Adopt a Chinese Baby, Move to China

CNNgo reports on adoptive families who are "prolonging 'root-seeking tours' into long-term stays in China for their adopted children:"                       

Guo Jiaming (郭家明), chief of Beijing-based adoption agency Love of Bridge, says his company began offering "root-seeking" services in 2009. The company has seen a growth in demand.

"Last year, 300-400 [international adoptive] families come to us for this service," says Guo.

For some families, however, a quick trip and tour are not enough. Some families are actually relocating to China, where their children can form balanced cultural identities and parents themselves can satisfy their own wanderlust.

* * *

Irish couple Ray Heraty and Sinead O’Donovan, both 39, were living in the United States when they began a three-year adoption process.

A China adventure grew appealing as they waited for their daughter, Jin, and was finalized when they picked her up in Nanchang at the end of 2008.

“Most of the other (adoptive parents) couldn’t wait to get out of China,” Heraty recalls of parents who waited with them in Guangzhou for their children’s immigrant visa. “We loved everything about it.”

Less than a year later, Heraty took a leave of absence from his job as a pilot and followed his wife’s work to China.

* * *

By living in China, they're hoping that a connection to the children’s home culture will give them a stronger sense of identity and self-worth.

“The whole issue of identity for adopted kids is really important,” Elizabeth says.

Since we moved to China for 5 months in 2007, not surprisingly, I think this is a great thing! Not that 5 months is really moving to China! We would like to do this again, and stay longer next time.  I saw the first trip back as kind of a practice run, with the girls only 6 & 3, not quite knowing how we'd do without our usual support system.  We loved every minute of it!  I can't apply for another Fulbright grant for quite a while, so we'll have to find some other way to get back there. . . .

Here's our blog from that time:  Xiamen Adventure.

The Indian Adoption Project

This article at Indian Country Today discusses the First Nations Repatriation Institute’s second annual adult adoptees summit, and includes fascinating history as well as current effects of the federal Indian Adoption Project :

I’m an angry Indian,” Roger St. John, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, told the First Nations Repatriation Institute’s second annual adult adoptees summit. The elite panel included child-welfare specialists, judges, lawyers, community activists and scholars. The most important experts, according to the organization’s founder/director, Sandra White Hawk, Rosebud Sioux Tribe, were adult adoptees—such as St. John—who related their experiences at the three-day meeting at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in St. Paul.

“I’m more than glad to tell you I’m pissed off,” continued St. John, a 49-year-old truck driver with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. “I was the youngest of 16 children, grabbed at the age of 4, along with three older brothers—no paperwork, nothing. The other kids in the family escaped because they took off.” Soon, St. John and his siblings ended up in New York City at Thanksgiving time. The year was 1966: “We were on the front page of the newspaper, along with lots of good talk about the holiday and adoption. We were brought up without our culture, which took a terrible toll on our lives. I grew up angry and miserable.”

* * *
At the summits and other events White Hawk has organized or spoken at since 2003, modern-day adoptees have recounted their dramatic life journeys, sometimes for the first time. “The stories vary from the most abusive to the most beautiful, but that’s not the point,” she said. “Even in loving families, Native adoptees live without a sense of who they are. Love doesn’t provide identity.”

“I never felt sorry for myself,” said St. John, “but if I ever got hurt, it wounded me to my soul, because I felt no one was there for me.” In recent years, he has found his birth mother and connected emotionally with his adoptive parents. “They were so young, in their 20s, when a priest convinced them to adopt four Sioux boys from South Dakota. It was too much—for all of us.”

Please read the whole thing -- I'm betting you'll learn some things you didn't know before.

A Verdict in the "Ultimate Disruption"

After a slew of adoption disruption stories in the news, I posted the story of Kairissa Mark, a 4-year-old, 21-pound, special-needs adoptee from China, beaten to death by her adoptive mother (a pediatrician, of all things) 83 days after her adoption, as the "Ultimate Disruption."
 
On Friday, a jury convicted Dr. Mark of first degree murder, aggravated child abuse, and child abuse.  The first degree murder conviction merits an automatic life sentence.  The Tennessean paints the picture as the verdict was handed down:

A former Mt. Juliet pediatrician accused of killing her newly adopted 4-year-old daughter was sentenced to life in prison after a jury Friday found her guilty of first-degree murder and abuse charges.

Deborah Wen-Yee Mark, 40, slowly shrunk in her seat as the jury foreman read the verdict from each charge. First-degree murder? Guilty. Four counts of aggravated child abuse? Guilty. Child Abuse? Guilty.

With each charge, she sank lower until her head was resting on the table where she sat and her shoulders heaved with silent sobs. Courtroom deputies had to help her stand and walk out of the room after she was given an automatic life sentence in prison for the first-degree murder conviction. She’ll be sentenced separately on the other charges at a later date.

Wilson County Assistant District Attorney Tom Swink praised the verdict. “Kairissa Mark received justice today,” he said.

Kairissa's adoptive father still faces charges of child abuse, though Dr. Mark's defense was that it was he, not her, who struck the killing blows.  The defense vows to appeal, including on the grounds that her lengthy confession was coerced and false.

Separation/Institutionalization Cause Genetic Changes

MedicalXpress reports on a study of institutionalized children:

Published online in the current issue of Development and Psychopathology, the study reports differences in DNA methylation, one of the main regulatory mechanisms of gene expression, or genome functioning. The investigators compared two cohorts: 14 children raised since birth in institutional care and 14 children raised by their biological parents.

Senior author Elena Grigorenko, associate professor at the Yale Child Study Center, and her colleagues took blood samples from children aged 7 to 10 living in orphanages and children growing up in typical families in the northwest region of the Russian Federation. They then profiled the genomes of all the children to identify which biological processes and pathways might be affected by deprivation of parental attention and care.

The team found that in the institutionalized group, there was a greater number of changes in the genetic regulation of the systems controlling immune response and inter-cellular interactions, including a number of important mechanisms in the development and function of the brain.

"Our study shows that the early stress of separation from a biological parent impacts long-term programming of genome function; this might explain why adopted children may be particularly vulnerable to harsh parenting in terms of their physical and mental health," said Grigorenko. "Parenting adopted children might require much more nurturing care to reverse these changes in genome regulation."

That last quote from the head researcher is interesting -- it pegs the genetic effects to "the early stress of separation from a biological parent," not to the institutionalization.  Sounds like their next step should be a study of children adopted as newborns and never institutionalized. . . .

Twice-Abandoned Triplets Feel Artyom's Pain

Wow.  What a story -- now-adult triplets adopted from a Latvian orphanage by an American, and returned there, alone on an airplane, just like Artyom.  Two years later, they were adopted by a second American family:

Their mother told them they were going to Disney World.
She bundled the three children on a plane, all alone, and told them there would be someone there to meet them on the other side.
But when the plane landed, they were on the other side of the world. Returned, without explanation, to the Latvian orphanage where she had adopted them less than two years before. And there was no one waiting to meet them.
They were 9 years old.

* * *

That was almost 20 years ago. There was no international outcry over what had happened to them, none of the shocked news coverage like last year when an adoptive mother from Tennessee returned her 7-year-old son to Russia like a mail-order sweater that didn’t quite fit.
But if the Russian incident was a worst-case scenario for Tennessee international adoptions, Evalds, Inga and Ieva are the other side of the story.
Tennessee is where they finally came home, adopted at age 11 by John and Carole Bratcher of Murfreesboro, who had enough love and patience to convince three angry, wary children that this time they really were home and that this family was theirs forever.

* * *

The triplets turned 28 last week. Renamed Brendan, Catherine and Elizabeth, they’ve grown into smart, happy, poised adults who can talk frankly about the trauma they survived. The same trauma a little boy in Russia is living through right now.
“I wanted to reach through the TV and grab hold of him,” Brendan Bratcher said. “I would sit him down and tell him it’s going to be OK.”

Sisters of Charity Investigated for Adoption Trafficking

The Sisters of Charity, known best for their most famous sister, Mother Teresa, has been accused (and one nun actually arrested and jailed) of selling babies into adoption in Sri Lanka, where the order runs a home for unwed mothers:

Sister Mary Eliza, from the Missionaries of Charity, has been in prison since Fraiday night accused of selling children. Since the congregation was founded, she is the first nun of Mother Teresa to be arrested. An anonymous tipoff informed police, which then burst into the Prem Nivesa of Moratuwa, a hostel for young unwed mothers run by the Sisters of Mother Teresa and arrested the nun. The hostel is now impounded. Sister Eliza, superior of Prem Nivesa, is now in jail at the Women’s Prison of Welikada, and has not been able to see a lawyer yet. Today, a judge is set to charge her formally with illegal trafficking in children.

Last Wednesday, a group of people led by Anoma Dissanayake, head of the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), surrounded the Prem Nivesa hostel to examine the situation of the children and mothers living in the facility run by the Missionaries.

“Police and NCPA officials burst into the home at around 11 am, causing panic. They checked every nook and cranny in the facility and took away our files,” a nun told AsiaNews.

Two days later, on Friday evening, police agents took Sister Eliza and two nuns to a judge’s home. Sister Eliza was then taken by car to Welikada Prison, whilst the two other nuns were brought back to the convent.

“Police, NCPA officials and media rushed to our facility,” Sister Eliza said before her arrest. “They cross-examined the unwed mothers and took away many documents.”

“We have never been involved in child trafficking. It is against our faith,” she reiterated. “Our mission is to take care of unwed mothers and their children. We have never taken money for our work. Children are adopted in accordance with the law.”

The circumstances surrounding the arrest of Sister Eliza remain murky. Some local media accused the Sisters of “selling the future of the country to foreigners for few thousand rupees”.

This article is careful to exonerate adoptive parents:

The couple from America who were waiting for their turn at the Children’s Home in Rawatawatte were not at fault.

They wanted a baby with all their heart and they had gone through the correct process to get a child by contacting a ‘licenced adoption agency.’

They also had a receipt with them from an adoption agency called the New Horizon Adoption Agency which stated that they had paid U.S. dollars ten thousand. The adoption agency had a local representative here in Sri Lanka. However, disturbing is the fact the Sri Lankan representative received U.S. dollars 6,000; and the child was given from a home called Prem Niwasa which also includes the words Missionaries of Charity…

There were several people lined up when officials of the National Child Protection Authority, led by the Chairperson herself swooped in on Children’s Home Prem Niwasa in Rawathawatte on Wednesday, November 23 around 11 a.m. . The allegations were that this children’s home was playing ‘stork’ to many couples – at a price.

“At the time of our visit there were several couples with money in hand. We received two telephone calls on our hotline 1929 about this Home. But we decided to take action when a questionable incident occurred last week…” said an official of the National Child Protection Authority.

This article is a denial by the Sisters of Charity:

Representatives of the Missionaries of Charity said that they do not receive a cent for their services. On the contrary, a fourth vow taken by the Mother Teresa’s congregation is to give wholehearted service to the poorest of the poor.

In search for the other side of the story to our article last week titled ‘Baby Shop in Rawatawatte’ in which we reported the raid on Prem Niwasa carried out by the National Child Protection Authority; this writer met with representatives of the Catholic Archdiocese and representatives of Mother Theresa’s nuns on Wednesday at the Bishop’s House.

* * *
“Missionaries of Charity do not deal with money – for God provides…” was the opening sentence by Father Ivan Perera, Episcopal Vicar of the Archdiocese of Colombo.

And another article reports that Archbishop Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith Furious about the allegations against the nuns.

UPDATE 12.15.11: IBNLive reports that the Sisters have been cleared:

A Sri Lankan court today dropped charges of child trafficking against a Mother Teresa charity and released a senior nun, an Indian national, suspected of selling babies for adoption. Sister Mary Eliza the head of Missionaries of Charity convent was arrested late November for her failure to disclose an underage pregnancy at the Prem Children's Home at Moratuwa, a Colombo south suburb. The nun who hails from Kerala, was already on court bail. The Criminal Investigation Department, which questioned 55 people, concluded that there were no grounds to charge her with selling children or with failing to report under-age pregnancies. It said all adoption procedures run by the sisters were fully legal.

17-year-old's adoption story

A nicely-done story (though why all these one-sentence paragraphs?!) of the adoption of a 17-year-old, reported by the Rio Grande Valley Monitor:

Leah Garcia, 18, feels like one of the lucky ones.

At 17, she had given up all hope of finding her forever family.

She worried what the future had in store for someone like her, who had no where to call home and no one to call a family.

Leah’s status as an adoptable child was coming to an end as she neared adulthood — at least in the eyes of the state.

Inside, she still felt like a scared child.

“Who would I turn to for support?” she constantly asked herself.

Her two younger siblings had already been adopted and after meandering through nearly 100 foster care homes since the age of 12, Leah was losing hope fast.

Her answer would come later at an adoption expo in Austin, where she met her adoptive parents Roxanne and Elias Garcia of Hidalgo.

The couple — a first-grade teacher and a police officer — immediately fell in love with the 17-year-old and went through the adoption process, which was expedited because of her age. A child in foster care can no longer be adopted once he or she turns 18.

“She brought a lot of joy to our home,” her mother Roxanne said. “We’re blessed to have her as our daughter.”

Colombia blocks gay father from taking legally adopted sons to U.S.

From Colombia Reports:

Colombian authorities have denied a U.S. journalist the right to bring home two young Colombian boys he had legally adopted, after learning of his sexual orientation, according to La Semana magazine.

The authorites acknowledge that his sexuality was an issue but claim it was the that fact he kept it a secret from the children that they objected to -- a claim Chandler Burr says is totally false.

Speaking on CNN's American Morning on Wednesday, Burr -- a novelist, former New York Times columnist, and museum curator -- described his stuggle to get his boys back, after the adoption process was halted at the last minute.

The story began in 2009 when Burr travelled to Colombia and, through the Colombian Family Welfare Unit (ICBF), began the process of adopting the two boys, now aged 9 and 13. The institute approved the application, allowing the children to spend the summer of 2009 in New York.

It was only during the final preparations in May 2011 that problems arose. According to Burr, after mentioning his sexuality in an informal conversation, a lawyer representing the ICBF removed the children from his care and interrogated them on the issue, before notifying Burr that he would not be able to take them back to the U.S.

Responding to yesterday's CNN program with an interview on Caracol Radio, the new director of ICBF, Diego Molano, has defended the decision on the basis that the children have "a right to know who their father is", and that Mr. Burr had hidden this important information about his sexual orientation from them.

Mr. Burr says the children knew that he was gay and didn't have any problem with it. Burr reported, "When the lawyer asked them if they knew I was gay, my eldest son Brian, who is 13, responded 'I know and I don't care.'"

According to former judge Eduardo Montealegre, "Colombian law allows a single person to adopt a child. Furthermore, there is no prohibition or limitation restricting adoption based on the sexual orientation of the individual." In practice, however, adoption by gay men in Colombia is seldom allowed.

Burr has vowed to fight the Colombian authorities on the issue, claiming that his rights are being violated. The case is currently under review in the Constitutional Court.

An Adopted Not-Adopted Child

The New York Times publishes the obituary of Judy Lewis, biological child of Loretta Young and Cary Grant, but who was passed off as the adopted daughter of Loretta Young.

Ms. Lewis, a former actress who died on Friday at the age of 76, was 31 before she discerned the scope of the falsehoods that cast her, a daughter of Hollywood royalty, into what she later described as a Cinderella-like childhood. Confronted by Ms. Lewis, Young finally made a tearful confession in 1966 at her sprawling home in Palm Springs, Calif.
Young was 22 and unmarried when she and Gable, 34 and married to Maria Langham, had their brief affair. She spent most of her pregnancy in Europe to avoid Hollywood gossip. Ms. Lewis was born on Nov. 6, 1935, in a rented house in Venice, Calif. Soon she was turned over to a series of caretakers, including St. Elizabeth’s Infants Hospital in San Francisco, so that Young could return to stardom.
When Ms. Lewis was 19 months old, her mother brought her back home and announced through the gossip columnist Louella Parsons that she had adopted the child.
Ms. Lewis grew up in Los Angeles, cushioned in the luxury of her mother’s movie-star lifestyle even as she endured what she later described as an outsider’s isolation within her family and the teasing of children at school.

I found this snippet particular poignant for an adopted not-adopted child:

In a 2001 interview on CNN with Larry King, Ms. Lewis recalled speaking to her mother about her early life.
"I was also asking her about being adopted,” she said, “as adopted children do. They say, ‘Where are my ... ’”
Mr. King interjected, “‘Who’s my mother?’”
“Yes,” Ms. Lewis said. “‘Who’s my mother? Who’s my father?’ And she would answer it very easily by saying, ‘I couldn’t love you any more than if you were my own child,’ which, of course, didn’t answer the question, but it said, ‘Don’t ask the question.’"

Wow.

Podcast: Exposing Corruption in International Adoption

At the Chronicle of Philanthropy, a 20-minute podcast described as follows:

Tiny Spark is new podcast on the business of doing good. The first installment takes a look at corruption in international adoption and how it has caused problems despite the generous impulses of many parents. Amy Costello, a freelance reporter and radio producer, hosts and produces the program.

In the past decade, American parents have adopted some quarter of a million children from Cambodia, China, Ethiopia, Nepal, and elsewhere. And in all of these countries and others, fraud has been uncovered.

Pressure from children's advocates and others are leading to changes. But problems persist.
For insights about how the process of trying to place needy children in good homes can go so wrong, Ms. Costello talks with Jennifer Hemsley, who spent years trying to figure out whether a child she tried to adopt from Guatemala had been kidnapped from her birth parents.

She also interviews Erin Siegal, author of the new book, Finding Fernanda, a new investigative account of international corruption in the adoption system in Guatemala.

There's also a podcast about nonprofits that focus on international adoption, which cites that the international adoption process to the U.S. brings at least $250 million a year -- at least without blackmarket adoption considered. In considering the global international adoption market, it cites $1 billion a year.

South Korea Adoption: Two Articles

Two interesting articles out recently:

From the AsiaSentinal, South Korea's Baby Mill:

Despite having one of the world’s lowest birthrates and the 14th-largest economy, South Korea is a major source of infants adopted internationally each year.

As the country has grown richer, its total fertility rate has fallen to the lowest level in the industrialized world, from more than six babies per mother in 1960 to 1.15 today, far below the accepted replacement level of 2.1 per mother, according to figures supplied by the World Bank. Despite that, there seems little impetus to keep its adoptable children at home.

Many factors are at work that lead to South Korean babies being adopted, both domestically and abroad.

From the Korea Times, Adoption Quota Leaves Behind Disabled & Male Children:

"In domestic adoption, more than 70 percent are girls. Boys and disabled children may have to find homes abroad, or may have to be transferred to institutions if we would ever fail to send them for overseas adoptions for the reason of government policy."

Lee [Myung-woo, from Holt International] was referring to the Korean government's adoption quota system introduced in 2007, which limits and lowers the number of Korean children adopted by foreign families. In hopes of encouraging domestic adoption, the policy dictates that internationally permitted adoptions be reduced 10 percent annually with the ultimate goal of eliminating all foreign adoptions.

"But now with the quota system, this baby [a boy with Down Syndrome] has no chance of being adopted," Holt said. "We've already reached our foreign quota for this year."

Missing Limbs, Empty Boxes

Zoe's class did a project about family in their Religion workbooks yesterday.  They were to fill out a family tree form -- mother's side, father's side.  And then there were boxes in which they were asked to put traits they had inherited from their parents.  Great.  THIS again.

Zoe filled out the mother's side of the family tree, and left the father's side blank. She showed her tree to the boy sitting next to her, and complained to him that her family tree was dull since she didn't have a dad.  He was puzzled:  "You don't have a dad?"  Nope.  He didn't get it:  "How can you not have a dad?!"  Zoe didn't really explain it, saying, "I just don't."

Then Zoe went to talk to her teacher, asking what she should do about the boxes for inherited traits, since "I wasn't born from my mom."  Now, this is something her teacher knows, that Zoe's adopted.  How could he not know, right, since she's Chinese and I'm not?!  He told her to fill in the boxes based on "ancestors she knows."  I think he might have been trying to tell her to fill it in based on her adopted family, but I'm not sure.  Zoe didn't take it that way, explaining that she didn't know anything about her ancestors.  Next her teacher told her to just "do what you know."  Zoe left the boxes blank, since what she knows about her biological family is nothing.

Why do schools keep having these projects????  This one isn't even a science lesson, isn't really teaching genetics or biological inheritance!  It's RELIGION, for God's sake!!!!  And of course there's no warning for the parents that this is coming up, no way to give the teacher a head's up that maybe this project is problematic for adopted kids who have no information about their biological parents. Like they need a head's up to avoid projects that make any child in the classroom feel excluded, abnormal, less than.

Did it bother Zoe?  She says no, but I don't believe her.  The first thing she did after school yesterday?  She pulled out a big piece of paper and markers, and made an elaborate family tree, including every relative she could think of, including her birth parents.  And she filled the entire page with family and color and design.  No more dull family tree for her.  No more missing limbs. No more empty boxes.

Little Dragon Tales: Chinese Children's Songs

Shanghai Restoration Project has a new album, downloadable from iTunes and Amazon, Little Dragon Tales:  Chinese Children's Songs.  It's billed as classic Chinese children's songs with a modern twist, and you can see from the video above that the children singing in it are as cute as their voices! I recognize most of the songs on the album from my kids' oh-so-many years in Chinese School, so I suppose it really is CLASSIC Chinese children's songs!

h/t Angry Asian Man

This is What National Adoption Month is Really About

It isn't about getting a healthy, white newborn as quickly as you can, or about adopting from China or Ethiopia or Haiti or Russia. Not saying anything's wrong with that, it's just not what National Adoption Month is about. National Adoption Month was conceived to highlight the outrageously high number of children in foster care who need permanent families.  And the centerpiece of National Adoption Month is National Adoption Day:

National Adoption Day is a collective national effort to raise awareness of the more than 107,000 children in foster care waiting to find permanent, loving families. This one day has made the dreams of thousands of children come true by working with policymakers, practitioners and advocates to finalize adoptions and find permanent, loving homes for children in foster care. In total, more than 35,000 children have been adopted from foster care on National Adoption Day.

And I am proud to say that students at my law school volunteer each year to help finalize adoptions from foster care during National Adoption Day:

Teddy bears, children’s books and balloons filled the courtrooms of the Tarrant County Family Law Center during National Adoption Day. Fifteen Texas Wesleyan School of Law students participated in the event, held on Friday, Nov. 18, 2011, at the Family Law Center in downtown Fort Worth. Forty-one children in Tarrant County were adopted by 30 families. Since 2000, more than 35,000 children nationwide have had their adoptions finalized on National Adoption Day. . . . [Judge] Boyd also recognized the contributions of the students at Texas Wesleyan School of Law who volunteer their time to assist the lawyers. “Every year [the students] have worked with National Adoption Day, and this is a wonderful opportunity for students who will become new lawyers to get their first experience in a courthouse.” The law school students, who worked with mentor lawyers throughout the fall semester to prepare the adoptions, stood with the children and their new families as the adoptions were finalized before a judge.

Gotta love feel-good stories about lawyers and law students! (Um. And maybe this is a good time to mention that the views expressed at this blog are solely my own and not those of my employer!)

Review: Finding Fernanda

The Christian Science Monitor reviews Erin Seigal's book, Finding Fernanda, about Guatemalan adoption corruption:

This well-researched examination of international adoption captures a world of inexplicable actions – some based on religious faith and others purely criminal – through thoughtful detail and an engaging narrative. Siegal began this work as a master’s project for her graduate degree in journalism, working with documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, leaked e-mails, and sources in the US and Guatemalan governments. “Finding Fernanda” – released just in time for National Adoption Month and which Siegal has published at her own expense – reads like a mystery novel, but the facts it reveals are hauntingly true.

In 2006, Mildred Alvarado was a struggling single mother living outside Guatemala City, one of the poorest and most dangerous cities in the Western Hemisphere. Betsy Emanuel was a devout Christian living in rural Tennessee with a house full of kids between the ages of 1 and 19 years old, a loving husband, and a pony in the backyard. Siegal frames her investigation into Guatemalan adoption around the palpable love both Alvarado and Emanuel have for their children and their faith in God. Despite their myriad differences, Alvarado and Emanuel share an ability to see the very best in people: a characteristic that made them vulnerable to deceit – but eventually also served to bring them together in search of a young child they both claimed as their own.

* * *

Siegal weaves the history of Guatemala and international adoption into her narrative, explaining how a system as seemingly altruistic as adoption could tumble into such criminality and corruption. US families began adopting from Guatemala in the 1980s, at the height of a violent civil war that left many children orphaned. Adoption proved a great source of revenue for the economically deflated country and – unfortunately – Guatemalan children became commodities.

The Bad Economy's Effect on Adoption Placement?

From the Oklahoman:

Nationwide, about 134,000 domestic adoptions were reported in 2007, according to the most recent figures available from the National Council for Adoption. That's a 3 percent increase from just five years before.

The economy has affected birth parents in complex ways, said Frank Garrott, president of the Gladney Center for Adoption, a national and international adoption agency based in Fort Worth, Texas.

“It's really hard to define that trend,” Garrott said. “Certainly the economy does come into play with some young women and their families make that decision. At the same time, we kind of see a counter-trend. As some young women get into a situation where they're really struggling and they are experiencing an unplanned pregnancy, that baby is the one thing that really gives them hope. ... It may not be a trend at all.”

But the face of families involved in the adoption process is changing a bit, Garrott said.

As adoption has become a more socially acceptable option, more families with children are looking to adoption as a solution for unplanned pregnancies.

“To me, that's so sad,” he said. “That couple knows the joy of parenting firsthand. To make that incredibly painful decision that one more child in the family is going to sink them, it's so painful when you think about putting yourself in their shoes.”

In recent years, birth mothers seeking help from Deaconess are a little older than in the past, McCool said. Most are in the 25- to 34-year-old age bracket. Several are married. Some already have children.

Obese Child Removed from Family & Placed in Foster Care

Remember a couple of months ago the story from England of children being removed from their parents and placed for adoption because they were obese? Couldn't happen in America, right?  Or maybe it could:

An 8-year-old Cleveland Heights boy was taken from his family and placed in foster care last month after county case workers said his mother wasn't doing enough to control his weight.

At more than 200 pounds, the third-grader is considered severely obese and at risk for developing such diseases as diabetes and hypertension.

But even though the state health department estimates more than 12 percent of third-graders statewide are severely obese -- that could mean 1,380 in Cuyahoga County alone -- this is the first time anyone in the county or the state can recall a child being taken from a parent for a strictly weight-related issue.

* * *

Cuyahoga County does not have a specific policy on dealing with obese children. It removed the boy because case workers considered this mother's inability to get her son's weight down a form of medical neglect, said Mary Louise Madigan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Family Services.

They said that the child's weight gain was caused by his environment and that the mother wasn't following doctor's orders -- which she disputes.

"This child's problem was so severe that we had to take custody," Madigan said. The agency worked with the mother for more than a year before asking Juvenile Court for custody of the child, she said.

Lawyers for the mother, a substitute elementary school teacher who is also taking vocational school classes, think the county has overreached in this case by arguing that medical conditions the boy is at risk for -- but doesn't yet have -- pose an imminent danger to his health.

They question whether the emotional impact of being yanked from his family, school and friends was also considered.

* * *

Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics and medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said that before a trend of removing children takes hold, the broader public-policy issue needs to be explored.

"A 218-pound 8-year-old is a time bomb," Caplan acknowledged. "But the government cannot raise these children. A third of kids are fat. We aren't going to move them all to foster care. We can't afford it, and I'm not sure there are enough foster parents to do it. "
He said he is worried that the families with the fewest resources, which are often minorities, will end up being ones with their children removed.
Caplan said one could get ethical whiplash in a world where one arm of government is so concerned about a child's weight that it removes him from his home, while another branch of government argues that french fries and tomato paste on pizza should be counted as servings of vegetables.

What do you think? Should obese children be removed when the parents are not successful in getting them to lose weight?

Pax Visits With Biological Grandmother in Vietnam

According to US Weekly:

During a recent family trip to Vietnam -- the first since Angelina Jolie adopted Pax from an orphanage near Ho Chi Min City on 2007, the 8-year-old spent some time getting to know his biological grandmother Nhan Dung.

"It was a one day visit," an insider tells the new Us Weekly, on stands now. "Nhan was looking forward to it after Pax had lived so many years abroad."

Jolie, 36, and longtime love Brad Pitt arranged for Dung to visit Pax at the seaside Six Sense resort in Con Dao, where the gang stayed during their trip.

Good for them.

When is Enough Enough?

The Chicago Tribune writes about a family with 14 children, 6 adopted from Africa, who want to adopt more but can't get approval from the necessary state agency because of the size of the family:

But the Twietmeyers and other like-minded large families in Illinois face an obstacle to their mission of adopting from countries where the orphan crises are especially dire. In order to adopt children from countries such as Uganda, India and the Philippines, parents must be licensed by the state as foster care families. That's a problem for the Twietmeyers and other families who far exceed the standard licensing limit.

It's also a problem for Jojo, Carolyn Twietmeyer's nickname for Jonathan, a 3-year-old child with Down syndrome and HIV, who lives in a Ugandan orphanage. Twietmeyer dreams of the day she can bring him home and call him her son.

But social workers at the Twietmeyers' adoption agency say they have been told the family won't be licensed for more children, a necessary step to adopt from Uganda, where adoptions are not finalized until after children reach the U.S.

The conflict pits the families' desire to live out their religious mission of caring for orphans against the state's mission to protect children.

Kendall Marlowe, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, said enough adoption agencies have abused their authority that it would be irresponsible to allow private adoption agencies to operate without public oversight. Five other states — Alabama, Colorado, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina — have similar guidelines, Marlowe said.

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While the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has to approve a home study for every international adoption, the state also must issue a foster care license to parents adopting from certain countries such as Uganda and the Philippines where adoptions can't be finalized outside the U.S.

Families who apply can be licensed for up to eight children, more with a waiver. Children with special needs count twice, reducing the total number of children that families can have in their home.

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As the Twietmeyers' children took turns one recent afternoon cradling their youngest sibling — Sofia, who has Down syndrome and who came to the family through a domestic adoption — they showered her with kisses. The couple pointed out that a large family is ideal for a child with special needs because there is no shortage of affection and helping hands.

But child welfare experts often see a fine line between a large family and a group home and worry that parents can rely too much on older siblings to serve as housekeepers, cooks and caregivers.

So what do you think?  Is Illinois right to impose a limit on family size?  Is 8 enough? Does a large family seem more like a group home? At what point does a large family become a group home?

New Christmas Ornaments!

Our only "Black Friday" shopping today was for Christmas ornaments.  First stop, Hallmark, a longstanding tradition, for each girl to pick out a favorite for the tree.  Next stop, World Market, where we have very good luck finding Asian-themed ornaments for our Touch of China Christmas Tree.  The photo, above, shows our haul. All the ornaments, except Po, came from World Market. 

Po, as a baby from Kung Fu Panda 2, in the radish box he was abandoned in and then found in, came from Hallmark. Hmmmm, what an interesting choice to commemorate that scene in an ornament.  And Zoe was immediately drawn to it in the store.  Part of it is that she likes pandas, but she also said it reminded her of China, where she was found in a box, and I've written before of how that box is important to her.  So now we have an ornament on our tree to commemorate abandonment.  Weird, but Zoe's choice.

Maya's favorite new ornaments, one that says China on it and one that's the Chinese lucky cat:

Zoe's favorite new ones, Po and a glittery purple pagoda:

It makes for a mixed-up tree, with ornamental nods to France (Mimi's home country), music, ballet, kids' artwork, family, and China, but it's our own!