Two Articles

22 thoughts on Two Articles

1. By far the most evil thing Clinton did. Even worse I yhink he knew it was evil and just did it for politics.

2. Read this book by Mike Davis… Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines And the Making of the Third World.

   It’s pretty easy to read, and a big part of the story is how colonialists used work-for-poor/famine-relief as a way to legitimize “deserve” language for *starving the poor*. It was also a way to alienate people from communal economies and pull them into export industries to fill England’s coffers.

   One should *never* accept any but the most broad of restrictions for poverty relief. No work, no preaching, no hard and fast lines for who diserves to eat, etc, etc, etc…

3. I checked it out on amazon. yeah it looks pretty readable.

   if there was a voluntary work program that got people actual *jobs* as an alternative to welfare I might support that. And by job i mean work that you get paid a living wage for. Work experience bullshit is a scam. In Nyc its free labor for the city. NYC parks are fucking plantations.

   And anytime you see people in those blue coveralls that say ready willing and able they are working for the privilege of living in a shelter.

4. AAAARrrrrrrrrgh! Another “all international adoptions are stealing babies” article. I know that our agency and the Mongolian government did EVERYTHING it could to make sure our daughter was not bought or stolen. There was police reports at the time of her abandonment, ads in the papers asking if people knew of her etc. This article totally made the adoptive parents sound like scum because some stranger showed up at their door with a story and they wanted to talk to a lawyer. *bangs head on desk*. And yes I know that there are horrible characters out there but they make adoptive parents sound so evil.

5. Thank you so much for pointing readers to the Mother Jones article on international adoption. It contains some facts most of us don’t want to know, since as a country we prefer the “orphan-rescuing narrative” in which nothing can be worse for a child than not living in the US with upper middle-class white people.

   “I knew that it was a possibility” [my son was kidnapped]. “To him, India does not exist.” I don’t think these two heartless, insecure people represent the average adoptive parent, but before this article came out, I don’t think many of us would have believed such people existed.

   “This is an industry to export children.” Perfectly said. When we could no longer convince single mothers to give up their kids, we had to go elsewhere, and along the way we forgot that adoption is supposed to be a practice that provides homes for kids who need them, not kids for people who want them.

6. Excuse me? Upper middle class people? Where do you get your facts? Many people who adopt internationally can barely scrape together the fees to adopt. Many, many of them are adopting children with problems such as cleft lip, hand or leg differences etc. These are children who will languish in orphanages if not adopted. We’re not talking cute tiny babies here, people. Most children are a year old or older, as almost no country will let children be adopted unless they are over 6 months old. Most countries only put the children up for adoption after they have been up for adoption for someone from the birth country to adopt. In fact India the average age is 1+ (really most are 2+) and most of the time you now have to be of Indian ancestry unless you are adopting older or special needs children. Is the industry flawed? Yes. Should more be done to make sure it’s well regulated? Yes. But we are NOT monsters for adopting overseas. We didn’t do it because some actress did. We are people who want to have a family, and instead of wasting bizillion dollars with IVF etc bringing yet another child into this world we adopted one that needed a home. We adoptive parents on the whole try very hard to make sure that our children have connections to their birth countries. We swap recipes, we organize events, language classes, there are culture camps, immersion schools and Homeland tours. We organize fund raising and do all we can to help those still in our children’s birth country.

7. Thanks for linking the Mother Jones article. I should have suspected something like this exists, but had never read anything about it before.

   A few things stuck out for me: it’s upsetting that the daughter’s future was sacrificed in order to search for an absent son. It’s upsetting that rich white people are adopting children from overseas because the process is “more open” in other countries, and ignoring the orphaned children who exist in their own countries. And it’s also upsetting, and very revealing, that the adoptive parents feel perfectly okay saying that they “had the adoption bug,” like…like it’s a shopping habit, or something. Like the kids are a commodity (and I guess that’s the point of the article–these children are being commodified). It sounds like a particularly tasteless commercial: “Bet you can’t adopt just one!” Ugh.

8. The Mother Jones article (and the commentary attached to it) reveals a lot of truths we adoptive parents have struggled with from the beginning of the process. However, the tone of many of the comments is extremely irritating, predicated as it is on the assumption that parents who adopt internationally are by definition bad actors – selfish, upper-class white couples who put their careers before children and now want a convenience child now that they are too old to have their own child.

   Ah, broad generalizations, the universal constant of prejudice. For the record, my wife and I are white, but hardly upper middle class. We, of course, cannot have natural children, and we started early in our 20s. I could paint a picture of nearly a decade of failed attempts, medical interventions, humiliations petty and major, invasive questions and the false-envy-sympathy of people who had children of their own – “Oh, you’re so lucky, you can spend all of your money on yourselves.” I could describe the depression of hope deferred.

   But the reality is that both of us arrived at adoption slowly, as the only chance we had to have the family that others seem to arrive at so easily. We stepped carefully into the adoption pond, collected data and researched, and faced the issues with trepidation and concern. Why not domestic? We explored that and ultimately rejected it; it wasn’t a matter of convenience or to “rescue the poor brown babies.” So we turned to the possibility of international adoption, which seemed the only option which would work for us.

   As an aside, one other thread running through these various discussions is the idea that it’s somehow wrong to want a child if you can’t have one naturally. Why? Why is it wrong to want a child? Even if you’re wealthy, why is it abhorrent to have that need and attempt to fulfill it? Isn’t that another prejudice, that somehow you can smugly nod at someone who seemingly has everything but can’t have a child, viewing his or her struggles with infertility as some sort of justice against their supposed sins of class, wealth, or lifestyle?

   A further aside is that it isn’t just white and heterosexual couples who struggle with these issues. What about same-sex couples? Many domestic agencies and localities block same-sex couples from adopting (remember that prop from Oklahoma?) so their only option is to go overseas. Again, is it fair to deny them the possibility of children?

   But back to my main rant. The process of adoption is, in its own way, as humiliating as the IVF process. Your life becomes filled with background checks, home studies, intense examination by every level of government and social agency. You have to trust strangers – your agency, the governments of your own and the foreign country – and you have no say in the process other than to accept or reject the placement. Yes, the process puts a burden of proof on the child’s home government, and a level of trust that the officials thereof are not corrupt. But one has to trust the process…and ask questions, which we did.

   But it is true that money is an essential part of the process. Let us not forget that the majority of the expense is not paid to the foreign country but for other expenses – travel and so forth – and that our own government takes a large slice for itself. It would indeed be ideal if the question of fees was taken out of the equation.

   If the parents in the article reacted as presented, with callousness towards their adoptive child’s home country and culture, then they are bad actors…but the parents we know are intensely interested in their child’s connection with their country of origin. We are part of a group which has meetings at least twice a year, collecting donations which we send back to the orphanage, holding drug and clothing drives, sponsoring culture camps and conferences, and involving our children in their home nation’s culture and language. We are all aware that we are very fortunate to have our children and acknowledge the debt we have to their homeland.

   The point I am trying to stress is that for every horror story of kidnapped or bought-and-sold children there are dozens – hundreds – of successful, secure, and legal adoptions. We adoptive parents are not all narcissists or privileged members of the upper class. Many of us mortgaged our retirement and future to have the blessing of being parents to some other homeland’s child. Yes, we are not heroes, we are not rescuers, we are to some extent fulfilling our own emotional needs with a child we could not have ourselves. I would counsel that we parents of international adoption not be stuffed into some simple category of “bad, selfish, rich, assholes” – but then again, generalization is easy, isn’t it?

9. I’m an adoptive parent and I thought the Mother Jones article was great. There is a huge amount of corruption in international adoption, and these under-regulated private agencies turn a blind eye to it.

   The commodification of children in adoption is an ugly open secret.

10. I am keeping the link to that MoJo article for the next time someone asks why people who use fertility science don’t “just adopt.”

    (Note: I am adopted myself. I am a huge proponent of adoption. My point is that adoption is neither simple nor a “get out of ethical dilemmas free” card.)

11. You are right that adoption is a complicated situation. BUT I think that when reporting there should be a balanced view of it. Many new regulations have come into being, and birth countries are getting more involved and investigating the agencies involved. For example in Mongolia only 3 USA agencies are allowed to do international adoptions. They also must do work in the birth country to help keep families together and other charity work. Mongolian adoption officials have traveled here to the USA to see the children themselves. We are required to send them reports and pictures till the children are 16 years old. They really care about the children and so do we. BRAFF is an organization that raises money for the children still in Russia and Mongolia. We’ve helped build playgrounds etc.

12. Of course, if the greedy women in the US who get abortions would instead carry their unwanted pregnancies to term and then give the baby up for adoption, there wouldn’t be this problem, right? There’d be plenty of home-grown orphans and abandoned kids to go around. (End snark.) No, adoption isn’t perfectly harmless. Even women who give up their babies voluntarily suffer the consequences (including severe and sometimes lifelong depression). I don’t even want to imagine what it must be like for someone whose baby was kidnapped from them.

13. Agree with the commenters above who felt the article revealed some critical problems in international adoption but fell into generalizations. I have two adopted sisters who were orphans; one, leaving the details aside, was in a position to have absolutely no doubts as to the truth of this. The lack of balance in this kind of article focuses more on assigning labels than discussing productive steps towards regulating corrup private agencies.

14. I don’t have much sympathy for adoptive parents who refuse to consider that adoption as a cultural and financial institution might not be 100% positive. You need to develop thicker skin. Why feel personally insulted by people drawing attention to corrupt adoption practices? Adoptive parents get plenty of positive feedback already. We are not the victims here.

    As for balance… the vast majority of articles available on adoption concentrate on the positive, even sunny aspects. Orphans are being rescued! New families created! Sunbeams! Rainbows! The Mother Jones article is important because it strives to create balance, reminding people that for every single happy family coming together, there’s some kind of tragedy tearing another family apart. Some of those tragedies have nothing to do with the adoption that follows later… but in others, yes, adoption is complicit.

    And adoptive parent solidarity is too often invoked to silence the voices of critics.

15. Actually lately most of the articles I’ve seen have been “Adoptive parents beat child” “Adoption the new accessory?” “Stolen babies.” BTW isn’t getting a “thicker skin” a bit of a strawman? We are already infertile, “broken” if you will. We go through humiliating medical procedures, get investigated by strangers even get fingerprinted. We have to pay money to everyone… doctors, social workers, the government to adopt. Yet we are evil evil people wanting to adopt. Maybe you haven’t seen all the negative reporting but we have, as we try to stay informed. There is more to every story and it should be more balanced. Yes it’s not a warm sunny rainbow filled process. Yes there should be more regulation going on. There are definitely people who need to be punished and exposed. But the reality is that there are children who need homes. Should we just let them rot to make you feel like you’ve saved the children from the big bad adoptive parents?

16. Excerpts from How to suppress discussions about transracial and transnational adoption:

    2. Misrepresent your opponent’s argument:
    – “You think children are better off in orphanages” or “You think children are better off in foster care.” Extra credit if you use the words “languish” or “linger.
    – “You would rather deprive a child of a loving home.”
    – “So you think it would be better to have been aborted?”
    3. Deflect attention away from the specific criticism:
    A very popular form of deflecting attention is to victimize adoptive parents. The way to use this method is to present all the hardships adoptive parents must go through to adopt. Among the items to list are how long it takes to adopt, how much money they spent, the invasiveness of the homestudy, and infertility issues.

    I also went through a really tough time during my own adoption qualification and matching process (from foster care). But that has very little to do with anything about adoption corruption. It’s just not relevant to the arguments. And the fact remains that I had a choice in the matter. The people who do not have choices are too often silenced.

17. Just to clarify – I have no objection to exposing corruption surrounding international adoption. I have no problem with exposing parents who have bought children – I was nothing but irritated by the constant stories about Madonna just “picking up” a child, especially in reflection with my own experiences with international adoption. If I discovered my daughter was forced into adoption by violence or theft I’d be absolutely horrified and more than willing to open up a dialog with the birth parents. I’ve studied Imperialism and the history of forced adoption – especially the Lebensborn program of Nazi Germany and the “civilizing” of aboriginal children in Australia – and feel nothing but helpless pit-in-my-stomach revulsion at such practices.

    What angers me is the blithe reduction – the categorization – of adoptive parents as being rich, white, and callous. Not all of us are, “thick” skin or not.

18. I do not think telling adoptive parents that they need a “thicker skin” is in anyway a good way to argue your point. And I totally agree that adoption needs more regulation. All I ask is a more balanced article. This article did not mention any of the new regulations, the steps that the United States are taking to make sure that the children are orphans or even the steps the birth countries are taking on their own to stop corruption. I also think any “happy warm rainbow” adoption story should include all the facts about corruption, the effects of poverty etc too.

19. The adoption industry can be pretty damned seedy. I’m with qvd. There is a pretty heavily documented history of some pretty monstrous actions and attitudes wrt adoptions. There are reason that legal adoptions are such a hassle, though it has only driven the bad stuff further underground.

    I had also agreed with qvc about anon egg donations. The value of anon donation accrues to the businessmen and organizations involved, and not really to the donor, even though she might think so. The dynamics involved is largely the same privacy in pay. Plenty of people do not other people to know what they make, however, they are *encouraged* to feel that way because it’s easier for businesses to wage discrimination and insider self dealing. The social losses aren’t really worth the gains for the privacy of individuals. It’s the same with donor anonomynity.

20. A further aside is that it isn’t just white and heterosexual couples who struggle with these issues. What about same-sex couples? Many domestic agencies and localities block same-sex couples from adopting (remember that prop from Oklahoma?) so their only option is to go overseas. Again, is it fair to deny them the possibility of children?

    tannenburg, I sympathize with what you’ve been through and your desire to have children, but honestly, no one is entitled to another human being. The question isn’t what should people who can’t adopt domestically should do, the question is whether or not the overseas adoptions are ethical. I’m not judging your adoption; clearly I do not have nearly the details to do so, but there a lot of overseas adoptions that are questionable if not outright immoral. No one deserves a kid enough to have one that was stolen.

    I’m adopted myself. I spent the first two months of my life living in a hospital, not because I was sick but because my birth mother was in a coma (and never did leave the hospital). I know first hand that there are kids who need homes. But the focus has gone from kids who need homes to people who want children. And kids spend their whole childhoods in foster care while we hear stories about kids kidnapped for adoption. It’s crazy. We need to stop thinking that people have an entitlement to children, and maybe start thinking that children have an entitlement to a decent home.

21. Marle, I concede the point that where there is money to be made, there is corruption. I am confident our adoption was above-board – we have the police reports on the abandonment of our child, she was found at the state hospital when an infant and not dropped off at the orphanage, and our chosen home nation is extremely resistant to adoptions to the point where a maximum of 5-10 are done each year. The criteria are high. I saw no evidence of bribery or corruption, but I could not precisely tell you where the money we paid the officials went. All we have is a receipt.

    I’ll also agree that the children should be the focus, not the parents. I personally think of myself as a caretaker, not an owner; she is, in the end, her own person with the right to construct her own life’s narrative, including where she came from and where she’s going. I know someone who had a “surprise” adoption – she found out in her late teens that she was not a “natural” child – and it was a devastating experience for her.

    All I can speak from is my own experience. My wife and I discussed the domestic option and set it aside for our own reasons, none of which had anything to do with “saving a child from depravity” or such nonsense. I very much look askance at many of the narratives surrounding all forms of adoption, especially those of the “I saw her picture and fell in love” nature.

    The fact remains that the children are ill-served by almost all of the existing systems. Still, there are people like me out there willing to include a child in our lives and children out there who would benefit from a stable and loving house, and yet the medium through which they are brought together is inefficient, corrupt, and often questionable.

    As an aside, I’ve always tried to dissuade people from painting me and my wife as having done something heroic by adopting our daughter. These sorts of comments often come from people who have cultural and religious biases – we’ve “saved her soul from paganism” or “she’s lucky to be raised American rather than X.” Anyone who glories in the process is objectifying the child to make themselves look better.

    In the end, for me, it’s not a matter of “deserving” a child. We were fortunate that there was a mechanism in place through which we could try and redress our childlessness – multiple mechanisms, in fact of point – and we exercised as much care as we could to choose one which was legal and in the best interests of the child.

    Also, I’d say I’m a lot more educated about adoption and foster care than I was then. The uncertainties of foster care and foster-to-adopt still trouble me, as part of the broken system I mentioned above; many of the deterrents involved are still in place. As a society we’re still feeling our way through new definitions of family and yet our legal system is stuck, to an extent, in a very rigid groove which ultimately may not serve the children as much as it serves the old view of children as property of blood-related parents and family members.

22. I think the article nailed it when it said that India is “more open-meaning easier” to foreign adoption. The system in that particular country seems to be corrupt and needs reform, but it is not a way to blanket the process in every country. There needs to be more oversight on what is going on in Indian orphanages, some way to protect people who are possibly poor or maybe uneducated from being victimized by their country. And people adopting need to be careful to investigate the process before running in.

    Like some have said above, not every country deals w/ foreign adoption the same way. I know that my husband and I have looked into it, along w/ a couple we are friends w/. For instance, Korea has very strict policies on foreign adoption, including a minimum age reached for the child, (though I am not sure what it is right now), the government will bring the child to you, in order to inspect your home. You must have either Korean ancestry, or have another tie to the country to ensure that you are going to provide some kind of cultural education to the child about his or her mother country. Bonus if you speak the language and can raise the child bilingually. Then, during the first two years, Korean officials make home visits, unannounced, to ensure that you are in fact doing all of the above, WRT cultural education and language learning. They want to make sure that the children are cared for and that the homes are appropriate for the child. They don’t just hand over a baby, they follow up and make sure that you are sticking to what you agreed to. You are tied to the Korean government for some time after the adoption takes place and it isn’t finalized until that initial two years lapses. If they don’t think you are living up to their expectations, they can take the child back. They also go to great lengths to advertise that a child will be adopted so that anyone missing a child has a chance to speak up.

    There are several other factors as well, and a few rules change all the time, like they used to look favorably on you if you could reside in the country for an extended time, but as my friend found out, now they will only allow foreign adoption if you are adopting from the country you are native to (meaning you can’t be residing in Korea at the time you are applying. My friends are living her as well).

    It’s not the whole of foreign adoption, and not everyone chooses foreign adoption after being turned down in the US. Some people specifically choose areas for different reasons. I understand the problems, and something needs to be done about it, but I don’t understand the apparent vilification of the process as a whole. It isn’t about rescuing a child, but it is about trying to provide a home for a child who wants or needs one as long as the proper procedures are adhered to.

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