Surrogacy or Adoption? Which is Best?

This article weighs in on the debate, Surrogacy or Adoption?  Which is Best?:

The debate between surrogacy or adoption is won by the benefits of surrogacy hands down in our estimation. Are you prepared for the unpredictable and life long consequences of adoption as you contemplate one of the most important decisions of your life?

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With the surrogacy or adoption issue it's not the child. It's where it came from that is the risk. You can never be absolutely certain about what the parents of the child you may adopt were like. The typical woman who places a child for adoption is not really a woman at all. She is usually a teenage girl, unemployed, uneducated, on welfare and can't afford to take care of a child. She often does not know which of her sexual partners was the real father. There are aspects you will never know, such as what emotional and psychological damage the child may have in the long run. In nearly every case of adoption there are problems down the road that will impact your family, for better or worse.

I was stuck the other day upon seeing Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt at the Olympics on TV with their adopted daughter from Africa. She was still clutching a security blanket and sucking her thumb. Also, there was the tragedy in February of 2010 when Marie Osmond's adopted son committed suicide.

Ugh.  The adoptee as irretrievably broken -- pathological, even -- is another favorite media meme.  Because, of course, no kids raised by their biological parents use a security blanket or suck their thumbs and certainly none of them commit suicide. And then there's all the insulting stereotypes about birth mothers -- on welfare, promiscuous, doesn't know who the baby daddy is.  Double ugh.

Families, Not Orphanages

This report, Families, Not Orphanages, from Better Care Network, which is affiliated with Unicef and USAID, assails institutional care for children and the preference for family care:

 With particular attention to lower income countries, this paper examines the mismatch between children’s needs and the realities and long-term effects of residential institutions. Evidence presented in this paper indicates that the number of orphanages is increasing, particularly in countries impacted by conflict, displacement, AIDS, high poverty rates or a combination of these factors. The paper examines available evidence on the typical reasons why children end up in institutions, and the consequences and costs of providing this type of care compared to other options. The paper concludes with a description of better care alternatives and recommendations for policy-makers. (p. 3)

Some interesting passages:

The number of children in institutional care around the world is difficult to determine due to inadequate monitoring by governments. Based on extrapolations from limited existing data, UNICEF estimates that at least two million children are in orphanages around the world, acknowledging that this is probably a significant underestimate. (p. 3)
Studies focusing on the reasons for institutional placements consistently reflect that poverty is the driving force behind their placement. For example, a study based on case studies of Sri Lanka, Bulgaria and Moldova found, “that poverty is a major underlying cause of children being received into institutional care and that such reception into care is a costly, inappropriate and often harmful response to adverse economic circumstances.” Furthermore, the case studies show “that resources committed to institutions can be more effectively used to combat poverty if provided to alternative, community-based support organizations for children and families.”  (p. 7)

Impoverished families use orphanages as a mechanism for coping with their economic situation; it is a way for families to secure access to services or better material conditions for their own children and others in their care. Consequently, residential institutions become an expensive and inefficient way to cope with poverty and other forms of household stress. ( p. 8)
 
In the history of many developing countries, institutional care is a relatively recent import. In most cases, it was introduced early in the twentieth century by missionaries or colonial governments, replicating what was then common in their home countries. At the same time, institutional care has largely been judged to be developmentally inappropriate and phased out of developed countries that continue to support this care in poorer countries. (p. 8)

Regrettably, much of the popular media coverage of AIDS-related orphaning suggests that AIDS has left vast numbers of children on their own. Statistics on orphaning reported by UNICEF and other organizations have raised global awareness, but they have also created misunderstandings. Such statistics estimate the number of children per country and globally who have lost one or both parents. The vast majority of these orphans, however, are living with a surviving parent or relatives. Of the estimated 145 million children estimated to be orphans, about 9 per cent have lost both parents This important point is rarely made when the media cite orphan figures. Furthermore, evidence suggests that the vast majority of children who have lost both parents are living with an aunt, uncle, grandparent or other extended-family member. (p. 13)

Communities can be organized to identify and support particularly vulnerable children and their families. Local faith communities have often demonstrated that they have great capacity to mobilize limited resources and funding to benefit especially vulnerable children. (p. 14)

The services necessary to prevent unnecessary family separation, reunite institutionalized children and expand quality foster care and adoption require significant financial investments in the short term, but as expensive residential facilities are shut down, resources can be redirected and better used to strengthen family care. Motivating governments, international organizations, NGOs and other policy actors to invest in family support services and alternative care is not easy. Children in institutions tend to be out of sight and out of mind, but the benefits to society of reforming care manifest over time in the lives of more intelligent, functional and socially integrated children, as well as in the lives of the adults thatthey become. (p. 21)

One section contains a very good overview of better care alternatives, including: Family support and strengthening (p. 15), Family reunification (p. 16), Kinship care (p. 16), Foster care (p. 17), Kafala (p. 18), and Adoption (p. 18).  As to adoption, after first noting that the Hague Convention requires in-country placements whenever possible, the report states:

In some developing countries, international adoption is more common than domestic adoption. However, the relative frequency of domestic adoption is increasing in many countries. In India, for example, local adoption was rare and faced certain cultural constraints. In 1989, India adopted national regulations specifying that at least 25 per cent of adoptions would be domestic, and the number of Indian children adopted has substantially increased. By 2005, domestic adoptions exceeded international adoptions.

The whole report is worth reading;  it's very well researched and cites to many specific programs in a variety of countries -- very informative.

Who adopts black children?

Really?  "Mostly white people" adopt black children?  I would hazard to guess that  more African-American parents have adopted African-American children than white parents have. Consider, for example, kinship placements and step-parent adoption which already account for the vast majority of adoptions in the U.S. And then think of the relatively small number of transracial adoptions -- according to the 2000 census, only 17% of adopted children are transracially adopted. That makes the VAST majority of adopted children in same-race placements.  And according to this report, African-American women were more likely to be seeking to adopt than white women.

Looks to me like Bruce Tinsley, the cartoonist, is operating under some mistaken assumptions. I wouldn't necessarily expect Charles Schulz to fact-check before having Lucy offer Charlie Brown advice, but for a political cartoon like Mallard Fillmore, I'd like to think the facts would be important. Instead, we seem to be operating under some negative impressions about African-Americans being somehow unable to care for African-American children.

And I wonder if the cartoonist is aware of the history of discrimination against African-American adoption in the U.S.  Consider this from the invaluable Adoption History Project:

For a good part of the twentieth century, African-American birth parents and children were simply denied adoption services by agencies because of their religion, race, or both. In some states with large African-American populations, such as Florida and Louisiana, not a single African-American child was placed for adoption by an agency for many years running as late as the 1940s. Discriminated against and reluctant to establish racially-exclusive organizations when integration was synonymous with equality, African Americans relied instead on traditions of informal adoption to take care of their own.

By midcentury, estimates were that up to 50,000 African-American children were in need of adoption, but would probably never find permanent homes. The U.S. Children's Bureau began including race in its reporting system in 1948 and during the 1950s, a number of innovative programs around the country began recruiting non-white parents. From New York to Chicago and Los Angeles to Washington, DC, child welfare professionals and civil rights activists came together to promote culturally sensitive policies, integrate agency staff, and do community outreach. “You don't have to be a Joe Louis or a Jackie Robinson to adopt children,” declared one encouraging radio spot created by the Citizens' Committee on Negro Adoptions of Lake County, Indiana.

So what do you think?  Why include "people who adopt black children" in this cartoon?  What message about transracial adoption do you think the cartoonist is trying to convey?

What's wrong with rescuing orphans?

Not a single thing.  We all want orphans rescued from war, poverty, illness, famine, corrupt & totalitarian governments, gender inequality -- all the things that lead to their "orphanhood." I also think it is a wonderful thing for true orphans to find families. But I think it's a problem when "rescuing orphans" is equated with adoption.

The first problem -- gratitude.  Have you ever heard the old saw that a man ought to date a homely woman, since homely women are likely to be grateful for the attention?  It's an ugly suggestion, isn't it?  And we can all look at such a relationship and see it as inauthentic, exploitative, unhealthy.  Any relationship where one person feels superior and the other is expected to be grateful is completely corrosive.  Talking about adoption as the rescue of needy, pitiful orphans by white knights on white chargers sets up that same unequal power dynamic.  Feeling inferior is profoundly damaging to self-esteem, identity, human dignity. I think it's not just damaging to adopted persons, but to adoptive persons, too.  Feeling superior does terrible things to your character, too.

And the suggestion is that, like that homely woman, the "rescued" adoptee should be grateful for everything that everyone else gets to take for granted.  At the Declassified Adoptee, Amanda talks about the way the "at least you weren't aborted" meme enforces gratitude in adoptees:

When you have to be 100 times more grateful than everyone else on the planet because of the assumption that your mother considered aborting you, for being able to breathe the same air everyone else breathes.....what reason would you ever have to be allowed to complain about anything...ever? You have no right to pain. You have no rights to rights. You have no right to be treated as all other human beings when the very foundation of your existence is this terrible idea that you are less deserving of humanity than every other person on the planet.

That same expectation of gratitude comes from being rescued from your abandonment, your institutionalization, your poverty, your homelessness, your loneliness. . . .

But why should I care if some other adoptive family has a savior complex, sees adoption as rescue, and tweets that their adoption trip is a "mission to free an orphan?"  It won't affect my family, will it?  Yes, actually, it will.  This theme of adoption as rescue is pervasive, as Mei-Ling cogently points out:

Yes, yes, I know many of you are about to protest your child shouldn’t need to feel grateful or indebted. I’m telling you this regardless of whether or not adoptive parents feel as though they have saved a child. I’m telling you: This is how adoption is presented.

Why? It doesn’t matter how many times you tell me you didn’t do it to be valued as a saviour. It doesn’t matter if you adopted because you simply wanted a child to love and not be seen as a rescue effort.

I can’t recall how many parents will comment, “No, my child should never have to feel grateful that he has a loving family. I always tell neighbour xx that we’re the lucky ones to have him.”

I get what you’re saying. That still won’t erase the image of the indebted child rotting in an orphanage, and the adoptive parents who are selfless. That is the message that the media, that the public swallows.

And it’s not going away any time soon.

Not only is it not going away any time soon, I'm afraid the idea of "rescuing orphans" by adopting them is strengthening.  As this article explains, it's now "a movement."

Which leads me to a second problem with "rescuing orphans" -- ends justify the means.  Movements can be world-changingly positive.  They can also be dangerous.  Sometimes when we focus on the great need of orphans to be rescued from deplorable conditions, we start to believe that ANYTHING we do to cure this great wrong is justified.  We don't stop to ask if the children are truly orphans or if they have extended family who can care for them, or if they truly need to be adopted.  Consider Exhibit 1 -- the group of missionaries who went to Haiti after the earthquake, scooping up children, orphan and non-orphan alike, in an ill-considered attempt to rescue them.  Ethical adoption practices are extremely important and should never be overlooked in our eagerness to rescue orphans.  We have to be acutely aware that almost every time adoption builds a family, it has first torn a family apart. 

A third problem with adoption as rescue -- it won't work.  Let's face it -- the "orphan crisis" we hear about, the 132 million or 147 million or the 163 million orphans around the world (those are UNICEF numbers, but they don't really represent true orphans), will not be solved by adoption.  Even if we successfully placed all 163 million orphans in new adoptive homes, the conditions that produce orphans -- war, poverty, illness, gender inequality -- would keep on churning out orphans.  The ONLY way to resolve the orphan crisis is to work to end the conditions that cause kids to need out-of-family care.  The orphan crisis will end when we take care of vulnerable FAMILIES.

I was really touched when a reader wrote on her blog that she'd never thought about it that way before reading what I said, that PREVENTING orphans was the only way to solve the orphan crises.  She said that it changed how she prayed for orphans!  She now prays that children NOT be orphaned before she prays that those who are truly orphaned find new homes.  I just love that.

A final problem I have with the rescue theme is that it is often presented as a uniquely Christian obligation to adopt orphans. As a Christian, I take as true James 1:27:  "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress."  As a Catholic, I believe that salvation comes from faith AND good works, and that that is why James talks about DOING as religion in this passage.  But the doing is to care for orphans and widows, not to adopt or marry them. Any other reading, I believe, is theologically unsound.  It's asking the Bible to mean something it just doesn't say.

And once adoption becomes a uniquely Christian obligation, we start excluding suitable adoptive parents based on some Christian beliefs, having the perversely opposite effect of making it harder to place orphans.  Gay and lesbian parents, unmarried couples, single women, Muslim parents, atheist parents, parents considered insufficiently Christian or the wrong kind of Christian, just won't do, it seems, when we see adoption as a Christian mandate.

There are lots of churches and organizations and individuals, Christian and otherwise, who are doing great work in caring for orphans.  I applaud their work, I donate to such organizations.  But caring for orphans and adopting children are two different things.  I don't confuse my charity work with the adoption of my girls.  I wish the rest of the world would keep the distinction in mind, too.

Talking to the Teacher about Race

You've likely had the "back to school adoption talk" with your child's teacher by now.  But have you had the race talk?  This blog post discusses both, and here's an excerpt from the race talk:

Raising the specter of race in the classroom is even dicier because not only is race a subject that most people think they know all about, but it makes a lot of folks uncomfortable. Almost all the teachers at our school are white, and though nearly 20 percent of the students are children of color, I always get the feeling that I’m one of the only parents who has ever thrown the subject of race out there with a straight-forward, yet complex, question like: “My child looks different from most of the children in the class. Have you dealt with race-related comments or teasing among students in the past?”

Every time I’ve posed that question, the teacher has simply blanched before quickly recovering to reassure me that nothing like that has happened, ever. This is the moment in the meeting when I’m certain that I’ve totally screwed things up by making the teacher feel insulted or marking myself out as a rogue officer with the PC police. In these moments, I take a deep breath and share an anecdote or two about race-related comments that my kids have endured at summer camp or in the park, right here in our lovely community. I try to reassure the teacher that I’m not expecting this kind of problem at school but that I know from experience such things are possible. If any kind of teasing or bullying happens at school, including race-related incidents, I would like to work with the teacher to address it appropriately.

Invariably, I leave these meetings feeling jangly, worried, and exposed. I may actually be a hyper-vigilant nut.

Yes, I dread these back-to-school conversations, too.  But given the racial teasing incidents my girls have experienced at school, I persist . . . .
 
What about you?  Have you talked to your child's teacher about race as well as adoption?

Cowboy Junkies: Alt-Country via Beijing Opera

This review of the latest offering from the adoption-and-China-connected group Cowboy Junkies is really interesting:

If Beijing Opera isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Toronto’s veteran alt-country band Cowboy Junkies, you’ll be forgiven. There’s quite a musical gap between the slow, sexy huskiness of Margo Timmins and the high-pitched urgency of Beijing Opera. Yet Beijing Opera was a strong influence in the creation of the Junkies’ latest project. You might not actually hear it, but it’s there in the fabric of Renmin Park, a recently released concept album reborn out of a family pilgrimage to China.

Margo’s brother Michael Timmins wasn’t looking for his next musical project when he set off for the city of Jingjiang two years ago with his family. He was looking for something much more profound: His young daughters, then 6 and 11, had both been adopted from China. (He also has a biological son, who was 8 at the time.) On this trip, the girls would visit the orphanages where they began their lives and be immersed in their native culture.

Michael planned to take a three-month break from music while there, but this proved impossible. He started attending a daily gathering of Beijing opera fans – a sort of karaoke club where a handful of people of varying musical talents would play instruments and sing Beijing Opera. At the park where they met, he also heard folk music and “bad pop music blaring out of boom boxes.” He found a local music fanatic who schooled him in good Chinese pop.

* * *

For Renmin Park, the band built tracks around loops of Michael’s field recordings. Along with the loose story of two lovers destined for disappointment are the sounds of Jingjiang: children singing, badminton players. It begins with a tinny recording of the music Michael’s family heard blaring out of a loudspeaker each morning, to which students would perform calisthenics. There are also two covers of Chinese pop songs.

* * *

The project has great personal meaning for Margo: It was not only born out of a life-altering trip for her nieces, but she herself is an adoptive mother. She adopted her son Ed, now 7, from Russia when he was 11 months old.

“The songs that deal with the adopted children, part of it is kind of exposing a part of my life,” she says. “It’s like reading your diary or your journal or something.... You’re standing there quite naked exposing your deepest emotions.

 At the band's website, you can find some blog posts and photos about the Renmin Park album.

Profile of Mei Magazine

Thought y'all might enjoy this newspaper profile of Mei Magazine:

Traci Wright admits that she and her husband, Paul, were a little naive when they got the idea of creating a new national magazine and publishing it from their Brandon home.

"Frankly, if we had known what we were getting ourselves into, we probably wouldn't have done it," she said.

What they were getting themselves into, they soon learned, was an awful lot of work for virtually no money.

But after five years, Wright wouldn't consider giving up Mei Magazine. It's a passion for her and an important part of the lives of her thousands of readers.

Mei, which is pronounced "may" and is the Mandarin Chinese word for "beautiful," targets Asian girls who have been adopted by American parents. The magazine has a fairly small but loyal readership, Wright said. Subscribers total about 2,500 girls throughout the United States and a few in other countries.

My girls are part of that small group of subscribers, and I've even written a piece for the magazine, so you can count us as fans of Mei Magazine!

Frogs

I've linked before to short-short fiction by Tai Dong Huai, an adult Chinese adoptee (see here (referencing the "Going Home Barbie") and here and here and here).  Here's an excerpt from another, called Frogs, about that moment of first meeting between adoptive parents and child:

And then it was just the three of us. A moment of stillness. My mom, her arms exhausted, tried to put me down. I wailed. She tried to pick me back up, but I screamed even louder. My father took a shot, but I continued going off like the victim of a murder-in-progress. At first, nothing could calm me. Not the American toys they brought, nor the Western fairy tales they read, nor the bright red pacifier they pushed toward my uncooperative lips. I only began to settle when they started to hop. How they came upon this solution they cannot, or will not, say. But the image is strong. A ten-month old Chinese girl in a hotel-issued crib, and two middle-aged white people hopping around the room in order to keep her still.

Even after two hours, after the people below banged on the ceiling and the couple next-door complained to the desk clerk, they continued to hop. "Like frogs," my adoptive mom will say at this point. "Sometimes together, sometimes taking turns, but never stopping until you finally fell off to sleep."

"We didn't know what we were going to do," my adoptive dad will add. "We were afraid we'd made the biggest mistake of our lives."

"But it wasn't," I'll say. "Right?"

My mom will smile and say, "We had them send up the two coldest beers they had."

I love her work, and love this description of her work in this review -- "just the right amount of resentment. Not too much; not too little. Just right." 

In Blind Pursuit of Racial Equality

As if we needed more proof that the "colorblind" approach to race and racism doesn't work, this study:

"Colorblindness" has emerged as central strategy for managing racial diversity in schools, business, politics, and the law, with the hope that deemphasizing racial differences will lead to equality, tolerance and inclusion. However, new research from the Kellogg School of Management shows that promoting colorblindness can lead people to turn a blind eye to even overt examples of racial discrimination and hamper the prospect for intervention.

In a new study entitled "In Blind Pursuit of Racial Equality?," researchers sought to determine the impact of colorblindness on elementary school students' capacity to recognize racially motivated incidents and subsequently report them to facilitate adult intervention.

* * *

In their experiment, the researchers explored the effects of promoting a colorblind approach to diversity among 8- to 11-year-old students. First, students reviewed different versions of a multimedia storybook, half received a colorblind version and the other half received a value-diversity version. In both stories, the narrator championed racial justice, but the colorblind version encouraged minimizing race-based distinctions, whereas the value-diversity version encouraged embracing these differences. ("We need to focus on how we are similar to our neighbors rather than how we are different" vs. "We want to show everyone that race is important because our racial differences make us special.")

After the storybooks were read, the students listened to three stories featuring varying degrees of racial bias: a control story in which a White child was marginalized by his White schoolmate's contribution to a school science project; an ambiguous story regarding a White student's exclusion of a Black student from his birthday party; and an explicitly biased story describing a White student's unprovoked assault of a Black student in a soccer game. After the stories, students were asked to describe the three events and their responses were video recorded.

The results found that students who had read the value-diversity version of the storybook were more likely to detect evidence of racial discrimination: 43 percent of students perceived discrimination in the ambiguous story and 77 percent perceived discrimination in the explicitly biased story.

In the colorblind condition, on the other hand, the frequency with which students detected discrimination dropped significantly, to 10 percent of children for the ambiguous story, and to only 50 percent in the explicit story—a scenario that portrayed overt evidence of racially biased behavior.

This decline in sensitivity has potentially severe consequences, according to the researchers. The students were later asked to recall the three stories presented to them via the storybook, and their video recorded descriptions were then presented to real schoolteachers. The students initially primed with a colorblind mindset described the stories in a manner significantly less likely to trigger adult intervention than students exposed to the value-diversity mindset.

* * *

"Despite good intentions to promote egalitarianism through colorblindness, our findings show that doing so sometimes elicits the exact opposite outcome, permitting even explicit forms of racial discrimination to go undetected and unaddressed," said Apfelbaum. "Perhaps most alarming, on the surface, colorblindness appears to work quite well—reported incidents of bias do decrease. In spite of such encouraging signs, however, our study suggests that colorblindness may not reduce bias as much as it adjusts the lens through which bias is perceived."

Think of the implications of that last paragraph for a minority child raised in a "colorblind" home -- the parents will hear very little about racialized incidents toward the child and think that their colorblind approach is working.  The child is likely to be confused by the difference between what she hears and what occurs to her.  She may well internalize incidences of bias, thinking there's something wrong with her instead of the bad actors.  And she'll never tell her parents . . . .

Underage Mothers Consenting to Adoption

According to Jane Jeong Trenka, this report (in Korean, and Google Translate doesn't help much) is about the new adoption law revision in Korea, and that under age birth mothers must now go to court to approve their relinquishments for adoption.  The concern is the presence of adoption brokers who are getting babies from under age women and selling them for as much as $20,000 for domestic adoption.

Did you know that in the U.S., in many states, a minor girl can voluntarily relinquish her child without judicial oversight, without counseling, without parental consent, without the impartial advice of any adult? I have a hard time with this -- I can't imagine a more life-altering choice for a girl than to place a child for adoption.

Another potentially life-altering decision for a girl is to have an abortion, and states go to great lengths to make sure that is an informed choice, including requirements that the girl be informed of her parenting options, the process for establishing paternity, the requirement that fathers pay child support, the state aid available for single mothers, etc. State statutes provide for parental notification or oversight by a judge.

But no such requirements when a minor girl signs away her parental rights in most jurisdictions in the United States.  Isn't there something wrong with this picture?

21 Guidelines for Adoption

From the Beacon Herald of Canada:

Putting the needs of children and families first and acting in culturally appropriate ways that respect the sovereignty of countries are among 21 broadly based recommendations stemming from an inter-country adoption summit held in Stratford.

Conference co-chairperson Robert Ballard, associate chairperson of the speech communication program at the University of Waterloo, urged researchers, government and adoption agency representatives to use them as the basis for further dialogue and action.

Although there was not necessarily even majority agreement on the recommendations, Ballard said there's broad agreement that significant changes are required regarding inter-country adoptions.

Draft recommendations resulting from roundtable discussions include providing better support for birth families, more preparation for adoptive families and giving more attention to histories -- including medical histories -- of children up for adoption.

Consensus from roundtable discussions included a call for improved communication with international agencies such as UNICEF and a suggestion there needs to be longer list of countries-of-origin for adopted children.

Recommendations call on agencies, governments and families to respect the Hague Convention standard even for non- Hague adoptions.

* * *
 
Summarizing the thrust of the recommendations, Ballard said there needs to be more communication and collaboration among countries as well as "an increased level of trust and respect for cultural differences and sovereignty."

Developed nations have the money and often set the agendas, he said, but need to respect what nations such as Haiti, Vietnam or Ethiopia are doing.

Attention often is given to the adopting families because they are the ones pushing the adoption, he said, but there needs to be better education and support for the birth parents and for adoptees.

Ballard said the UW conference in Stratford is the first he knows of that has brought so many parties together having an interest in adoptions and where the organizer does not have a vested interest.

Ballard was himself adopted from Vietnam in 1975 at the conclusion of the Vietnam War and grew up in the U.S.

I sure like to see recommendations from a conference chaired by an adopted person, the persons most affected and usually most silenced in adoption.

New Adoption-Themed Movie: Like Dandelion Dust

Like Dandelion Dust hit theaters yesterday, though it's been around the film festival circuit for about a year now.  Has anyone seen it?  I'd have to say the reviews have been "mixed." USA Today touts it as "the next Blind Side."  The New York Times praised the acting but called the movie formulaic, with this vaguely snooty concluding line: "The only wrinkle this tale has to offer is a concluding sequence set in Haiti, which feels vaguely exploitive. But for those who like this genre of film, this one executes the formula very well."

The movie is based on this book by Karen Kingsbury, a Christian writer.  Conventional wisdom would say not to expect the New York Times to give rave reviews to a Christian-themed movie.  But the Baptist Press review was also mixed:

So-called nightmare adoption scenarios are rare in the real world, but one is set to play out on the big screen Sept. 24 when "Like Dandelion Dust," based on a Karen Kingsbury best-selling novel, releases nationally.

The movie has a gripping storyline that many viewers will find compelling: a couple adopts a boy at birth, only to discover six years later that the birth parents are trying to get him back. The legal twist? The birth father, who was in jail that whole time and didn't even know he had a son until he was released, learns that his signature consenting to the adoption was forged. Because it was forged, the adoptive parents have no legal rights to the child. And, for the rest of the movie, the two couples fight for the 6-year-old boy, who, amazingly, didn't even know he was adopted.

As an adoptive parent of a 2-year-old boy, I love movies about adoption. "Bella" still ranks among my all-time favorites. Like Dandelion Dust, though, is a different matter.

The reviewer notes, "Watching it before you adopt is tantamount to watching "United 93" before you fly."  It's clear that his real concern about the movie is that it might deter some from adopting.  He even opines that the movie would be liked by adult adoptees who will be gratified to see that their birth parents and their adoptive parents love them and are willing to fight over them.  Hmmmm, somehow I'm thinking, not so much!

I'm pleased, though, that he mentions the inadvisability of NOT telling your child he's adopted, like the adoptive parents in this story did.  (What can I say, this blog isn't called Adoption Talk for nothin'!):

The general public likely also will overlook a storyline that was even more unbelievable: The boy was clueless as to his background.

Adoption agencies encourage adoptive couples to be honest with their children, telling them about their origins from the moment they learn to talk. It's the right thing to do and it avoids having to schedule "the talk" when they're older.

Right on!

I don't think I'll be seeing this movie, because I quite agree with the reviewer from Baptist Press on this point:  "It's not enjoyable in real life to watch couples battle over a child, and it's no more fun on the big screen."  Just not my cup of tea.

If you've seen it, let us know your thoughts!

A newborn adoption disrupted

So many disruption stories are about older child adoption and/or international adoption.  Here's one in the Chicago Tribune about a family that adopted a newborn domestically:

After Ellie endured dozens of clinicians and multiple hospitalizations, the Gertzes came to the sad realization that their daughter would never be able to function in the family constellation. They faced a wrenching dilemma: Do they give up their daughter to protect everyone else?

Lori Gertz told of the family's struggle in a blog, and she and her husband, Craig, 45, shared their story with the Tribune in an effort to help other families by raising awareness and calling for more resources for children with mental illness.

Eight years ago, giving up their daughter would have been unfathomable. The Gertzes had one son — Jonah, then almost 4 — and longed to have more children, but, after seven miscarriages and Lori Gertz nearing 40, the window was closing. So they turned to adoption.

Eventually, a 34-year-old New Jersey woman chose them from an online site, just eight weeks before her due date. On Jan. 5, 2003, Lori Gertz accompanied the birth mother into the delivery room. She was the first one to hold and feed the 8-pound newborn.

"No one could have felt luckier and more joyful than us," Lori Gertz said. "We have beautiful photos of that day … proof of a mother doing only what was in the best interest of her child. I wish she had that presence of mind when Ellie was in utero."

* * *

In 2005, it took Ellie pushing Lori Gertz — now eight months pregnant with Talia — down a flight of stairs for others to recognize this wasn't about the "terrible twos" or bad parenting. This was something that could not have been prevented by the Gertzes.

When they met Ellie's birth mother, she revealed few habits beyond bingo and cigarettes, and nothing in her pristine medical records suggested otherwise.

Only after the woman's brother started e-mailing the Gertzes did they discover other vices. She began drinking and smoking pot in her teens, graduating to PCP, then crack cocaine, a routine she continued during her first trimester. "I know she was clean for the remainder of her pregnancy because she was in jail," wrote the brother.

Read the whole thing, and then let us know what you think.

Lessons for Social Workers

From Social Work Today mag, a piece about the lessons social workers can learn from the Russian adoption debacle where adoptive mom Tory-Ann Hansen sent 8-year-old Artyom alone back to Russia saying she no longer wanted to parent the child she'd adopted less than a year before:

In this blame game, many longstanding questions surface about social work practice and policy in international adoption. Social workers counseling prospective adoptive parents need advanced knowledge of the unique challenges facing any adoptive family, families who adopt children with difficult histories, and children from other countries, including Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Clinicians need a sound grasp of the clinical, policy, and ethical dilemmas involved in international adoption so they can provide effective care.

* * *

Intercountry adoption presents predictable issues for children. Some U.S. adoptive parents gravitate toward adopting a child from another country because they want no contact with the child’s birth family. This lack of understanding a child’s need for connection, identity, and information may deepen the child’s sense of loss. Today’s adoptive parents are advised to maintain some sort of contact with the child’s birth family and weave the child’s ethnicity into the fabric of adoptive family life by, for example, eating foods, celebrating holidays, speaking the language, or socializing with people from the child’s country of origin. Doing so can be hard in a family’s busy life and requires earnest, sincere, ongoing parental commitment and effort.

While all adoptees encounter loss, children adopted from other countries face additional losses. These may be minimized, denied, and dismissed in a world that sees adoptees as lucky to have been rescued from an orphanage or poverty abroad.

***

Adoption agencies are paid to make adoptions happen. This may create an incentive that does not serve the best interests of children or families. Biological families may not get the support they need to parent. Prospective adoptive parents may be encouraged to overlook misgivings about adoption as a path to parenthood or their compatibility with a particular child. Agencies may do an inadequate job of helping prospective parents with unrealistic expectations screen themselves out of the adoption process.

* * *

Families are best able to explore these issues in the context of a noncoercive collaborative relationship with a clinician who is well educated about adoption issues and takes a nonjudgmental, strengths-based stance. Each adoptive family needs access to a longstanding relationship with an adoption-informed clinician who can help them navigate the turbulent waters they may encounter on the lifelong adoption journey. Training programs to prepare clinicians for this highly specialized work are needed.

* * *

The decision to parent is a leap of faith—in oneself, the child, and the future. Children in Eastern European orphanages desperately need families. Justice, which forms the heart of social work’s mission, demands that all reasonable efforts be made to keep children safe within the protection of their birth families; when that is impossible, they are best served when nurtured and protected by families within their countries of origin. International social welfare programs should pursue these goals. When children cross national boundaries for adoption, their new families also need support and compassion.

Really good stuff here!  But I'd like to think that ALL adoption social workers already know all of this. . . .


And what about this line:  "[Adoption} Agencies may do an inadequate job of helping prospective parents with unrealistic expectations screen themselves out of the adoption process." Huh?  Why do we talk about PAPs screening themselves out?  Isn't that the social worker's job???

How Did You Celebrate?

We had a fun Autumn Moon Festival  celebration last night.  Because of after-school activities we couldn't start until after 7 p.m., so we kept it simple.  We met good friends at a Chinese restaurant for dinner.  It's always funny when we go to this particular restaurants.  Our friends have been going much longer than we have to this particular restaurant, so long that they've nicknamed it "Baby Chinese," since Sydney has been going there since she was a baby.  Our family has discovered the restaurant more recently. 

Now, the one thing our families have in common is that we have children from China.  And, yes, the other mom and I can be proud of our (ahem) zaftig figures.  But no one would confuse one for the other.  But we've managed to completely confuse the poor Chinese man who owns the restaurant.  Sometimes Zoe goes with the other family.  Sometimes she comes with our family.  Sometimes our two families go together.  I'm thinking Sydney might have gone with us one time.  So now this poor man can't figure out who is who and which kids belong with whom.  It's always a hoot!

Anyway, this so nice man brought us moon cakes to surprise the girls, and they were, indeed, delighted.  They threw themselves on the gift with all appropriate shrieks and squeals, very pre-teen girly behavior.  So our sweet restaurant owner surely had no doubts about how much his gift was appreciated.

And yes, the moon cake had an egg yolk in the center to represent the moon!

We also shared all the varied stories we knew about the Moon Festival -- Lady Chang Er sent to the moon for taking her husband's immortality pill, the rebels using moon cakes to pass notes about when to attack, the General's daughter using a moon cake to pass escape plans to her captured father. . . .

Afterwards, we did some moon gazing, and all three girls were sure they saw Lady Chang Er in the full moon -- Maya claimed to be able to see her eyelashes!

So how did you celebrate the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival?

Hard Truths of Some Adoptions

From the Motherlode blog at the New York Times, Lisa Belkin introduces a post from KJ Dell’Antonia about adopting kids who already have a family, but still need one, as follows:

A friend, an adoptive mother, said to me recently, “I have faced the fact that my daughter is only mine because I have more money than her birth mother.” That is a simple reality of adoption, she says, and yet it is so rarely spoken aloud.

Indeed.  And here's what Dell'Antonia has to say about adopting her daughter from China, about taking her away from a loving foster home:

“I want to go home.”

It doesn’t really matter what or where home is, especially not if you’re a young kid, parted from your culture and country and navigating a world where nothing means what it once did. Whatever home is to you, when you’re miserable, when the world is hard and uncomforting, the craving is universal: I do not want to endure. I want to go home.

When my daughter, adopted at nearly 4 years old from China but from a largely English-speaking home, first came to us, she said those words loud and clear, and she said them often. When you watch Sui Yong, the 8-year-old at the center of PBS’s documentary “Wo Ai Ni, Mommy (I love you, Mommy),” adoptive mother Donna Sadowsky can’t understand the phrase, spoken by her daughter in Chinese — but the viewer can read the subtitles, and Sadowsky can read the rest: the tears, the tone, and the defeated little body curled up in the bed.

In adoption parlance, “Faith” Sadowsky has “come home,” but the Sadowsky house isn’t home for Sui Yong.

When asked by her daughter — later — why she wanted a child from China, mother Donna Sadowsky says she told the girl that “I needed a daughter, and you needed a family.” It’s not an unusual line; in fact, it’s fairly standard. It’s as good a way as any of making sense of the many forces that bring together parents and children in the adoption world. But from that child’s point of view — and from my own daughter’s — it isn’t true. Like many of the older children adopted from China now (and most Chinese adoptions now are of children older than 2 years) Sui Yong, now Faith, and my daughter already had families. Loving, close, treasured families. Families they couldn’t keep.

Zoe was not in foster care, and Maya was.  Maya was the first child her foster parents had fostered, and they've gone on to foster others, at least two of whom were adopted abroad and one of whom was adopted domestically.  Maya was with them for 10 months and they heard her first word and saw her first step.  They were very loving, as evidenced by the ease of Maya's transition to our family, and by the fact that they still -- 7 birthdays later -- send a present for Maya's birthday.

Yes, Maya is perfectly happy and thriving in our family.  But I still feel pain at what she has lost.

Happy Mid-Autumn Moon Festival!

Cool, huh?  That's a mooncake mold!   You can see many others at a wonderful cake site, tpcalcake.

Talk About Rescue Mentality!

This tweet from a prospective adoptive parent:

Leaving on a mission to free an orphan. Sweet daughter your family is on their way, only a few hours separate us now! #adoption #Ukraine

A mission?! Free an orphan?! Yikes!

Close Encounters of the Intrusive Kind

We've all experienced it -- intrusive, uncomfortable questions or behavior directed toward our transracially adopted children.  Here are three posts discussing that phenomenon from two adoptive parents and one adoptee:

When They Don't Get It, from Our Little Tongginator:

The other day someone walked up to me at a public event, gestured to the Tongginator, and asked, "where did you get her?" Okay, so maybe I'm overly sensitive about this, but... GET her? As if I ran down to Target and purchased some toilet paper, a bag of chips, baby wipes and, oh, a CHILD. Thankfully the Tongginator did not hear the woman's comment and I replied, "we adopted our daughter from China."

That's when she pointed across the room to her daughter and said, "I just thought we might have that in common."

The encounter made me stop. It made me think. I don't exactly know how to navigate situations such as these, when someone walks up to me - out of the blue - to discuss adoption topics. Usually the Tongginator also hears the comment, so I draw my daughter into the conversation, asking if she'd like to discuss the topic and, when she says no (and she ALWAYS says no), I share that my daughter doesn't usually wish to discuss such personal matters with people we do not know.

But how to navigate when the questioner is a fellow adoptive parent who either used an unfortunate turn of phrase that just so happens to be a hot button for me?

Please Don't Pet My Daughter, from On African Tyme:

This morning Rodas and I were picking out some peaches at the grocery store when a woman walks up to Rodas--without even glancing my way or saying anything--and starts combing her hands through Rodas' hair. She then grabs Rodas' chin and tries to get her to look at her. She's not really aggressive, but she's very direct and her manner was as though she was looking for something on Rodas (lice? Trying to see if Mom was taking care of her hair? I don't know...). I was very taken aback. Rodas was as well, as she immediately stiffened up and withdrew (as if to say, go ahead and touch me but I'm taking my soul out of it). She's done this before and I know she likes to be the one to initiate physical touch (as it should be) ESPECIALLY from strangers. I know I wouldn't enjoy some complete stranger walking up to me and running their hands through my hair and looking me over like a doll they might buy.

I firmly tried to give the woman the hint to remove her hands from my daughter by saying "Excuse me, my daughter's not used to complete strangers coming up and petting her." I said it with a smile to lighten it, but obviously it was too light because the woman tried to get Rodas to look at her once again then she just smiled at us and walked off!

It's a Small World, But Not THAT Small, from adult adoptee Paula at Heart, Mind & Seoul:

Setting: Family chain restaurant, c. 1990, predominantly white suburb in the Midwest

Characters: Myself (19 years old) and well meaning white couple, approximately 50 years old

***

"Hello, my name is Paula and I'll be your server today. May I bring you anything to drink right away?"

"Hi there." Stares curiously at me. Tell me, dear, by any chance are you a Korean?"

"Yes I am."

"Are you adopted?"

"Yes, ma'am." (Oh help me, where is this going?)

"By any chance do you know Steve?"

"Steve?"

"Yes, Steve. I believe he's a Korean and adopted as well. Our friends got him a while ago."

"No, I'm sorry I don't."

"Are you sure? Because he's a Korean. And adopted. Like you."

Go read all three posts in their entirety, Then come back and talk!

So, adoptive parents, what has been your worst encounter with a stranger?  How did you approach it?  Has your approach changed over time, as your child gets older? Adoptees, what encounters do your remember from childhood?  How did your parents approach it?  How did you wish your parents had handled it?  As adults, how do you handle intrusive incidents?

Wait For the Punch Line

From the Joplin Globe:

A Missouri couple is trying to get their 10 adopted children back, but they stand accused of making some of those children sleep in calf huts and a truck trailer in their backyard.

Sharon and Reed Leonard were charged in August with misdemeanor child endangerment, almost a year after an investigation by the Newton County Sheriff’s Department and state child-welfare workers determined some of the children allegedly were forced to stay outside the couple’s home north of Neosho. Sharon Leonard, 51, also was charged with felony child abuse.

* * *

“What I was told was they were given their meals on the porch of the home and had to ask permission from the parents to go inside and get ready for school,” Detective Dale Brashers said of the children allegedly forced to sleep in the backyard.

* * *

The Leonards moved to Newton County in November 2008 from Wisconsin, where they’d operated the Hearts of Hope Adoption Ministry, a not-for-profit organization offering assistance in international adoptions, and Abiding Acres Kennel, a dog-breeding business.