Some Links About Haiti & Adoption

I've put together a few random links -- no way can I keep up with everything out there on Haiti and adoption right now. But here are a few things that haven't gotten a lot of play out there, I think. The Daily Bastardette is doing a great job of keeping track, so check her out first.

Interesting article with quotes from a Canadian professor who has a book coming out soon about Operation Pedro Pan:

On Wednesday, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced that Canada will expedite some adoptions of Haitian children following last week's devastating earthquake, but it won't ease immigration restrictions for those looking to come to this country.

"I understand the response (regarding adoptees), but it's not a good time (for a massive airlift)," said Karen Dubinsky, professor of Global Development Studies and History at Queen's University.

"North Americans are compassionate and places would be found (for more doptees), but that's not what Haiti as a country needs right now." First World nations should be helping Haiti with money and supplies, Dubinsky said.

Dubinsky has studied large-scale child evacuation campaigns, including Operation Peter Pan, which followed the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and said the Haitian situation causes "red flags to go up."

More than 14,000 children were sent from Cuba to Miami by their parents between 1960 and 1962 in an operation co-ordinated by the U.S. government and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami. Dubinsky said such adoption campaigns present "tremendous risks."

"The U.S. government, which was no fan of the Cuban Revolution, really helped to
manipulate the anxieties, saying the (new) government was going to take parental rights away from Cubans," said Dubinsky. "Cubans taken to the U.S. went into foster care and orphanages and many never saw their parents as children, although some were reunited as adults."

Dubinsky's book about Operation Peter Pan, Babies Without Borders: Adoption and Migration Across the Americas,will be published this spring.

An adoptive mom is PISSED OFF that people are only now caring about Haiti's orphans:

I’ve now been hearing a lot about people all across our country (and our community) wanting to “sign up” to adopt kids from Haiti who have been left orphaned by this horrible disaster. While I should be excited, and I am on some level, that at least people are talking about, thinking about and maybe even considering adoption, and it’s at the forefront of everyone’s minds, THESE PEOPLE ARE PISSING ME OFF!

I suppose they’re no different than people who never give to charity until there’s a disaster… never attend church until Easter or Christmas Eve… never cheer for a football team until Superbowl Sunday… These are “fair-weather fans,” or so we’ve dubbed them. But let me be very clear about this: There is no room in adoptive parenting for fleeting, fly-by-night, wanna-be do-gooders.

[I sure sympathize with being pissed off about this! An acquaintance of mine updated her Facebook status yesterday with, "I want to get me one of those Hati orphans." It was all I could do not to respond, "Don't you think you should learn to SPELL Haiti before you "get" a child from there?!" Sheesh.]

From CNN and the British Telegraph, articles about children's charities warning against rush for adoption from Haiti.

From NPR (thanks to kantmakm for the link), an interview with the Joint Council on International Children's Services Chief Executive Thomas DiFilipo (JCICS is about as pro-adoption as it is possible to be, for what it's worth):

[I]n a time of a national emergency, it's really not the best policy to airlift the children into another country. Here's a quick example of what can happen. You have a child in school. You have a mother or father at work, maybe the work is in a on the opposite side of the island. The earthquake hits, the child is alone for two or three weeks, no one comes to visit. You assume the child's an orphan, you put them on a plane, fly them to France, and they get adopted.

And then two months later, you discover the father was in the hospital or could not otherwise, he was injured or was in a camp. And then you find out what you really did was not give a child a home, and a family, but what you did was you separated the child from their parents, their birthparents. And we certainly don't want to be in a position of doing that. Airlifting children out for medical needs or emergency surgeries, that's one thing. But mass airlifts of tens of thousands of children just - it's not something that we would support, for sure.

Tonggu Mamma picks up on that theme in a very well-reasoned post (go read the whole thing!):

We live in Maryland, which is the little state newscasters keep referring to when discussing the country size of Haiti. My sister and her family also live in Maryland, about 90 minutes south of us - BY CAR. Would you seriously question my love for my nieces and nephews if an earthquake of that magnitude hit Maryland and I had yet to reach my sister's children on day ten? What about on day 20? Or 30? What if I was completely healthy, except that I broke my leg during the earthquake and I didn't own a car? And what about my Great Aunt P, who also lives in Maryland, but about three-and-a-half hours from us - BY CAR - and in the mountains. How long would you expect me to take to reach her house under similar conditions? Much less find out where my relatives were living if their house now lay in rubble?

Puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

O Solo Mama adds another adoptive parent voice with 10 Ways to Think About the Lost Children of Haiti.

A religious charity, Hope for Orphans: Serving Every Church to Reach Every Orphan, adds a cautionary note about adopting from Haiti, in language familiar to many evangelical Christians, including some important questions that should first be considered:

1.How have we sensed God’s leading toward adoption prior to this tragedy? While it is entirely possible that the Lord is using this tragedy to open your eyes to the needs of orphans and the possibility of adoption, you may want to proceed with caution if this tragedy is the first time you have ever considered adoption. . . .

* * *

3.Have you sought the insight and counsel from godly people who know you well? . . . Also, it would be wise to seek counsel from others you know who have adopted. They can share with you the realities of raising children who have experienced great suffering . . . .

* * *

5.Is my desire to adopt coming primarily from a desire to obey God or to “save” a child who is suffering. The desire to help a child in need is very important. The thing to remember is that adoption is not the only way to do this. You can be a part of God’s care for the orphans of Haiti in other ways.

Finally, from the Beyond Consequences Institute, an opportunity to listen to an audio link giving advice from Dr. Ronald Federici and social worker Heather T. Forbes to adoptive parents bringing home children from Haiti who have experienced the additional trauma of the earthquake on top of the traumas that led them to adoption.

One of THOSE Books

Each Thursday a parent reads in Maya's kindergarden class. I'm doing it today as a last-minute fill-in, and Maya was very excited to hear it when I told her this morning. When we went to look at books to decide what to read, she said, "But you can't read one of those books, like Chinese Eyes or on being 'different.'" (she didn't actually do air quotes when she said different, but with her tone of voice she might as well have!). With more discussion, it was revealed that "those books" included anything China-related or adoption-related!

My girls are just so different (wouldn't Maya hate that!) -- Zoe loves it when I read one of "those books" to her class. She can't wait for me to come to her class to talk about adoption, and is really looking forward to Chinese New Year so we can do our annual talk in her class. Today her class is having a talent show (just a little one in the classroom, no parents invited!), and Zoe has decided that her talent will be writing Chinese characters on the board!

Maya, on the other hand, doesn't think being different is all that great. She wants a daddy, like just about everyone else she knows has. She's avoidant when it comes to talking about adoption, because if we talk about it, she has to think about being different. And while she knows she's Chinese, she'd rather no one else know.

So Maya and I look through some books, and she picks a lovely little book illustrating Robert Frost's poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." (She doesn't get that very few kindergartners would pick that book, making her very different!) After looking at Todd Parr's It's OK to be Different, she agrees I can read it (yes!). I think Maya needs to hear it more than her classmates do.

And so long as it isn't one of those books, about China or adoption or being different, I can pick a book to surprise her!

Adoptive Parents as "Victims" of the Earthquake

Trenchant observation from Korean adoptee at Outlandish Remarks about media focus on American adoptive parents as victims of the Haitian earthquake:

Sifting through the adoption-related news media from the past week, I’ve encountered a deluge of stories about the devastating impact of the Haitian
earthquake on, um, straight middle-class white people in the U.S., Canada, and
Western Europe.

My inbox is infested with melodramatic stories of good straight middle-class Christian white people who’ve bonded with “their” Haitian children through pictures, orphanage visits, and on religious missions. The Washington Post announced, “Prospective parents grow more worried about Haiti’s orphans,” and the The LA Times declared, “Children are safe, but US parents’ adoption dreams are buried in rubble of Haiti earthquake.”

“Heart-wrenching,” “excruciating,” “tragic,” “anxious,” and “fearful.” These are the terms used to frame white adoptive couples’ emotional experience of the disaster.

That focus on adoptive parent victimhood is affirmed in an interview with Department of State Deputy Assistant Secretary Michelle Bond about citizen services in Haiti following the earthquake:

QUESTION: What about children awaiting adoption by U.S. families?

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY BOND: I mentioned that American citizens who have been affected by the earthquake are our top priority. Well, American citizens who are waiting to complete the adoptions of children in Haiti are included in those who are top priority.

Amazing how her answer switched the focus from the children to the victimized parents; amazing that people whose dreams have been crushed under rubble are equated to people who have just been crushed under rubble . . . .

I have a great deal of sympathy for adoptive parents who have already adopted or who have already been matched with children in Haiti. I can't imagine how difficult it is to be in their shoes. But it is hard to think that their plight makes them victims of the earthquake -- their chidlren, yes, but adoptive parents, no.

I don't mean to make this blog all Haiti, all the time, but not only is Haiti the most extraordinary humanitarian crisis in at least a decade, with 200,000 people dead and 1.5 million homeless, it is also the biggest international adoption story in the news right now.

I wish it weren't an adoption story; I'm very concerned that the focus on adoption is diverting resources and attention from other vulnerable populations in Haiti -- the sick and injured, the elderly (click only if you have a strong stomach), pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, ALL children whose parents are no better at finding food, water and shelter than the extant orphanages there. And I'm concerned that the call for adoption as a relief mission will destroy families and further traumatize already traumatized children. As I've said before, the issue for children "in the pipeline" is a bit different, but these cries for expatriating orphans is going far beyond those already adopted by U.S. citizens or those already matched with U.S. citizens. A recent New York Times article mentions that among the 53 "orphans" brought to the U.S. through the efforts of Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell are 7 who have not been adopted or matched. On Twitter, I got this message today: "300 Haitian kids arriving in #Indiana, looking for host families (1mo min, possible #adoption opp) Can you help?" (The latest tweets now say that prospective adoptive families have been found for all 300 kids, so no need for temporary foster homes.)(Newest news, no Haitian orphans heading to Indiana -- wonder how much in donations the charity that floated this one made?)

So despite the measured approach promised by CIS and the Department of State, with only children already adopted or matched for adoption being promised entry visas, children are already arriving in the U.S. to fuel the hopes of prospective adoptive parents, without any check on whether these children are orphans. After all, as the New York Times article notes, being in an orphanage does not make one an orphan, and not all orphanages are reputable:

It normally takes three years to adopt a child from Haiti, because of a lengthy process required under Haitian law. The Haitian government has had reason to be
cautious; there are about 200 orphanages in Haiti, but United Nations officials say not all are legitimate. Some are fronts for traffickers who buy children from their parents and sell them to couples in other countries. “In orphanages in Haiti there are an awful lot of children who are not orphans,” said Christopher de Bono, a Unicef spokesman.

Please consider the real victims of the Haiti earthquakes (another earthquake hit that country today), and donate to organizations that will help all the desperate people of Haiti. Click here for a list of organizations offering aid in Haiti.

What Haiti Needs

Biology 101

I'm frequently amused and bemused by the searches that lead people to the blog. My all-time favorite in weird searches -- "Korean grandmother boobs!"

Today's query shows a complete lack of understanding of human reproduction: "can you get a visa to the US for an adopted child in Taiwan if they have 2 birthparents?"

Ok, follow me here, it takes a man and a woman to make a baby. Ergo, every person on earth has two birthparents!

Haitian Children in the Process of Adoption

The Department of Homeland Security (Citizenship & Immigration Services) and Department of State have announced that Haitian children in the process of adoption will be granted immigration visas or humanitarian parole to the U.S. Those eligible:

Category 1
Children who have been legally confirmed as orphans eligible for intercountry adoption by the Government of Haiti, were in the process of being adopted by Americans prior to Jan. 12, 2010 and meet the below criteria.

Required Criteria
Evidence of availability for adoption, which MUST include at least one of the following:

Full and final Haitian adoption decree

Government of Haiti Custody grant to prospective adoptive parents for emigration and adoption

* * *

Category 2
Children who have been identified by an adoption service provider or facilitator as eligible for intercountry adoption, were matched to prospective American adoptive parents prior to Jan. 12, 2010 and meet the below criteria.

Required Criteria
Significant evidence of a relationship between the prospective adoptive parents and the child AND of the parents’ intention to complete the adoption, which could include the following:

Proof of travel by the prospective adoptive parents to Haiti to visit the child

Photos of the child and prospective adoptive parents together

An Adoption Service Provider “Acceptance of Referral” letter signed by the prospective adoptive parents

Documentary evidence that the prospective adoptive parents initiated the adoption process prior to Jan. 12, 2010 with intent to adopt the child . . . .

Evidence of the child’s availability for adoption, which could include the following:

IBESR (Haitian Adoption Authority) approval

Documentation of legal relinquishment or award of custody to the Haitian orphanage

The departments have struck a line that is likely to make many unhappy. This is no Operation Pierre Pan where all orphans are scooped up for airlift to the U.S.. Only children whose orphan status has already been fairly well established, and who likely already have some relationship with the adoptive parents, are eligible. But is also not free from the potential for fraud, since much relies on the complete honesty of the fractured, overtaxed Haitian government and adoption agencies who, for good or ill, are strongly motivated to get Haitian children regardless of orphan status out of the country.

Still, this seems like a supportable middle ground, especially for children in Category 1, and some in Category 2. Category 1 children seem to have a legal right to enter, just like any other Haitian children with relatives in the U.S. CIS is already expediting relative petitions for children in the quake area. I'm also less troubled about bringing Category 2 children who already know their prospective adoptive parents to the U.S. -- at least there is that basic familiarity with their new caregivers that might help to offset the trauma of already traumatized children being removed from everything familiar.

My fervent prayer is that the U.S. with grant humanitarian parole to entire families from Haiti if they can be better cared for out of the country. We mived whole families from New Orleans after Katrina, recognizing the value of keeping families together. I hope we can do the same for Haitian families. All the children of Haiti are suffering, whether orphaned or not. Let's do our best to support all Haitians in this time of crisis.

"I'm Legit"

I posted about this song by Zara Phillips and Darryl McDaniels (DMC of 2009 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Run-DMC), after I heard it at the American Adoption Conference convention in April 2009. Now you can see the video! Great song, great video!

Both artists are adopted, and produced this song to support open records in adoption. I've written before about the practice of amending birth certificates to substitute the names for adoptive parents for birth parents, and then sealing that original birth certificate with the accurate birth information. I think adoptive parents should stand up for open records, recognizing that we have nothing to fear from our children's natural interest in their birth families. I hope the emotion in these lyrics will convince others that open records is the only humane option.

Happy MLK Day

I hope I can get away with saying "MLK Day." If Zoe sees it, I'm likely to get in trouble! Ever since she learned about MLK in preschool, she's been insistent that we use his FULL name, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., all the time. I have such a distinct memory of her at age 3 on MLK Day, at a restaurant with a TV showing a clip of Dr. King. Zoe became so excited when she saw him, exclaiming in her piping little voice, "That's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.! Look, it's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.!" Everyone in the restaurant had to turn to see who was excitedly saying that mouthful!

Today, to mark the occassion, we read Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, and talked about what it means. Zoe drew the picture, above, with her summation of the speech's meaning. The video, below, is the girls' homage to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with Zoe singing a song she learned in school , and Maya showing her paraphrase of the speech (yes, these are Maya's own words!). Enjoy!

Talking to Your Child About Money in Adoption

Money is an inescapable part of adoption. The lack of money is one common reason for placing a child for adoption. Without money, one cannot adopt. The desire for money motivates much corruption in adoption. Money makes the world go 'round, as they say.

Have you had that conversation, where you have the difficult job of explaining to your child that you paid for adoption services, not for her? At Grown in My Heart, Michelle of GotchaBaby introduces her breakdown of adoption fees by imagining that conversation after her daughter helped her send the last payment to the adoption agency facilitating the adoption of her brother:

And she happily held the sealed envelope until we got to the mailbox. I’ll admit, there was a moment of panic running through my head. “Do I tell her the truth, that we are finishing paying the placement fee for her brother? Is she going to ask why that costs money? Holy crow, is she going to connect the dots and figure out that we paid money for her adoption as well? Why can’t I just do these things when she is asleep???”

Once the moment had passed and I regained my senses, I had some time to think about the fact that at some point, this very topic will come up. What, exactly, will I say? Probably something along the lines of that we had to go through some classes and do some paperwork to be able to adopt them. That the agency that brought us together with their birthmother, Jane, does a lot of good things for people who need help, and the agency, in turn, relies on people to support their work. That the people who work at the agency helping other families all need to be paid, just like we get
paid for our jobs. Or something like that. That the agency we used provides services to all women and children needing help, helped me swallow the agency’s placement fee.

The issue hasn't come up with my kids yet. They've certainly been present when people ask me how much it costs to adopt, and I've always answered carefully about fees for services. I also reference the medical costs for giving birth to a child in my answer about the costs of adoption, so they can see that there are costs involved no matter how you add a child to your family. But I don't know how much of these conversations they've understood.

I remember how shocked my kids were when they figured out that their preschool teachers weren't working for love alone. I hope my explanations of tuition payments will lay the foundation for explaining adoption agency fees when the topic comes up.

Have you had that conversation with your child? Tell us about it!

New China Adoptee Blog!

Meia passed on the link to her new blog, Adoption, Etcetera, where she introduces herself as follows:

The Basics...Adopted at approximately age 2 in December 1993 from Anhui Province, China, by a single woman. I'm a follow-the-golden-rule, origami-crane-folding, peace-making, write-a-letter vegetarian. I'm a stand-on-the-corner-in-a-witch's-costume-and-a-rainbow-scarf protesting-prop 8, pro-gay-rights feminist. I'm a singing-in-the-shower whisperer. I'm a baby-name-book-reading, writer. I'm a cool chess nerd. I'm a travel-around-the-world homebody. I'm a feeding-the-chickens-because-it feels-so-peaceful snail-lover. I'm an adopted adopter of a black cat I named Kitty-Cat. I'm a watch-the-ants-gather-around-the-sugar-water-droplet-because-it's-just-like-Arthur-and-the-knights -at-the-round-table gal. Etcetera.

I love it! Be sure to read her post about Mandarin lessons as a child. I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. Etcetera.

Love Without Boundaries: Vote For Them to Win $1M!

Please vote for Love Without Boundaries to win $1 million from Chase Community Giving. (Voting is free, and therefore won't divert any funds you are donating to Haiti relief.)

The thing I love about LWB is that not only does it help orphans in Chinese orphanages, it also prevents Chinese children from being orphaned. I've posted before about LWB's Unity Fund, which provides medical care/surgery to poor families so that they need not abandon their children in the hopes that they will receive life-saving medical treatment. The only thing better than helping orphans in need, in my opinion, is preventing kids from becoming orphans in the first place.

I'm not asking you to donate a penny, just vote! Voting ends January 22, so vote, and spread the word!

More on Haiti and Adoption

Child Trafficking Major Concern After Quake, so it is important to get unaccompanied children into "safe zones," says UNICEF.

73adoptee has collected many cautionary blog posts about Haiti and the adoption response, including posts with great information about the baby airlift from Cuba in the 1960s, called Operation Pedro Pan, and those calling for an Operation Pierre Pan from Haiti.

Quebec Department of International Adoption (via Google Translate) adds its caution to the statement from the U.S. State Department about seeking to adopt children affected by conflict or natural disaster -- including a reminder that children without parents present are "unaccompanied minors," not necessarily "orphans."

From SOS Children's Villages, Earthquake Orphan Appeal: Do Not Adopt Earthquake Orphans, asking some great questions:

When you see any child who has lost their family on the news, your natural instinct is to want to go and pick them up and cherish them. You should not feel guilty about this instinct, it is part of being human and most of us share it. There is also a deep wisdom in this reaction about the need for a proper long term solution for the child not just one day's hot meal. However before taking steps toward trying to adopt a tsunami [sic] child, you should stop and think:

1) Is you adopting them the best solution for the child? A child who has started growing up in a community and their lost parents still has some inner security from knowing their environment, knowing other adults, familiar weather, the sound of local language or accents and their general surrounding (even smells, humidity and temperature). You may feel you can offer the most caring environment in the world, but it may not be the one where the child feels most secure.

2) Is this approach cost effective? Caring for children locally in the long term is much cheaper than uprooting them and bringing them over for adoption. . . .

3) Can you know that the child really has no-one? . . .

4) Are many of us really up to it? . . .

FYI, SOS Children's Villages already has a village in Haiti, has worked there since 1978, and has emergency sponsorships of quake orphans in Haiti.

Dawn at Creating a Family has a list of adoption agencies and aid agencies in Haiti doing emergency relief work with orphans and orphanages.

"They Remembered Me"

From AdoptiveFamlies, an article by Korean adoptee Hollee McGinnis (who happens to be policy & operations director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute), who did not search for her birth family -- they searched for her:

That night, as I stared at the blurry photo of my biological grandfather and grand mother, my mind kept returning to one thought: They remembered me. Every adopted person thinks about the man and the woman—ghostlike figments—who gave her life. But that night the characters in my adoption story came alive. They were no longer figments of a dream, but flesh and blood people—people who shared my blood.
It took four years of exploring my American, Korean, and adoption identities before I embarked on a journey back to my birth country to meet my birthfather and his family. The night before I left for Korea, I sat with my parents on our back patio. I feared the only parents I knew might feel I did not love them if I met my birth family. But my dad dispelled my worries. He said, "We always knew we had family in Korea."

Suz commented on a post once saying that she wished stories from adult adoptees about searching for or meeting birth family didn't include defensive language about their adoptive families, the de rigueur defense of "I love my adoptive parents, but. . . ." I wish we were past that, too. After all, what could be more natural than someone wanting to meet their birth family? That doesn't have anything to do with how good or bad their adoptive family is/was!

Still, some adoptive parents need to hear that message, and McGinnis provides that reassurance here: "But meeting my biological family has in many ways strengthened my relationship with my adoptive family; I have a future now with my birth family, but nothing can take away the years of nurture my parents gave me."

She also absolves her parents for withholding the letter her birth grandfather sent when she was 15, and not disclosing it to her until she was an adult (on the advice of an adult adoptee they consulted). I think adoptive parents really take a risk withholding this kind of information, a risk of damaging their relationship with their child. With so much uncertainty in the lives of adopted children, they need to be able to trust that we will tell them the truth -- the whole truth. Adoption experts say children need to know the whole truth by age 12. Yes, we tell the truth in age-appropriate ways, but we have to tell the whole truth.

I can't speak to her situation, but I'd have to say that I would think a 15-year-old would be old enough to learn of the letter. The reason experts say kids need to know their whole story by age 12 is that so much important identity work happens in the teen years. Adopted kids need to be able to integrate their whole story in those teen years. I would think it would be important for a teenager to see that letter, and know that her birth family had not forgotten her. I'd think it would be a positive for an adopted teen to work that knowledge into her identity.

Still, I'm glad that McGinnis' parents did tell her about the letter; not all adoptive families would, I'm sorry to say, from stories I've heard. And I'm glad that her parents were sensitive enough to absolve her of any loyalty conflict, accepting that she wanted to go to Korea and meet her birth family.

"Playing the Adoption Card"

A great post (too mild a description -- how about fantastic, wise, insightful. . . ) by Tonggu Momma at Grown in My Heart, about her daughter "playing the adoption card:"

I am a momma who strives to keep open the lines of communication with my daughter, especially those conversations that center around her adoption. Listening to adult adoptees (both on-line and those I know in real life) pushed me to go a step further this year, asking questions of my daughter and allowing us both to just sit with her emotions. We’ve had many conversations about her first family, her foster family and orphanage, our adoption story and yes, we’ve even tackled the topic of racism. I’ve made mistakes, as a momma and as a person, but I figure that trying my best, focusing on my daughter rather than myself and remaining humble during this process will see all of us through as best we can.

Last month, the Tongginator played the adoption card. And by that I mean that she tried to manipulate me to get her way, using the topic of adoption. . . .

But my daughter is smart. REALLY smart. She also knows me well.

And what she’s learned these past five years as my daughter is that I pretty much drop everything to talk with her when she brings up the topic of adoption. When she says “I miss my Abu (her name for her foster mother),” I stop what I am doing, get down at her eye level, offer a hug and wait. I make no apologies for this… it’s what she needs.

Except when she doesn’t.

Oh, boy, does this sound familiar! Zoe, especially, will play the adoption card at times, raising adoption to deflect negative attention ("when you're mad at me, it makes me feel like I'm back in the orphanage") or to delay doing something she's supposed to do (wanting to talk adoption when she should be doing her homework) or when she wants some one-on-one attention (interrupting something Maya is saying to ask a question about adoption).

How lucky we are that by the time our kids start talking adoption, we know them well enough to distinguish between genuine and disingenuous adoption talk, or at least most of the time we can tell the difference! When I'm not sure, I try to err on the side of talking about adoption, if at all possible. And sometimes when I know they're really playing the adoption card, I'll still talk adoption, if I have my own agenda for doing so, like when I've been looking for an opening to explore an adoption issue with them. But I also let them know that I recognize their tactic for what it is (boy, do they hate talking at that juncture)!

I think if you've laid the right foundation with your kids (like Tonggu Momma has), by letting them know in a multitude of ways that you're open to discussing adoption feelings, there's nothing wrong with giving them a quick affirmation on the adoption point ("I know you feel sad about your birth parents, but. . ."), and then postpone the discussion to another time (". . . you need to finish your homework before bedtime. Let's talk about it after you finish.") But then I think it is important to raise the issue again at that later point, even if you think it was being used manipulatively -- and if they are reluctant to talk now, you can at least affirm your willingness to talk, and explain again why you couldn't talk before.

And, of course, the best way to diminish the value of playing the adoption card is to listen attentively to ALL important issues your child wants to discuss. That way you affirm that adoption isn't the only issue you pay special attention to, that they are about more than just adoption. And if they have a full deck of cards to play in an attempt to manipulate you, at least the adoption card won't come up as often!

Haiti and Adoption

At MomLogic, adoptive mom Sarah talks about the earthquake in Haiti, and her 4-year-old whose adoption has been finalized, but is still there because of visa problems:

When I heard about the earthquake, it almost felt unreal. It still does.

My son is there. He's 4 years old.

I have adopted two children from Haiti, and am currently hosting a baby ("Bear") from there. He has been with us over a year while he gets surgeries for spina bifida. My daughter, Angeline, also from Haiti, also has spina bifida. My son Isaac, due to years and years of glitches in paperwork, is still in Haiti. My heart breaks knowing he's there, and I can't get to him, especially in this devastation. I have heard from
his orphanage that he is okay, thank God, but my heart breaks for him. I just want to go get him NOW.

At her blog, Mom to 14 (yes, you read that right -- she has 14 kids at age 36 -- 5 bio, 6 adopted from foster care, 2 adopted from Haiti, and one hosted from Haiti), she writes:

In the adoption world the word is that there will be a meeting tomorrow [Friday] at 10am EST by the department of state who will talk about adoptions in Haiti and those US citizens with children waiting for Visa's or passports. Children who have been waiting years. They said it could take weeks to come to a decision on how to handle things.

The only thing I could find on the State Department website about Haiti and adoption is this timely reminder that adopting children affected by natural disasters and conflict is not the best way to help:

The Department of State receives inquiries from American citizens concerned about the plight of children in areas of conflict and in countries afflicted by natural disasters such as the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Our office shares this concern for children in devastated areas and we understand that some Americans want to respond by offering to open their homes and adopt these children in need.

It can be extremely difficult in such circumstances to determine whether children who appear to be orphans truly are eligible for adoption. Children may be temporarily separated from their parents or other family members during a natural disaster or conflict, and their parents may be looking for them. It is not uncommon in an emergency or unsettled situation for parents to send their children out of the area, or for families to become separated during an evacuation. Even when it can be demonstrated that children have indeed lost their parents or have been abandoned, they are often taken in by other relatives in the extended family.

During times of crisis, it can also be exceptionally difficult to fulfill the legal requirements for adoption of both the U.S. and the child's country of origin. This is
especially true when civil authority breaks down or temporarily ceases to function. It can also be difficult to gather documents necessary to fulfill the legal requirements of U.S. immigration law. There are many ways in which U.S. citizens can help the children in areas of natural disaster or conflict. For example, individuals who wish to assist can make a financial contribution to a reputable relief or humanitarian organization working in that country.

I've posted before on the topic of adopting children affected by natural disaster, that adoption experts say it's wrong to take a traumatized child away from the only environment he or she knows in the wake of tragedy. I think the State Department is right to remind those looking at the tragic pictures on the news that they should be looking at other ways to help.

But that does not help those, like Sarah, who are already in the process of adopting from Haiti. I can only imagine how I would be feeling in their shoes. The closest I can come is the uncertainty I felt about what would happen to Zoe's adoption after 9/11 -- I received her referral in August, and didn't take a full breathe until I held her in October. And I didn't have to worry about whether she was alive, healthy, safe. . . .

My heart goes out to the people of Haiti, and to all those outside of Haiti who are worried about loved ones there.

More Children Rescued From Child Trafficking Ring

Have you been following this story? Looks like 12 more children have been rescued from this child trafficking ring in China:

In the continuing crackdown on human trafficking that started in April, twelve more abducted children were rescued by police in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

That brings the number of rescued children in Guangxi to 31, of whom 20 have been reunited with their families.

Nineteen of the reunited children were from Guangxi and one is from Yunnan Province, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.

The reunited kids were linked to their parents through DNA tests and a DNA database set up by the Ministry of Public Security.

The police have taken into custody five people suspected of running a multi-provincial human trafficking ring. The chief suspect surnamed Lan confessed to police that his ring has sold more than 30 kids in rich southern Chinese provinces, according to a former report.

Lan said he used little pets and balloons to lure little boys from migrant worker families in Guangxi. He said he almost succeeded every time when he tried to abduct a child.

He said he earned between 20,000 and 40,000 yuan for each boy he sold in Fujian, according to the report.

Some children are sold for adoption to childless couples, and others are trained as beggars or prostitutes.

My kids are from Guangxi Province, so this story has really hit close to home. Sometimes international adoptive parents look at these stories and simply heave a sigh of relief when they realize it only implicates domestic adoption, not international adoption. I understand that reaction, but in reality we should all care about child trafficking, no matter what. For one thing, as China (finally) cracks down on child trafficking, traffickers may be looking to "dump" children they may have already taken as the police draw near. Taking them to an orphanage would be a great way to do that. From the orphanage, they may find themselves adopted internationally by unwitting adoptive parents.

World's Oldest Mother -- Age and Adoption

Some days I feel like the World's Oldest Mother.

Sometimes the feeling is internal, like when I can't get up without making those old people noises, or when my knee aches and my shoulder twinges and my . . . well, you get the picture. Other times it's external, like when people ask if I'm my kids' grandmother (7 times in the first year I was home with Zoe (not that I'm counting or anything!)). Sometimes its the inadvertent things friends say -- like the friend who complained that her elderly parents couldn't possibly understand something going on in her life, and I realized that her mom was 40 when she was born, just like I was 40 when I adopted Zoe (I take a perverse pleasure in the fact that I was 39 when Zoe was born, even though I turned 40 just 5 days after she was born!All bets are off with Maya, of course -- I was 43 when she was born, and 45 when I adopted her, officially older than dirt). I can just see Zoe and Maya in future years complaining to a friend that I'm too old to understand! Oh, yes, and sometimes the reminder that I'm the World's Oldest Mom comes in something my kids say, like when Zoe wrote, "I hope you enjoy your grandkids," on my last birthday card. Or when Zoe realized I was exactly 40 years older than her: ". . . when I'm 7, you'll be 47; and when I'm 8, you'll be 48; and when I'm 9, you'll be 49; and when I'm 10, you'll be 40-10. . . . "

With 40-10 staring me in the face, I want to talk about parental age and adoption. It's an issue I cover in Adoption Law, together with other adoptive-parent "qualifications" like religion, race and sexual orientation. The legal standard, of course, is best interest of the child, when we look at parental qualifications in adoption placements. The arguments against older parents are pretty well known -- they may not live to raise the child into adulthood, they may not have the physical energy needed to parent, they may not have the mental flexibility necessary to understand "today's youth," the child might be stigmatized with peers and others for having older parents.

With many of these arguments, age is really serving as a proxy for health. We can all name 70-year-olds with more energy than some 30-year-olds we can name, and same goes for life expectancy and mental flexibility. (I have a sneaking suspicion, for example, that Jean Smart, though older than me, is much more physically fit than I am!) Certainly, in the grand scheme of things, the younger you are the more energy you have and the longer your life expectancy is. But we always know some exceptions. Why, you can even take a test to see if your REAL age is the same as your calendar age!

Sometimes when it's hard to get information about an issue, when we don't know if someone fits within the norm or is an exception, we use proxies -- like we use "race" as a proxy for "lower socio-economic status" and "lower socio-economic status" as a proxy for "poor education" in making decisions about admission to college. It may be that you are African-American and the child of an ambassador who attended private schools, or you grew up in a poor area, but went to the only excellent high school in the vicinity, but we can't know the socio-economic status of each applicant, or how good the thousands of high schools in America are, so we use race and/or area poverty as a proxy.

But in adoption, do we need to use age as a proxy? We already gather tons of information about prospective adoptive parents, including health and mental outlook and energy -- the things we really want to know, that we sometimes assume age will tell us. But we can figure out whether someone fits within the norm for their age, or is an exception to the rule. Health can even tell us something about life expectancy, though there are no absolutes on that front. Still, life expectancy is increasing -- life expectancy for women at birth in 1900 was 50.7 years, and in 1997 it was 79.4 years. A 58 year-old-woman can expect to live an additional 24.6 years, long enough to usher a child into adulthood. And we know that even very young adoptive parents can die before their time. Because of that, what we typically want to know of all prospective adoptive parents, regardless of age, is what plans they have for the care and custody of their child if they were to die before the child reached adulthood.

So that leaves us with the stigma, embarrassment, etc., of a child with older parents. It hasn't seemed to occur to my kids yet that I'm older than the average bear, though I'm sure it will eventually. I admit, I sometimes feel weird as the menopausal mother of a kindergartner, but I can also say I'm not the only "golden oldie" on the pickup line! And that stigma argument is the same one used to deny adoption on the basis of sexual orientation -- after all, won't Johnny be embarrassed to have gay parents? It's also one of the arguments against transracial adoption.

Yes, there's this long-held belief that adoption should try to replicate the "natural family." The adoptive family should look just like a biological family -- that was the motivation behind the old "matching" rules, where child and adoptive parents were matched not just by race, but by hair color and texture, skin tone, eye color, even height and weight. Replicating the natural family would also mean only couples capable of procreating "naturally" would be suitable adoptive parents. Gay couples wouldn't fit in this requirement, neither would transracial adoption. And being too old to reproduce would also disqualify a family from adopting under this rubric. I'm not sure I'd want to limit adoption to what "nature" could create -- as a single mom, I wouldn't qualify, either, not having experienced any visits from God or gods to impregnate me!

The "nature" argument comes up with assisted reproduction as well. Take a look at this interesting article, Monstrous Mothers: Media Representations of Post-Menopausal Pregnancy. The world's real oldest mother, who gave birth at age 66 with the help of donor eggs, died at the age of 69 last summer. That's kind of the poster child for "too old," right? She left her 3-year-old twins orphaned. Yes, she might have lived to the ripe old age of 101, as her mother did, but the odds were against it, right? Just like the odds would be against a 66-year-old adoptive parent, right? What she did, and what older adoptive parents do, is "unnatural."

My problem with this argument is that it disproportionally affects women. Nature allows the World's Oldest Father to procreate at age 90, and media representations of older fathers wouldn't dub them "Monstrous Fathers," hmm? What we buy instead is the meme, "I'm a much better father now than before, because I'm older, more settled, and have more patience," usually said while the child is in the background jumping on the couch (I always think it's exhaustion, not patience, that allows him to ignore the bouncing kid!). I know a man who had a child with his (of course much younger) wife at age 66, the same age as the World's Oldest Mother, and no one even blinked. It certainly wasn't a cause celebre in the media, with people screaming, "There oughtta be a law!"

"So? Nature is unfair," I hear you cry. But who says adoption has to follow nature? Interestingly enough, the Evan B. Donaldson Institute has a recent report out suggesting that nature -- at least when assisted -- should follow adoption: Old Lessons for a New World: Applying Adoption Research & Experience to Assisted Reproductive Technology. But in adoption, we've moved beyond matching, beyond the idea of replicating the "natural" family, haven't we?

Most courts that have looked at the age factor in adoption have said that the age of prospective adoptive parents is relevant in a best interest of the child analysis, but that it cannot be a SOLE or DETERMINATIVE factor in adoption placement. In the case we study in class (registration required to view case), the prospective adoptive parents were selected by the birth mom, had parented the child placed with them as a newborn for 2.5 years at the time of the adoption, and were aged 54 (adoptive mom) and 70 (adoptive dad) at the time of the adoption. The trial court denied the adoption based solely on age, and the appellate court reversed, and directed the trial court to enter an order approving the adoption.

I'm not willing to accept categorical statements -- "you're too old to parent a child," said to adoptive parents, or "you're too young to parent a child," said to a birth mom to induce relinquishment. Adoption, more than just about any other endeavor in human life, is about SCREENING. We have doctors, social workers, government officials and judges all judging the fitness of adoptive parents. We don't need proxies, we don't need single-factor tests. We can carefully examine on a case-by-case basis the suitability of a particular adoptive parent. We might get it wrong, I don't doubt that, but I can't help but believe that individualized assessments are better than absolute rules.

More details on Jean Smart's China adoption

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

Another Celebrity Adoption: Jean Smart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 Tips for Raising a Child of Another Race

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

Adoption Experiences of Women & Men

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adoption: at what cost?

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

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

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

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

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

Scott Simon Talks Adoption With His Daughter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friends & Sisters Forever

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

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

Eeeeewwwwwwww!

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

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

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

And yes, Zoe is the artist featured above!

"My Prior Life"

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

The Passing of Days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get On Board the Orphan Train

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waiting for God: Religion & Korean American Adoption

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reprint: Talking Explicitly About Race/Racism

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

Kay Johnson Interview at O Solo Mama

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

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

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

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

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

A Toast to the Red Thread!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Magic 8 Ball & Birth Parents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Baby Market

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

We're in Vermont!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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