reader emailed to ask exactly what "orphan tourism" was, and said she'd had a long-time dream to volunteer at her daughter's former orphanage for a summer. Would that be "orphan tourism," and if so, what exactly is wrong with it?
I've also thought about volunteering at my kids' orphanages; I think many adoptive parents have. I can see myself with a volunteer group building a playground for the kids, painting a classroom in the orphanage, repairing the orphanage roof, and spending all other spare time cuddling babies in the infant room. I know the intentions are good -- wanting to help the children left behind, modeling for our children the importance of helping those in need, giving back out of gratitude for all we have gained. But is that really the best way to help? Consider these reasons NOT to engage in orphan tourism, offered in a wonderful article in the journal Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies, AIDS orphan tourism: A threat to young children in residential care.
Packaging Orphans for Your Pleasure
Part of what makes orphan tourism possible are the images presented in the media of "orphan." Says the article cited above:
Globally circulated, the poignant spectre of “AIDS orphans” and “children left behind” portrays children as abandoned, innately vulnerable and in need of care. Such images, presented by the international media, NGOs and now tourism operators, conjure up a desire among those primarily in the Western world to take direct action in the care of such children. At the interface of global discourse and Western sentimentality lies the growing phenomenon of “AIDS orphan tourism”, by which individuals travel to residential care facilities, volunteering for generally short periods of time as caregivers.
Researchers argue that the image of the “AIDS orphan” is replicated and disseminated “because it has economic valence” and that “orphanhood is a globally circulated commodity.” In the case of rising trends in volunteer tourism, the commodification of “AIDS orphans” is particularly salient.
So orphan tourism commodifies children, packaged as orphans, for your vacationing pleasure. In this AlJazeera report from Cambodia, they talk of orphan tourism as a "human safari." Ick.
Attach and Release. Rinse. Repeat.
The hallmark of voluntourism is that it is temporary. On your two-week vacation, you can save turtles in Greece or restore cave paintings in Arizona. But with orphan tourism, we're talking about children, not turtles. Children are designed to attach to adults, but we all know well the dangers of frequent broken attachments. As the article above notes:
Volunteer tourism operators frequently advertise the enormous “needs” of both the institution and the children who reside there, and short-term volunteers are encouraged to “make intimate connections” with “previously neglected, abused and abandoned” young children and to take part in their daily caregiving activities.
But some critics say transient volunteering is more suited to making participants feel like do-gooders than to doing good. "If you're going to work with children in an orphanage, [how will they] understand what you're trying to do when you don't speak their language and you don't stay long enough to form a relationship?" asks Tricia Barnett, director of Tourism Concern, an industry watchdog based in the U.K. "What does it mean to the child?"
Sally Brown, founder of Ambassadors for Children, counters that every bit helps. "If a kid can be held for a couple of days," she says, "you're able to make a small difference."
Really? Does it REALLY help for a child to be held by strangers for a few days, who then leave, to be replaced by new strangers, over and over again? The orphan tourism article says:
Unfortunately, many of the children they leave behind experience another abandonment to the detriment of their short- and long-term emotional and social development. Inherently, the formation and dissolution of attachment bonds to successive volunteers is likely to be especially damaging to young children being cared for in such environments. The early adversity faced by young children with changing caregivers leaves them very vulnerable, putting them at greatly increased risk for developing disorganized attachments, thus affecting their socio-psychological development and long-term well-being.
Adoptive parents are savvy enough about attachment to recognize how damaging this kind of orphan tourism can be.
Buffet for Pedophiles
Are orphanages screening who comes in to work with children? Are voluntourism operators checking to make sure volunteers are not child abusers or pedophiles? Somehow I doubt it. So exactly who is coming into the orphanages to work with children? Certainly, I'm sure, most are fine people with good hearts. But all it takes is one bad apple to do a lot of harm. In the AlJazeera report, several orphanage directors talk of the importance of police clearances, etc., for volunteers; one says he doesn't use volunteers because it's too cumbersome to screen them for just a few days' work.
Think Globally, Act Locally
The kind of jobs that orphan tourists do usually require low skill and little education. In many impoverished countries the unemployment rate is astronomically high. Voluntourists can displace in-country workers. As the orphan tourism article notes, "such opportunities would arguably be better suited to local youth, many of whom would be grateful for regular meals, basic training and a testimonial to their work experience."
As part of your altruistic visit, do you want to be taking jobs and food from locals?
If You Build It, They Will Come
Orphan tourism requires orphanages. Ninety percent of orphans (defined by UNICEF as a child who has lost at least one parent) are actually in the care of a surviving parent or extended family members. You can't have orphan tourism that goes to Aunt Tessie's house to see an orphan -- that home with an adult caregiver destroys the necessary illusion of "orphan" that the tourist has come to help.
Those seeking to exploit orphan tourism, therefore, are motivated to create orphanages and move kids to them -- even though we know that in-home care is the best option for those children. The AlJazeera report talks about that being a problem in Cambodia.
Volunteering to hug an orphan sounds like a win-win for everyone, but it's not. Special care has to be taken with vulnerable children in orphanages. Please think of other ways to help.
Yuan Lihai, a 46-year-old woman who has adopted more than 100 abandoned babies over the past 25 years, has aroused the public's curiosity about what kind of person she is, the Henan Business Daily reported Thursday.
Yuan, who started to adopt babies in 1986, is called 'mom' by her adopted children.
Of all the children she has adopted over the years, 39 young children are still living with her in Lankao county, Central China's Henan province, as those who have grown up have left her to work or are married with their own families.
Most of the babies were found suffer from diseases when they were adopted, said Yuan who added that some of them were too weak to survive.
At first, it was Yuan's love of children that prompted her to adopt abandoned babies she saw at gates of hospitals. Since then she has became well known for adopting babies across the county, and has had some babies abandoned directly outside her house. Even the police officers and hospital personnel sent abandoned babies to her.
Thanks to the stress of caring for the adopted babies Yuan and her husband separated, but fortunately other family members agreed to help her take care of the adopted children.
As the number of adopted babies grew, Yuan found that her house was not big enough to raise so many children. To solve this problem, she sent some children to her relatives' homes, including her biological son, and found other places for the children to live.
Nowadays Yuan employs four people to help take care of the children.
While receiving a lot of praise for her kindness, there are also some doubts as to her intentions, because there is a considerable expense associated with Yuan, who is not wealthy, raising so many children.
Some doubters say Yuan sells the healthy children on for profit or cheats in insurance claims for minimum living costs.
Yuan denies the claims, and says she earns enough money in other ways to raise the children. Yuan receives some aid from people she has helped and earns money from other business ventures including a store operated by her sister and a house for renting.
Yuan says she receives a minimal 4,000 yuan of guaranteed relief allowance each month, but says that it is far from enough to cover her costs and expenses.
Yuan admits that she did send some children to other willing adopters, but says it was without charge.
In an attempt to ensure the adopted children have a better life, local authorities have advised Yuan to give up custody of the remaining children, so that they can be sent to official homeless shelters.
However, Yuan says she does not want to give up the children due to emotional ties that exist between her and the children.
Though confronted with difficulties and doubts, Yuan is still willing to accept more abandoned babies. She says that when she passes away, she will let her natural son continue to raise the children or send them to an official homeless shelter.
Things that make you go hmmm. . . . Good samaritan? Child hoarder? Child trafficker? Hmm. . . .
The Cambodian government on Thursday introduced guidelines aiming to better protect orphans and vulnerable children after childcare experts voiced alarm over an unregulated boom in orphanages.
The new standards emphasise that placing children in institutions should be "a last resort", after UNICEF said earlier this year that three quarters of the 12,000 children in Cambodia’s orphanages had at least one living parent.
"At all times, efforts should be made to keep children in families or community-based care, with residential care as a last resort and a temporary arrangement," the newly adopted Standards and Guidelines document states.
Cambodian Social Affairs Minister Ith Sam Heng told AFP the guidelines, drafted with the help of UNICEF and other children’s rights groups, were "very important" in helping to keep families together.
* * *
The UN agency had earlier expressed concern about the country’s poor and vulnerable children after learning that over the past six years, the number of orphanages in the impoverished nation has almost doubled to 269.
Only one in 10 of these are funded by the state, it found, while the rest rely on charitable donations to survive, including from tourists who are encouraged to visit orphanages, volunteer there or watch shows performed by the children.
Childcare specialists say they fear that this kind of orphan tourism has contributed to the growth in orphanages and encouraged the institutionalization of poor children.
As classes resume for another school year, Hillsborough County Animal Services has teamed up with the Best Friends Animal Society to go "Back in Black," by offering reduced adoption fees on a special group of needy shelter pets. There's no better time to adopt and save money!
Through mid-September, all black and mostly black-colored dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens will be offered at 50 percent off of their regular adoption fee.
* * *
"Back in Black" is a national awareness campaign targeting overlooked black and mostly black-colored adoptable animals of all ages, breeds, sizes, and personalities.
These darker dogs and cats suffer from what shelters around the country commonly call "black pet syndrome," a preference by shoppers to select more fair-haired companions.
This behavior is likely the result of outdated superstitions about black pets. It may also result from an adopter's inability to connect with black animals whose fur appears to obscure their equally dark eyes. Whatever the case, evidence has shown that black animals are undeniably the most challenging to adopt out.
Of course you've made the connection, haven't you? If not, see here.
In a June 27 Dear Abby column, Abby sided with the adoptive dad (stepparent adoption) who was upset that his adopted son wanted to take back his biological father's surname:
Dear Real Dad: I strongly believe that the people who raise a child are that child's "true" parents, regardless of whether the child meets his or her birth parents. Is there any ill will between you and Noah? Could there be money or prestige connected with Noah's birth father's name, which could account for what's happened?
After investing 34 years of yourself in that child, you have reason to feel hurt. Family counseling might smooth some of this over. I am sorry for your loss.
Sheesh, nothing like attributing the worst possible motives for wanting a link to biological relatives, huh? Well, Abby has now published responses she got to her advice, and here's one that's bang-on:
Dear Abby:
May I weigh in on the letter from Noah’s Real Dad in New York (June 27), whose adult adopted son wants to reclaim his original last name? I am an adult adoptee who searched for and found my birth family.
* * *
Unless you walk in an adoptee’s shoes you cannot judge their actions. After all, the adoption decision is made without the consent of the child. We also resent being treated like children after we are adults. Noah is a 34-year-old adult able to make his own choices and decisions.
Noah is fortunate that he knows his birth father and didn’t have to search a bureaucratic maze to obtain any information. Laws have been passed in several, not all, states allowing adoptees to get important information about their birth families that is necessary for taking care of ourselves and our own children. — Debbie In Florida
When Zoe was teased at school with the ubiquitous stretched-eyed "Chinese Eyes" gesture, I reported it here and here.
When Maya was told by a little boy at school that she couldn't sit next to him because she was Chinese, I reported it here.
When a child at ballet told Zoe her skin looked dirty, like it was covered with mud, I reported it here.
So imagine my surprise when Maya came home from school eager to teach her sister a new ditty she'd learned:
Mailman, mailman do your duty.
Come and shake your African booty
She can do the pom pom, she can do the splits
But best of all she can kiss kiss kiss.
Yep, I did the classic spit take, and tried my calmest voice: "WHAT did you just say?!" And no, it wasn't the kiss kiss kiss or even the booty, unmodified.
Of course Maya had no idea there was anything racist about "African booty," so we had a chat about that. But I couldn't let her off the hook completely -- didn't she see it might hurt someone's feelings if they happened to be African, just like it hurt her feelings to be told she couldn't sit next to a boy because she happened to be Chinese?
We talked about how important it is to stand up for other people; even when we're not African, we have to stand up when they're teased just like we want others to stand up for us when we're teased because we're Chinese. Of course, when you're 7-about-to-be-8 it's hard to stand up, especially for Maya who has to fight against her particular issues -- wanting to be popular, wanting to fit in.
We brain-stormed some ideas of what Maya could do if it happened again, including her telling her teacher, her telling her friend to stop. Finally, she settled on having me talk to the mom of the friend who taught her the rhyme. That was an easy one, since I know the mom really well and knew she'd be receptive. Sure enough, she'd already heard the ditty from her child and had the same discussion I had with Maya! And they very smartly re-wrote the rhyme for future use:
Mailman, mailman do your duty.
Here comes a girl and she’s a cutie.
She can do the pom pom. She can do the splits,
But best of all she can kiss,kiss,kiss.
Thouh I liked even better the version the mom came up with (couldn't get buy-in from her daughter!):
US Postal worker, US Postal worker do your duty,
Here comes a human being and it’s very smart.
They enjoy reading books and learning about art.
But most of all they can fart, fart, fart….
Yes, I've always known that bullies have mommies. I've known the parents of all kids who've racially teased my kids. But what do you do when your child is the bully, the teaser, the racist? Have you had that turn-around experience? What did you do?
Yippee! E.J. Graff gives me an excuse to do two things -- tell you about her new blog at American Prospect and post about the NYT article, One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring. (I feel like I need an excuse to post about artificial reproductive technology, since I try to hone in on adoption, but it's sometimes really hard to maintain the focus!). E.J. Graff notes that the NYT story raises some of the same issues she's reported about in adoption, under the title No More Family Secrets:
The mother and father of seven children, six of whom are overweight, face the "unbearable" prospect of never seeing their four youngest again if authorities act on a threat to remove them.
Three girls aged 11, five and one, and a boy aged five, are to be put up for adoption or "fostered without contact" because their parents failed to help them slim down.
This means the parents will be unable to trace them and the family could only be reunited if the children attempt to find their family when they are grown up.
Social services warned the couple three years ago that their children would be taken away from them if they did not bring their weight under control.
Under this standard, I would have been removed and put up for adoption. . . .
In celebrating labor, today is a good day to recall those left out of the American dream of prosperity through the centuries. I want to highlight the website Journey for Justice, which focuses on 223 years of APA labor history in the Puget Sound area, and has really interesting portraits and stories. The ad above, assuring restaurant customers that there will be No Chinese Employed About the House, came from that website.
Though the headline overpromises, I think, this is an interesting article from the Independent:
Victoria exudes motherhood, even amongst the dank synthetics of Finfine’s old, strip-lit bar. And even now, whilst rain drills the potholed car park outside, in the uncomfortable company of harsh-featured afternoon drinkers and without her daughter, this elegant European transmits a contradictory familial comfort. She is one of those parents so in love with her family that there’s heartening warmth in the most fleeting exchanges, and an overt protectiveness in more lasting ones. In short, she’s a mum. And it shows.
But being a mum isn’t something that came easily to Victoria. As an international adoptive parent, determined not to cut corners or resort to bribery, she was forced by a rapidly corrupting system to fight tooth and nail for her little girl. It was a fight that took its toll and almost forced her from the ring. After her second or third blow in as many years and as many countries, Victoria admitted early that she came close to throwing in the towel. “After all that, I was very depressed. I thought there was no point in continuing my search. Never mind, I told myself. I tried. Okay, I give up.”
* * *
Her search began, in the early noughties, with a holiday. “I was always very fond of Asia,” Victoria said, reflecting on the time she’s spent in India, Nepal and Vietnam. So when she decided to adopt, with the support of her Italian partner whom she’d met with true European style on a flight from Paris to Rome, the Eastern continent was the obvious choice.
And so for two years Victoria leapfrogged between her job teaching artistic therapy for children and her tireless search to find her daughter in the quagmire of Asiatic adoption. At the time, only one country in Asia was open to the kind of single parent, private adoption she was pursuing, and so her search led to Nepal. “I went there, I liked very much the country so I though okay, I’ll go with it.”
“But it was very corrupt: with $6,500 in your wallet you could buy any child you wanted,” she explains. “So, after days and nights trying to find honest people to help, and after so many bad stories, I decided forgot it.” Her decision was a prescient one. In the same month the French government ceased its international adoption relationship with the Asian country, and more were to follow suit. Canada has still prevented all adoption with Nepal, as has most of Europe, on allegations of corruption and child trafficking.
“So I turned to Vietnam, because I wanted to keep one foot in Asia,” she says. “But it was the same. In the end everybody wanted to take something from you. I decided to renounce it. I said to myself: if the only way to become a mother is to pay a huge amount of money then I don’t want it.”
Again Victoria demonstrated sound foresight. Vietnam, like Nepal, has become more than a headache for inter-country adoptees.
* * *
“There are thousands of orphans all around the world who dream of a loving, permanent family to call their own,” said Chuck Johnson, president and CEO of the National Council For Adoption. “Our hope is that the Step Forward for Orphans March brings attention to the problems in inter-country adoption that must be addressed now.”
The problem though, is that inter-country adoption is rapidly becoming a highly profitable market, largely because it remains almost completely unregulated. Expensive and well-advertised agencies have sprouted across the world, as child-rearing entrepreneurs have realized parents present the lucrative combination of desperation and ignorance. “Your neighborhood health club is more heavily regulated,” says Trish Maskew, executive director of Ethica (a nonprofit outfit that advocates better international adoption laws).”The industry allows unlicensed facilitators to work without oversight. The U.S. government refuses to act, and consumers walk into this blind.”
OK, she's no longer a child (just saying, cause so many headlines about adult adoptees start out with the "child" thing), but this is an interesting story of an early international adoption from Nepal:
Waiting on a dusty road outside a hospital in Katmandu, little Bishnu listened to her mother.
"I'm going to the bathroom," the woman reassured her. "I'll be right back."
After she walked away and around a corner, the 4-year-old waited. And waited.
"She never came back," the adult Bishnu now says. "That's the last time I saw her."
* * *
With no sign of her parents, authorities allowed her to be adopted by two American missionary doctors, a married couple in their 50s teaching at a college. They decided she would be best educated at boarding school, especially to instruct her in English. First, she attended the same school in Katmandu as the daughters of the king and queen.
But in time, her adoptive parents decided to relocate to medical missions elsewhere. So for three years, Bishnu attended a boarding school in India, a time she recalls as dreadful, confusing and crowded.
From there, her adoptive parents took her to their home in Pennsylvania. There, though, she would attend other boarding schools, which she recalls only for their strictness. She readily recalls few heartfelt moments with her adoptive parents, who took care of her needs but offered little warmth.
Still, they eagerly took her on a trip in 1967, when she was about 13. They had been summoned to Washington, D.C., by King Mahendra and Queen Ratna, for whom the missionary doctors had provided medical care in Katmandu. The royal couple would be visiting President Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson, and they wanted to see Bishnu.
"I felt so special," Bishnu remembered. "I was the only child there.
* * *
Safe to say, that was the high point of her teen years - in part because the rest seemed so low. She realizes boarding school affords privileged education. But for her, it meant great loneliness - and, as with almost her entire life, no attachment to family.
Still, she endured prep school, then went to a music college. She focused on her voice - the same voice that delighted the Katmandu hospital when she was wee - but couldn't seem to stick with the regimen. More and more, she felt a pull to wander, on a search she didn't quite understand.
* * *
Bishnu has been working as a day-care assistant and living in Peoria with a friend. Still, though settled down, she retains an unsettled feeling from her earliest days.
From that, a couple of years ago she began to search the Internet for information about her family and hometown. The effort long languished, as much of Nepalese peasant country remains unplugged.
But a breakthrough happened after she discovered Nepal Orphans Home, not-for-profit based in North Carolina that aids impoverished children in and around Katmandu. Despite meager income, Bishnu began to send donations to the group.
"I just became so energized," she said. "I admire the work."
She began trading emails with the group's director, Michael Hess. He and others there offered to help find information about Bishnu's past.
The first bit of info came as a delight. Though her mother's name remains unknown, she learned her father's name - Amar Bahadur Chetri - and thus discovered her surname.
"I found out my last name!" she says, grinning. "I didn't even know my name.
She leaves today for three months in Nepal to reconnect with family.
I thought we'd already debunked this one -- that moving a child from a first world country (like Ethiopia) to America does any good for the planet. But in order to hawk her book, this adoptive mother makes the argument over at Huffington Post:
With the advent of vaccines, technology and industrialized ways of living, life span has increased since our grandparents were kids. By 2050, it is estimated that the planet will house more than 9 billion people. Though birth control is available to those who know about it and choose to use it, it is my belief that educating our youth about creating a family must now include the topics of overpopulation, the environment and adoption. It is no longer OK to only discuss safe sex with our hormone-driven, adolescent population. We now must, if our planet is to survive, show our children how poverty, environmental disasters and garbage are a direct result of too many people living on Planet Earth, consuming -- at least in the Western world -- far more than our share of resources.
* * *
Though I did not start out on the path of adoption, or writing a book about the experience, to promote adoption as a way to help heal the planet, as Oprah often has said (quoting Maya Angelou), "When you know better, you do better." It is my greatest hope that presenting the idea of choosing adoption as a first choice rather than a last option will plant knowing seeds in fertile minds and encourage people who inhabit this planet to make choices that perhaps they might not have made.
Maybe if a woman deeply feels the desire to give birth, she will do it one time, then decide that adopting to grow her family is the most conscious choice to make. Maybe if a couple finds that they cannot sustain a pregnancy, rather than go find a fertility doctor to prescribe drugs that possibly will make her pregnant, these people will decide that adoption is the better option.
The time has come to see that choosing adoption as a first choice, not a last option, for growing your family is the right thing to do -- for the planet, for a woman's body, and for the parentless children who ache for family.
So we're supposed to ignore that part about 4-year-olds and computers and iPads? We're supposed to glide right past that part where we'll have to replace and landfill them as new technology comes along? We're not supposed to notice the environmental cost of rampant consumerism in the West? Ok, fine, you want to adopt? Then adopt. Don't come up with ridiculously unsupportable reasons to justify your life choices. Adding "saving the planet" to "saving an orphan" as an excuse isn't helping anyone.
A New York woman is suing her bosses after they cut her maternity benefits to just five days because she had her twins with a surrogate. Five days is what a parent adopting a child gets at the pharmaceutical company, compared to 13 weeks if a woman carries the baby herself.
* * *
According to court document, Ms. Krill wrote to her bosses saying, “treating her differently than other employees having babies is not fair and is placing me in an untenable condition.”
Responding to the New York case in an interview with ABC news, a law professor pointed out that it would be difficult for a company to award maternity benefits to a mother who did not give birth, and not extend them to fathers.
Canadian parents who qualify for far longer benefits (at least 35 weeks in parental leave however your new child arrived in your arms) can be grateful they aren’t looking at a five-day speed bonding exercise with their baby.
But a similar issue has also gone before the courts here where an adoptive parents receive parental leave benefits from the government, but not the additional maternity benefits available only to women who give birth. The same would apply to parents of babies delivered through surrogacy.
An adoptive mother from Vancouver took the government to court in 2007 arguing that the shorter benefits were discriminatory , but lost at the Federal Court of Appeal.
The court ruled that the she did not qualify for additional benefits because she didn’t undergo the “physiological and psychological experience” or pregnancy. The Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear her appeal.
What do you think? Is maternity leave designed to benefit parent-child bonding? for recovery from physical/psychological effects of pregnancy? And what, if anything, do these rules do for surrogates who give birth but do not parent or for birth mothers who give birth but do not parent?
"Mooooom! Did anything important happen to me when I was one year old?"
That was Maya's question earlier in the week. She had to make a timeline of her life for second-grade Social Studies. Zoe made her timeline last week in fifth-grade Art class. Yep, that's another one of those tricky school projects, like family trees, DNA exploration, baby pictures, that can be difficult for children adopted even a little later in life.
It wasn't a problem for Zoe, who loves to share every bit of her adoption story with anyone who will sit still long enough (there's a new kid in her class, and she told him all about it -- "I was wrapped in three layers of clothing with a little hat and put in a cardboard box and left near a bus stop and found and taken to the police station and then to the orphanage . . ." He apparently asked her, "Does it make you uncomfortable to talk about it?" And she said, "Duh! I wouldn't tell you about it if I was uncomfortable!" Little does she know that he was probably indicating that it made HIM uncomfortable to talk about it!).
Maya was okay with the timeline, so long as nothing on it mentioned China or her foster parents -- those things make her too different in her mind, and she wants more than anthing else to be just like everyone else. So, did anything big happen when she was one year old? I suggested her birthday party (with balloons!) that her foster parents gave her, and pulled out the pictures from the party (I'm so fortunate to have these from her foster parents!). Nope, she didn't want that. Since she was adopted at 18 months, which was when she was one year old, she decided to put that -- but no mention that the adoption was in China.
Interesting timing -- a great blog by an adoption therapist, In My Child's World, talked about timelines just yesterday, to emphasize the importance of our children KNOWING their timeline, especially the timeline BEFORE we entered the picture:
Erik and I sit on the floor. He’s swaddled in a brown, cozy blanket as we look at the stark white paper. “Ok, Erik. We’re going to do a timeline, just like the kind you do in school. Have you made one before?” “No, I don’t think so,” he replies. I explain to Erik that the timeline is the story of his life from the very beginning to today. “So, how did your life begin?” “Ummmmm, with mom and dad.” “Even before you were a family with mom and dad. Where did you live?” “Guatemala!” “Yep, and who did you live with in Guatemala?” “Mom and dad.” “Before mom and dad...” Erik looks up at me with a quizzical look on his face, “I don’t remember,” he answers.
At the age of five, Erik doesn’t fully comprehend his life story even though he has heard it before. So, why do we need to bring it to his attention? What are the vital reasons for a child to know and be able to recite their life story from the beginning to present day? The key points include:
Children need to be aware of their life story in order to grasp why certain situations, sounds, smells, sights, and people trigger them.
