More details on Jean Smart's China adoption

From People, more details on Jean Smart's adoption of a child from China -- details that will sound familiar to most of us who have adopted:

“When we finally started the process, it actually took a lot longer than we expected. We thought my son [Connor] was going to be about 15 when we got the baby and he’s just turned 20.”

Fortunately, baby girl has proven to be worth the wait. “[Bonnie] is the smartest, funniest, most darling gift,” Jean raves. “And she sleeps all night!”

* * *

There were anxious moments while they were waiting to be matched with a child, however. “The day we got the big envelope with the picture was very exciting and very nerve-wracking,” she says. “Then you have 24 hours or something to say yes or no.”

Jean, Richard and Connor huddled together on the front porch, to open the envelope together as a family. “[We] said ‘Okay, here it goes!’” she recalls. “And we went, ‘Oh my God! She’s so beautiful!’”

I don't plan to post about every detail of celebrity adoptions all the time, but I feel bad for suggesting that Smart might have gotten special treatment on the age front, so I was looking for more information about when they might have been logged in. Nothing that specific here, but certainly seems likely they were under age 55 when logged in.

And don't all of us adoptive parents love to relive that referral moment?!

Another Celebrity Adoption: Jean Smart

Reported January 8, 2010, Jean Smart adopted a child from China in May:

'Samantha Who' star Jean Smart has a new baby at the age of 58, but it's no medical miracle - the actress and her husband adopted a little girl from China in May, PEOPLE reports. Smart, her husband Richard Gilliland, and their 19-year-old son Connor traveled to China in May - returning with daughter Bonnie, now 18 months old.

Smart revealed the new addition to her family on Wednesday's 'The Bonnie Hunt Show,' saying of her overseas trip, "When I came back, there were four of us!"

Smart claimed that the age difference between her two kids isn't an issue, though she admitted that Connor was initially "more excited about the trip than the baby." After a few days, however, "[Connor said] 'This is incredible....I didn't know I was going to feel this way...She's amazing.'"

The 19-year age gap was unintentional, however - Smart confessed that the adoption process took much longer than she'd planned. "We thought they were going to be closer in age when we first started this!"

One issue with celebrity adoption always seems to be whether they got special treatment. The last quote about the adoption taking longer than planned suggests that the long queues in China adoption applied to her, too. But it looks like an exception might have been made on the age front, since China requires even special-needs adopters to be under 55.

P.S. As several people have noted in the comments, given the wait times for adoption from China, it's likely Jean Smart was under 55 at the time she was logged in, and that satisfies China's rules. Looks like no special treatment here!

5 Tips for Raising a Child of Another Race

Another interesting adoptee voice -- Jane UG-LBC. She was adopted from Uganda by an American family in the 1960s at the age of 4. She offers her 5 tips for raising kids in transracial adoption. I've edited down, and only included some of the 5 tips, so you'll go to her blog to read the whole thing:

Tip 1. DO take your child to their birthplace during their childhood. . . . Take them during big life events, such as graduations (leaving Elementary, leaving Jr. High, Graduating from High School).

* * *

Tip 3. DO involve your child in an activity with just their Race. Nothing is worse than feeling like an outsider with your “own people”. . . . Most adopted children (out of race or not) have an incomplete part of them and with Children of Multi-Racial adoption, just knowing who you are really builds your self-esteem. . . .

Tip 5. DO teach your child their original language. . . .

And given my previous post about adopting same-race siblings, I found Jane's bonus tip interesting as well:

*BONUS TIP: If you decide after adopting one child to adopt another child, remember, you are not the United Nations, or Brangelina, and we are not accessories that come in different colors and sizes. Adopt a Child of the same background so your Adopted kid will have someone to relate to. . . .

Adoption Experiences of Women & Men

I just found this government report, Adoption Experiences of Women & Men and Demand for Children to Adopt by Women 18-44 Years of Age in the United States (catchy title, huh?!)published in 2008, reporting on data collected in 2002. Some stats --

Forty percent of women currently taking steps to adopt were 35–39 years of age,
double the percentage of the population of all women in this age group.

Three-quarters of women currently seeking to adopt a child had impaired fecundity or were surgically sterile.

Men were twice as likely as women 18–44 years of age to have adopted a child. Among ever-married persons, men (3.8%) were more than 2.5 times as likely as women (1.4%) to have adopted.

Hispanic and non-Hispanic black women were more likely to be currently seeking to adopt compared with non-Hispanic white women.

Nothing surprising, except perhaps the last one, that Hispanic and Black women were more likely to be currently (in 2002) seeking to adopt than White women. I would have thought otherwise. And the data about men being twice as likely as women to have adopted the child is likely explained by step-parent adoption.

The survey also asked women about relinquishing children, and noted the decline in relinquishment of babies in their first month of life. The report gave the following explanation:

In the case of nonrelative infant adoptions, providing a child with a family and providing a couple or individual with a child are complementary purposes; the number of these adoptions are governed by the number of children available for adoption (supply) and the number of individuals and couples seeking children to adopt (demand). In the past 30 years, several societal changes have decreased the number of children placed for adoption.

First, keeping and raising their babies has become a more frequent choice of unmarried, pregnant women of all ages so that fewer babies have been relinquished for adoption.

Second, there had been an overall decline in the teen birth rate since 1970 (although preliminary data for 2006 show a 3% increase in the teen birth rate compared with 2005). In 1970, the teen birth rate was 68.3 (births per thousand women 15–19 years of age). It declined to 51.5 in 1978, fluctuated between 50.2 and 53.0 until 1988, rose to 61.8 in 1991, then experienced a steady decline through 2005 where it reached a low of 40.4, rising in 2006 to 41.9. Since teenage mothers historically were most likely to relinquish their infants for adoption, this has had a significant effect on the number of infants available for adoption.

Lastly, legislation requiring that reasonable efforts be made to preserve and reunify families (e.g., The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980), and to give preference to placement of children with relatives who meet state standards for child safety (e.g., The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996) have also limited the number of infants available to nonrelatives for adoption. The combined impact of these societal changes and legislative actions has been a decline in the number of native-born infants and young children available for adoption with little expectation that relinquishment rates will rise to meet the current level of demand.

Interesting that a government report is using the the terms "supply" and "demand" in the adoption context. Not a place I expect to see language of commodification and markets. . . .

Adoption: at what cost?

A new report, from the Terre des hommes, a Swiss children's aid foundation, focusing on the responsibility of receiving countries to ensure ethical international adoption:

Focus has been given for many years on the practices of the countries of origin. They have been found to be too lax or too corrupt, and considered to be responsible for the downward slide in standards for intercountry adoption.

Now, in the time of globalization, when a child can be bought over the internet, or ever-increasing numbers of candidates seek to adopt in a context of risk, there is urgent need to focus on the co-responsibility of the receiving countries.

In this publication, Terre des hommes – child relief (Tdh), under a mandate by Terre des Hommes International Federation (TDHIF), shows how the receiving
countries also have a certain responsibility. With procedures and legislation which have little, if any, respect to the interests of the child, and policies which tend to respond to the demands of adopting couples or put pressure on the countries of origin in order to obtain children, the receiving countries do not respect the engagements they undertook by ratifying the Hague Convention on international adoption.

The report looks as receiving European countries, but it is still quite applicable to the U.S. as a receiving country.

Scott Simon Talks Adoption With His Daughter

Scott Simon of NPR has two daughters adopted from China -- 6-year-0ld Elise and 3-year-old Lena.You can listen here to him and his wife talking and singing with Elise, telling her the story (or is she telling them the story?!) of going to China to get her. As he notes in his commentary:

Not every question "can be answered by love, fun or ice cream," says NPR's Scott Simon.

As part of StoryCorps' National Day of Listening project, Simon explains how he responds when asked, "Where did I come from?" by his 6-year-old daughter, Elise.

Simon and his wife, Caroline, adopted Elise and another daughter, 3-year-old Lena, from China. They've grown up knowing they were adopted and are naturally curious about their birth mother.

"We don't conceal any details from our daughters — they're cunning enough to catch us anyway. But every few months they absorb a little more and the older and smarter they get, the more questions they have for which we have no real answers."

So far so good -- they know they are adopted, they feel free to ask their parents questions, their curiosity about their birth parents is natural, and no details are concealed.

I wish it could leave it as just a cute story, but I have to mention that the story he tells Elise -- we wanted a family, so we went to China -- is woefully incomplete. He is telling HIS story, not hers. I believe that every (and if you've been reading here for a while you know I hardly EVER say EVERY about anything!) adopted child's story should begin with the child's gestation and birth -- "You grew in your birth mother's tummy until it was time for you to be born." Without this piece of the puzzle, an adopted child can't really know what adoption means. Now, it could be that they talk about that piece, too, but you wouldn't be able to tell that from the audio report, so I felt I had to mention it!

Friends & Sisters Forever

I always get sappy about Zoe and Maya as sisters. They really are amazing together, closer than most sisters connected by biology, I believe.

A disgusting case in point -- Maya bites her nails (I have to say "her nails" not "her fingernails," because she's been known to bite her toenails, too!). As we were getting ready this morning, I'm only half paying attention, I confess, when I heard Maya saying something that included the words "bite," "nails," and "Zoe." Took me a minute to figure out the sentence, then I asked for confirmation, "What did you say?!" Maya first said, "Never mind," maybe realizing I wasn't going to like what I was about to hear. I insisted, "No, you were saying something about Zoe and biting nails. What was it?" Maya, always truthful, replied, "Last night, I bit Zoe's nails. I didn't have any left, and she asked me to!"

Eeeeewwwwwwww!

Every family is different, I know, and the ability or desire to adopt siblings for an adopted child is a personal choice. But at a forum I read, there was a recent discussion about whether it was important for a transracially adopted child to have a same-race adopted sibling. Intuitively, I have the sense that the answer is yes. I didn't have much to add to the discussion, but did recall that there was something about it in the Evan B. Donaldson Institute report, Beyond Culture Camp: Promoting Healthy Identity Formation in Adoption, about Korean adoptees:

While the listing of experiences/services in the survey did not specify “adopted” siblings, almost all of the respondents with brothers or sisters reported having adopted siblings, so we can likely assume that having a sibling who also was adopted was the context of this support. Previous research has found that for transracially adopted young adults, having only a sibling born to their adoptive parents was associated with maladjustment (Brooks & Barth, 1999). Also, Korean adoptees participating in the “Gathering” reported that having a sibling from Korea was a source of comfort and support (Freundlich & Lieberthal, 2000).

Not very definitive, hmm? There are no absolutes about this. I think Zoe and Maya are very fortunate to have each other, for lots of reasons including the support they give each other on issues of adoption and race. But I also think if I had decided not to adopt again after Zoe, things would still work out well for her. And I was reminded of this issue of same-race siblings today because I showed my Adoption Law class Adopted: The Movie. I was again struck by the extraordinary support Korean adoptee Jen got from her only sibling, the brother born to her white adoptive parents. So this probably falls in the "it depends on the individual" category . . . .

And yes, Zoe is the artist featured above!

"My Prior Life"

The author of the blog I quoted here has asked that I remove his content from my blog. I have done so.

The Passing of Days

Lord, we offer thanks and praise
for the circle of our days
Praise for radiant brother sun,
who makes the hours around us run
For brother sleep, and sister death,
who tend the borders of our breath
Be with us, Lord and guide our ways
around the circle of our days

I learned yesterday of the passing of two people important in my life, Frank Walwer and Mary Daly.

Frank was Dean of the law school where I teach at an important time in its history, and at an important time in mine. I was a young teacher and scholar, and a little unsure of my abilities. He asked me to be his Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and I was certainly unsure about that. But in the years I worked for him, I got unfailing support and daily appreciation. He often pushed me beyond the bounds of my comfort level – on one memorable occasion telling me I didn’t need to make a presentation at an important meeting of the American Bar Association committee looking to accredit the law school, and then casually saying in his opening remarks that I would be presenting on a host of issues! I didn’t exactly appreciate it at the time, but when I pulled it off, as he knew I would, my confidence soared!

He was funny and infuriating and charming, and helped me to see myself in a new way – as a competent and confident professional. I thank him for that.

Frank died in a car accident on New Year’s Day (no one who had ever ridden with him was surprised by the manner of his passing!). He was 79.

Mary Daly was a radical feminist and theologian, and I only knew her from her writings. I did not always agree with what she wrote, but she opened my mind to ask questions I’d never thought of before. My version of feminism up to that point had been basic “same-as” feminism – women are the same as men, and so should have the same rights and privileges as men. Until reading Mary Daly, I never thought to ask how it was that men had become the ones that women had to prove they were like to get the rights and privileges men got by virtue of birth.

Daly was intelligent and extreme and insightful, and helped me to see the world in a new way. I thank her for that.

Mary Daly died Sunday after lingering poor health. She was 81.

I’m not sure what Frank would have thought about being eulogized here together with Mary Daly (and who knows what Mary Daly would have thought about being eulogized with Frank!). I don’t think Frank would have called himself a feminist, but he was. He loved working with women, but not in that condescending patting-on-the-head way of some. He was proud of his role in the racial integration of Columbia Law School, where he served as Dean of Admissions. He was always proud of my accomplishments, and that meant the world to me.

You know, the more I think about it, I think Frank is likely having a great conversation with Mary Daly right now, probably driving her crazy and loving every minute of it!

Get On Board the Orphan Train

I'm teaching Adoption Law this week -- a special intensive one-week course.I have 100 students, and I started the class by welcoming them to "Adoption Law Boot Camp." Meeting 6 hours a day for a week is pretty brutal, but I try to mix things up to keep students awake and learning. One way to do that is to show videos. Monday morning's video to accompany the history of adoption was the Orphan Trains, which I recommend highly -- it's not just informative, it's honestly emotional and powerful.

Here's a little explanation of the Orphan Train movement:

The story of this ambitious and finally controversial effort to rescue poor and
homeless children begins in the 1850s, when thousands of children roamed the streets of New York in search of money, food and shelter--prey to disease and crime. Many sold matches, rags, or newspapers to survive. For protection against street violence, they banded together and formed gangs. Police, faced with a growing problem, were known to arrest vagrant children--some as young as five--locking them up with adult criminals.

In 1853, a young minister, Charles Loring Brace, became obsessed by the plight of these children, who because of their wanderings, were known as "street Arabs." A member of a prominent Connecticut family, Brace had come to New York to complete his seminary training. Horrified by the conditions he saw on the street, Brace was persuaded there was only one way to help these "children of unhappy fortune."

"The great duty," he wrote, "is to get [them] utterly out of their surroundings and to send them away to kind Christian homes in the country."

In 1853, Brace founded the Children's Aid Society to arrange the trips, raise the money, and obtain the legal permissions needed for relocation. Between 1854 and 1929, more than 100,000 children were sent, via orphan trains, to new homes in rural America. Recognizing the need for labor in the expanding farm country, Brace believed that farmers would welcome homeless children, take them into their homes and treat them as their own.

In adoption history, this is considered one of the largest experiments of the "child saver" movement. After this time, Children's Aid Societies worked to alleviate childrens' poverty by caring for the whole family instead of removing children from their families (perhaps not surprisingly, this change happened at a time when women were heads of Children's Aid Societies).

One similarity I see between this child saver movement and the current child saver movements (including but not limited to the "Orphan Sunday" crowd), is the liberties taken with the word "orphan." So who is an orphan? Look to the dictionary, and you'll learn that the word comes from Greek (orphanos) and Late Latin (orphanus), and means "a child whose parents are dead."
On Charles Loring Brace's Orphan Train, hardly any of the children were actually orphans. Almost all of the children had at least one living parent. Some of the parents had children removed because of abuse, akin to involuntary termination of parental rights today, and some parents relinquished parental rights, but other children were simply residents of orphanages because of illness or poverty of their living parent or parents. One woman on the video talked about the day she was told she was taking the train to Texas to find a new family, and she told the orphanage matron that she couldn't go -- she had a mother in a hospital right in New York. She was told she was going anyway.

In E.J. Graff's Foreign Policy article, The Lie We Love, she noted that statistics about the number of orphans in the world are based on that skewed definition of orphan:

UNICEF itself is partly responsible for this erroneous assumption. The organization’s statistics on orphans and institutionalized children are widely quoted to justify the need for international adoption. In 2006, UNICEF reported an estimated 132 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. But the organization’s definition of “orphan” includes children who have lost just one parent, either to desertion or death. Just 10 percent of the total—13 million children—have lost both parents, and most of these live with extended family. They are also older: By UNICEF’s own estimate, 95 percent of orphans are older than 5. In other words, UNICEF’s “millions of orphans” are not healthy babies doomed to institutional misery unless Westerners adopt and save them. Rather, they are mostly older children living with extended families who need financial support.

I've blogged before about these weird definitions of orphan, including in the proposed Families for Orphans Act, which turns anyone under the age of 21 living in an institution, including a hospital or dormitory, into an orphan. Tell that to all the freshmen and sophomores living in dorms at colleges around the world!

So it seems there's nothing new under the sun -- in 1853, the emotional appeal of the word "orphan" was used to justify Charles Loring Brace's child-saving movement. And today, we throw that inaccurate statistic around -- there are 132 million orphans in need of families -- to play on emotions and justify international adoption. In both instances, we separated existing families in order to save the child, when we could be supporting the family and prevent the child from becoming an orphan in the first place.

I recognize that I'm vulnerable to the charge of hypocrisy here, since my children did not meet the definition of orphan -- or at least no one had any idea of whether they were actually orphans whose parents were dead -- and I adopted them anyway. Guilty as charged. I will say in my defense that I was satisfied at the time that their birth parents were unfindable and that they could not be returned to an existing family. But then one of my favorite movie quotes is from The Big Chill: "I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex."

Waiting for God: Religion & Korean American Adoption

Check out this chapter by Jae Ran Kim of Harlow's Monkey in Religion and Spirituality in Korean America

Are Lesbian Couples More Open to Transracial Adoption Than Heterosexual Couples?

That's the question for this 2009 study, Lesbian and Heterosexual Preadoptive Couples’ Openness to Transracial Adoption , reported in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. The study uses data from 147 White preadoptive couples (54 lesbian, 93 heterosexual) to examine their openness to transracial adoption, and their explanations for why they were or were not willing to adopt transracially.

Reviewing earlier studies, the author suggests (internal citations removed):

From a symbolic interactionist perspective, sexual orientation is a key social location that may impact how preadoptive parents construct the possibility of adopting transracially. That is, from a symbolic interactionist perspective, lesbians’ stigmatized minority status and membership in the gay community expose them to
certain experiences, values, and norms that may shape their behavior in significant ways. In this way, lesbians’ marginalized status, vulnerability to practical barriers in
the adoption process, and the social accessibility of adoption (via increasingly visible gay adoptive communities) may lead them to approach transracial adoption with greater willingness than heterosexuals. U.S. Census data suggest that lesbians are significantly more likely to have adopted internationally than heterosexual couples, a finding that may reflect women’s efforts to avoid heterosexism and discrimination in
domestic adoption, or, alternatively, genuine interest in transracial or transcultural adoption. In support of the latter possibility, Bennett studied 15 lesbian couples who adopted internationally and found that many women described themselves as being
drawn to the idea of building multiracial and multicultural families. She suggested that women’s experiences as stigmatized individuals might make them more open to adopting a different-race child.

The data gathered in the study supports this hypothesis -- 91% of lesbian adopters and 68% of heterosexual adopters indicated that they were open to adopting a child of color.

Another finding reported about couples who differed among themselves in their openness to transracial adoption:

Ultimately, however, the decision of whether to adopt a child of a different race is a couple decision; thus, all couples in which one partner was not open ultimately decided that they would limit their search to White children. This finding has implications for practitioners, whose goal should be to assist couples in communicating about and resolving their differences early in the adoption process.
Notably, heterosexual couples tended to differ more in their perspectives on openness than lesbians. Perhaps lesbian couples are more likely to endorse similar perspectives because they have engaged in more discussion about their feelings and concerns about transracial adoption, leading them to find common ground. Some scholars suggest that lesbians are more communicative in part because of their common socialization as women; consistent with this, some studies have found higher levels of emotional intimacy in lesbians’ relationships than heterosexuals.’

The entire study is worth a read, especially because of the explanations given for why couples were open or not open to transracial adoption. Because the couples were interviewed with open-ended questions, the reported narratives are especially interesting.

Thanks to kantmakm at adopttalkcanada forum for the link, which fulfills my continual geeky need for MORE DATA MORE MORE MORE DATA about adoption!

Reprint: Talking Explicitly About Race/Racism

Mamapedia has reprinted this post about talking race and racism with kids. I submitted it to them eons ago, and forgot about it! Thought I'd raise the topic again here, as well.

Kay Johnson Interview at O Solo Mama

O Solo Mama has brought us an enormously informative interview with Kay Johnson, author of Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son, discussing the documentary, China's Stolen Children, and a number of other issues in China adoption. Here's just a small nugget of information from Kay about domestic adoption in China:

Unregistered adoptions are revealed by looking at census data. In 1990, demographers estimated from sample census survey data that there were as many as 400,000 adoptions per year and that this number—as well as the percentage of
girls—was increasing. Couples often arrange “informal” adoptions secretly through friends or relatives. You know someone who is going to have an overquota child, and they know you want to adopt a girl, or someone helps find an adoptive family. After the adoption, the birth family may know where the child lives and may see her from afar though often the adoptive family doesn’t allow contact.

There are fewer registered adoptions because of the restrictive legal requirements (childless, over age 35 which has dropped to age 30). In 2000, when the legal age was dropped to 30, we know there were 50,000 registered adoptions. After that it fell. In 2001 there were 35,000 and it’s stayed around 35,000–45,000 every year. In 2008, there were 37,000 registered domestic adoptions. These are usually recorded as adoptions of foundlings but it could be your neighbour’s relative’s friend’s over-quota child who is hidden and then handed over to you—a childless couple over 30—to register as a foundling.

In the early 1990s, there were lots of real foundlings. Some orphanages would fill the hallways with cribs. There aren’t many foundlings now. There are some, but they’re few and far between, and so people who want to adopt find it harder to find them.

The whole thing is a must-read! Thank you, O Solo Mama, for bringing it to us. You've provided a fount of information for the China adoption community.

A Toast to the Red Thread!

Well, on New Year's Day we got my sister Kim and Brian well and truly married. A great start to 2010! It was a lovely and casual ceremony, with Kim wearing a purple Celtic dress and Brian wearing a kilt (yes, the girls asked him what was worn under a kilt, and he replied, "Nothing worn. Everything in good working order!").

Maya and Zoe decided when they heard that Kim was getting married that they would be the flower girl and ring bearer. No, they were never invited to be the flower girl and ring bearer, because Kim didn't want a flower girl or ring bearer! That did not stop Maya from wandering around our house tossing imaginary petals from a basket, or Zoe from taking stately steps holding a small pillow. So when Kim heard about this, we had to quickly improvise basket, petals and pillow. The girls were adorable, with the crowd going "ahhhh" with the first toss of the petals. Zoe kept the rings on the pillow despite one coming untied. Good job, girls!

Now, "casual wedding" also translated to "unplanned!" For instance, the schedule for the ceremony included a cider toast, and when I asked Kim who was making the toast, she said, "I don't know!" Yikes, I could never operate that way! Still, I didn't have an inkling what was coming when Kim asked me to corral the crowd for the toast (I assumed she was just taking advantage of my extremely well-developed bossiness skills!).

So everyone was gathered for the toast, everyone had lovely glasses of hard cider (which was yummy, btw, my first time to taste hard cider!), and Kim says, "You make the toast." Whaaaaaaat? How nice -- 2 seconds warning.

Not knowing what else to say, I told the crowd the Chinese legend of the red thread (which of course actually applies to lovers, not parent and child as we China adoptive parents would like to think!), that those meant to be together are connected by a red thread, and that no matter how long or how tangled the thread might become, it will not break, and it will bring together those so connected. I said that the red thread had finally brought Brian and Kim together -- raise your glass to toast the red thread and the new couple it brought together! (Or at least that's what I think I said -- for all I know it was all incoherent babbling!)

Whew! Good thing that red thread legend is all over adoption-land (I have to say I don't usually appreciate it there! (In fact, I sometimes visualize that thread strangling the poor child in "meant to be.")). It really saved me, so I'll put aside my aversion for now!

We're back home in Texas now. It was a great visit, and the girls' "daddy-need" really asserted itself on this trip with Brian being so nice and attentive. Maya said she wanted to stay in Vermont and have Kim as her mom so that Brian could be her daddy! Both girls followed him around like little ducks newly imprinted on a parent. Zoe decided that Brian's mom was her new grandmother, but was disappointed to discover that the marriage didn't make her cousin Aaron (Kim's son) her brother now. Sheesh, a person could get a complex!
(That's Zoe & Maya with cousin/brother Aaron)

Magic 8 Ball & Birth Parents

We're still in Vermont, and the girls are having a ball. Not only have they made snow angels and a snowman, they've gone sledding for the first time in their lives. They didn't even need all of that -- they are thrilled by the snow falling from the sky and actually sticking on the ground!

To add to the quintessential Vermont experience, we went to the Vermont Country Store, where amongst the udder balm, "Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific" Shampoo, Vermont extra-sharp cheddar, and Black Jack and Clove gum, were classic toys -- including the Magic 8 Ball.

Maya had no trouble coming up with a question -- "Will I marry Connor?" Connor is her current crush in her kindergarten class. Thank goodness, the answer was "Too soon to predict!"

Zoe pondered for a while, and then asked, "Will I find my birth parents?" Uh-oh, the answer came back, "Outlook not looking good." So of course she asked again. This time, the answer was more to her liking -- "It is decidedly so." Her next question was, "Do my birth parents think about me?" Again, not an answer she approved of -- "Not likely." When she asked again, the answer was "Absolutely!"

After the negative answers, I explained that the Magic 8 Ball was just a toy, and really couldn't predict anything. I didn't convince Zoe after she got the positive answers -- she just figures you have to ask the question twice to get the right answer!

I asked the Magic 8 Ball a question of my own: "Will my friends, real and virtual, have a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year?" The magic came through for me -- the answer was, "It is decidely so!"

So I'll add my wishes to those of the Magic 8 Ball -- have a Happy New Year!

The Baby Market

The subject is assisted reproductive technologies, and whether adoption regulation should apply, in the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, titled the Baby Market. Interesting opinions from four commentators: Diane B. Kunz, Center for Adoption Policy; Arthur Caplan, bioethicist, University of Pennsylvania; Charles P. Kindregan Jr., professor of family law; and
Rebecca Dresser, law professor, Washington University.

We're in Vermont!

We liked that little touch of "White Christmas" we got in Texas, so we decided to head to Vermont to visit my sister! Actually, we've been planning to visit for quite a while, since she's getting married on New Year's Day (how's that for an easy anniversary to remember?!).

The girls were thrilled when it started snowing today, and I was thrilled that Aunt Kim took them out in the snow and left me toasty warm to take pictures from inside.

There's likely to be a blogging slowdown this next week, and wanted to let you know why . . . .

Adoptive families' quests to trace Chinese roots often meets dead ends

From the L.A. Times, a long article about successes and failures in searching for birth family in China:

My name is Haley. I was adopted in 1995. I now live in America. I enjoy singing and playing the violin and hanging out with my friends. I have a good life, but I would like to find my biological family.

Just minutes after Jeannie Butler and her adopted daughter, Haley, tacked a Chinese-language poster with this message to a wall in the Yangtze River village where she had been abandoned, a woman emerged from a restaurant next door and did a double-take.

The woman stared hard at Haley, 14, then at the baby photo on the poster.

"Oh, my gosh, she looks just like my cousin's daughters!" she blurted out as an interpreter with the Butlers translated.

A flurry of cellphone calls ensued. By that evening, Haley had met her biological father and the eldest of three biological sisters. The reunion in July went so well
that Haley and her parents are spending the Christmas season this year with her
extended biological family in China. They hope to meet the birth mother Tuesday.

Such encounters are rare for the thousands of American families who have adopted Chinese children. But increasingly these families are making the return journey to China, not merely as tourists climbing the Great Wall and steeping their daughters (and they are almost all girls) in Chinese culture, but as detectives trying to unravel the most elusive mystery of all: Who is my child?

Who are her biological parents, and where are they from? Is she Han Chinese or a member of one of the many ethnic minorities? Does she have a biological sibling? And, most important, how did she come to be abandoned and referred for adoption?

The number of Chinese adoptees looking for their birth parents is expected to rise as the girls, most of them still very young, reach adolescence and then adulthood. But in China, the families often confront an entrenched culture of secrecy that clashes with Americans' presumed right to know.

Non-Hague Countries, Adoption & Child Trafficking

Last month, Australia's Attorney General expressed concern that the Ethiopia-Australia adoption program did not comply with the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption:

DESPERATE families seeking to adopt children from overseas have been dealt a blow after the Attorney-General's Department halted Australia's largest international adoption program.

Frustrated adoption groups claim steps taken by the Rudd Government to free up adoption processes have instead buried it under another layer of red tape.

Australia has an average 300 international adoptions a year, the largest number, about 40, from Ethiopia. But the program has been suspended amid fears a request for payments to help needy children left behind breaks international laws on child trafficking.

A spokesman for the Attorney-General's Department said: "The apparent link between the provision of financial assistance and the referral of children for adoption
is inconsistent with our understanding of our obligations under the Hague Convention."

It's an interesting point, because what Australia is concerned about, it seems, is NOT individual PAPs being asked to donate by orphanages (though that would be a problem under the Hague Convention if the adoption was CONDITIONED on the donation), or the recent reports out of Ethiopia of adoption corruption, but that the Ethiopian government has requested that the Australian government provide community development aid as a condition to continue adoption placements to Australia:

A key reason for the suspension is a new requirement of the Ethiopian Government that the program enter into a formal agreement to provide community development assistance. The Australian program has previously been exempt from the requirement to provide financial/material assistance because of its unique Government-to-Government arrangement. We have recently been advised that this exemption can no longer continue.

The Hague Convention is full of language designed at avoiding "the sale of, or traffic in children." Money in exchange for consent to adopt is violative of the Convention. It further says in resounding terms, "No one shall derive improper financial or other gain from an activity related to an intercountry adoption." (BTW, proper financial gain includes payment of reasonable expenses for the care of children prior to adoption, and reasonable payment for adoption services.) So as between two countries who have signed the Hague Convention, I'd think the Ethiopian proposal quite problematic.

But Ethiopia is not a signatory to the Hague Convention, so there is no requirement that it follow the convention. And the convention itself creates procedures to be followed BETWEEN convention states, not between a convention state like Australia or the U.S. and a non-convention state like Ethiopia. One could argue that payments to Ethiopia from Australia or the U.S., even when made in order to make children available for adoption to these countries, would not violate the Hague Convention on intercountry adoption. And though the Convention of the Rights of the Child has similar language to the Hague concerning financial gain in adoption, the U.S. (and the good folks of Somalia -- good company, huh?) has not signed the CRC.

So when Australia or the U.S. deal with adoptions from non-Hague countries, is there any requirement to avoid child trafficking, the sale of children? It sounds like other countries which do adoptions from Ethiopia have been paying development aid as a condition of allowing adoptions, since the Australian reporting says Australia has been getting an exemption from the development aid for adoption scheme. So while these other countries may not be violating the Hague Convention, is there anything else to be concerned with?

The U.S. signed the U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress & Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women & Children in 2005, and it binds receiving countries as well as sending countries to cooperate to prevent trafficking. "Trafficking in persons" includes “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of . . . the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person." But that treaty deals mostly with cooperation in criminalization of transnational trafficking. Beyond that, there's language about each country agreeing to strengthen internal policies and legislation to combat trafficking. But the language seems to require the U.S. to avoid complicity in trafficking of children, doesn't it? And giving development aid to the Ethiopian government "to achieve the consent" of Ethiopia, which clearly has "control over" children in its orphanages, clearly fits the definition of "trafficking in persons."

But the trafficking protocol prevents buying and selling of persons for purposes of exploitation: "Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs." Hmmm, interesting, isn't it, that buying and selling children, on its own, is not trafficking -- only buying and selling for purposes of exploitation. And there's disagreement, of course, about whether buying and selling children for adoption is exploitation.

An Ethiopian website reports on the decision of Australia to suspend the adoption program, and quotes one person as calling the Ethiopian government's cash for kids program "modern-day slavery," and some have argued that adoption in general is like slavery. I don't think, though, that governments, including the U.S., would be convinced that adoption = slavery = exploitation. I think it would be easier to make the argument that conditioning adoption on the provision of money that is not related to the expenses of adoption -- whether the condition is imposed by individuals or institutions or governments -- is child trafficking and exploitative.

Australia's other treaty obligations (it is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the anti-trafficking Protocol) may justify its stance on Ethiopia's request for aid as a condition to allow adoptions to Australia, but I'm not sure that the Hague Convention does. And that strikes me as a fault with the Hague Convention, not with Australia's position that conditioning an adoption program on governmental payments is problematic. Perhaps it is time to take another step forward in ending adoption corruption and require Hague countries to only do adoptions with other Hague countries.