Madonna Maternal Madness: Will the adoptions never stop?

Just a short rant on Madonna today because Ya know, I've had it with these celebrity adoptions that make every teenager and young woman coming down the pike thinking that adopting some infant from a "poor family" or a "poor county" such as Nepal is deserving of some friggen medal. Given the way things are going today, Mary would have been urged to give up her child...as she and Joseph were so very poor--not even a proper bed to be born into. Some better-off family would have adopted Christ and he would not have had to turn water into wine, or feed a thousand with a few loaves and fishes. But I digress.
Filippo Lippi - Madonna and Child with two angels Picture @ Uffizi Gallery, Florence


Each one of these celebrity adoptions sets up a whole chain on other adoptions, and from what we have seen about the corruption in international adoption (which apparently most of the world is oblivious to---like folks, read Mother Jones and its revealing story about kidnapping for hire in India to provide healthy cute infants for Americans; Foreign Policy or, for that matter, FirstMotherForum this past month here and also here and here for a poppin' eyeful about the dark and seemly side of international adoption. And over at Daily Bastardette, Marley has a good blog about the Madonna Madness for Mercy (the girl's name) the Material Girl now wants to... ahem...buy.

Yes, I mean that word. Buy. That is what it comes down to. Madonna will go to Malawi, spend some money there for an orphanage or a school, and then whadda you know, come back with a child! It that isn't filthy lucre in exchange for a baby, then I'm the Queen of Sheba not a poor wretch eking out a living writing.

Friday we will find out if the Material Girl from Michigan (my home state, I am embarrassed to say) gets to take Mercy back to England, over the wishes of her grandmother and other family members..This from USA Today earlier in the week:

Mercy James' grandmother, 61-year-old Lucy Chekechiwa, is reportedly against Madonna's decision to adopt. (Mercy James' single teen mother died at age 18; the girl's father is believed to be alive.)

"Why doesn't this singer pick other children?" she told Britain's The Sun. "It is stealing. I want to go to to court. I won't let her go."

Well, like Wow, Madonna, I know you are promising to dump some money in Malawi, where you got your last child, and yes, probably do some good, but now we have a family member actively asking you not to adopt this little girl. You say you have had your eye on for quite a while--why not pick a kid who doesn't have a family--are they not so cute, do they have problems, are they sickly?

You say your son needs a companion who looks like him, but is this the way to solve that problem? You could bring over a whole village of kids--hell, the whole country is poor, bring them all over to your pad in merry ole England. That is the attitude I sense from the wanna-be adopters who filter through my life in more abundance than I would wish on my enemies: Hey, the family is poor, we are not, so....won't the kid have a better life with us?

Well, maybe not. Being adopted costs a great deal of psychic damage to both the child and her/his mother you have not considered. And note I said "family": the attitude now is that fully formed families with poor kids would be better off letting them go so that the child can have a life with more stuff in it.

I'm still feeling cranky from the Dear Prudence letter over at Slate we've been talking about, which yes, as Mairaine noted, did have some good advice in it. What got me going was the insensitive way it was handled and signed that was so demeaning to the birth mother. And then I heard that The View on ABC had a discussion about the Madonna fracas this morning from a friend whom I've educated about international adoption.(You can see the clip at The View's site--at least we no longer have Loud-Mouth Adopter Number One there, Rauncy Rosie, and that is a blessing, but of course...Elizabeth and others are mostly in favor of letting the kid be taken from her native land. Joy Behar, bless her, had some doubts.)

I was not intending to rant on about Madonna's Maternal Madness, but I couldn't help myself after hearing that it has become topic du jour with way too many people saying, Yeah, girl, you go there and get another kid...Happy April Fool's Day....--lorraine (not so happy)
_______________

Look for post from Linda on Friday about her daughter on Facebook. A page she is denied access to, while other family members are not.

Madonna's Malawi charity fails and Ethiopian adoptions shut down to a trickle: Could there be abuse in the system?

Lorraine

Madonna's plans for a swell school for girls in Malawi (from where she has adopted two children) are going up in smoke, but in the meantime $3.8 million was spent on architectural drawings, nice cars and golf-club memberships, according to news reports today. Oy vey, was all I could think--think what could have been done with that money for boys and girls in Malawi--and their families--instead of turning them into families who are so poor they feel they must relinquish their children to people in more affluent nations to be adopted. By Madonna, perhaps, herself! How lucky is that?*

Madonna's Malawi Madness: Help Support Mercy James

Madonna's adoption of three-year-old Mercy James from Malawi has been halted, but of course the pop star is appealing the decision. In the meantime, Ethica, which calls for ethics in adoption--apparently a novel concept in many if not most international adoptions--has been raising money to support the object of Madonna's jaded affection. The desire is simple: raise enough cash to give the girl a decent home and education so that she can grow up among her own kind, not whisked off to England where she can grow up among genetic strangers and the...uh, finest treadmills that money can buy.



Madonna has said that she wants to adopt Mercy so that her other Malawian child can have someone around who looks like him. Well, I suppose with that line of thinking, she could adopt the whole country to come and live with her. Ethica has a good post about the situation from a social worker in Michigan, Madonna and my home state.

As the average annual income in Malawi is $160, the amount needed is under $3000 to support Mercy James until she is eighteen. As times are tight, donations as slim but one still imagines that raising $2,240 would not be difficult, but the money is not pouring in. As of yesterday, Ethica was still short of this goal, more than a week after asking.

People, I'm asking, give a damn here. We have written about the corruption in international adoption here and here, and Madonna in particular, and readers who post at least agree with us that more must be done to stop the wholesale sale of children from impoverished countries. One way is to start by sending a donation, however small. Ten dollars from ten people is more than half a year's annual income in Malawi. Surely the readers of FirstMotherForum can pick up the slack.

Please donate for Mercy James. Go to: http://www.ethicanet.org/malawi. Or send a check to: Ethica, Box 130822, Ann Arbor, MI 48113, which is what I did, noting that it was for Mercy James. I won't use PayPal because I get too much phishing once I use the site. And do check out Daily Bastardette for gory details of Madonna and Malawi. Marley has posted a lively rundown of the chain of events.

Now, off to the computer fix-it man. My PC has been acting up lately. Protesting god knows what, possible the really late and cold spring we have been having on Long Island.--lorraine

Tell NYT readers what you think about Celebrity and International Adoptions

We’ve written about Madonna and Malawi Mercy before but it’s worth another pass.

Here’s a chance to let New York Times readers know what you think about international adoption. The Times “Room for Debate” column has invited readers to comment on Madonna’s attempted adoption of a three-year old Malawi girl, Mercy, and international adoptions in general.

The Times included articles from six well-known commentators; four spouted the usual drivel about how the need for children to grow up in stable families trumped the perceived need for children to stay with their families and in their country. Throwing a bone to culturalism, they mentioned culture camps and other adornments.

Two writers, journalist E.J. Graff and adoptive father and law professor David Smolin, wrote about the corruption in international adoption and pointed out that most of the children coming from third world countries are not true orphans but very young children of impoverished parents. True orphans are older, often handicapped, and not desired by those interested in adopting. We’ve written before about Graff’s excellent coverage of corruption in international adoption.

The vast majority of the 174 commentators as I write this Tuesday afternoon are persons who adopted children from abroad. They argue that Madonna is a loving mother who will provide a better home for Mercy than her poor father. They (like Tom Lehrer’s old dope peddler) contend that they did well by doing “good”. They met their need for a child -- and they rescued a child from a life of degradation in their native country and culture. They didn’t adopt an American child because few were available except for undesirable foster kids. Some of them sound amazingly smug and are amazed that anyone would oppose the adoption of any child from a Third World country.

I posted the following comment: "Marguerite Wright and other pro-adoption commentators note that 'Research shows that children do best when raised in a supportive, caring family. Mercy has a much better chance of thriving in a family environment with personal attention, educational opportunities and medical care than in an orphanage.'

Madonna is not offering Mercy a supportive, caring family. With Madonna’s commitments and career, Mercy will be raised by nannies and receive little personal attention from Madonna or anyone else. If Madonna were willing to put Mercy’s needs before her own desire for publicity and possession of a child, she would provide funds for Mercy’s family to give her educational opportunities and medical care while being raised in a supportive, caring family, her own.

There are millions of poor children in the world. We need to work on providing all children educational opportunities and medical care rather than snatching a few thousand each year from their loving but poor families to meet the emotional needs of wealthy Americans.”

Let’s add our voices to this debate. Post your comments here and then go to the Times site and add your voice there.

More Madonna News; Child Trafficking in Asia

_______________

Madonna's bid to adopt a girl from Malawi, Chifundo Mercy James, has been approved by the highest court in that country according to several news sources. The papers also say that while "her family" (ie, maternal relatives, her mother died in childbirth) is for the adoption, her father, who has never seen the girl, also according to these sources, is against it. From Mirah Riben's blog, Family Preservation Advocacy, we took this statement:

We are delighted to report that Malawi's Supreme Court has overturned an earlier ruling denying a petition by Madonna to adopt Chifundo "Mercy" James, and has granted a full adoption. According to the New York Times, Chief Justice Lovemore Munlo, in reviewing the lower court's ruling, said that the first decision was a narrow interpretation based on old laws and that "in this global village a man can have more than one place at which he resides." We agree. Moreover, in our increasingly inter-connected world, a child should not be viewed as the sole responsibility of his country of birth.

--from the press release of ACT for Adoption, a Rye, NY, based organization of adoption attorneys with a Harvard connection through the proponent of all-adoption-all-the-time Prof. Elizabeth Bartholet of Harvard.

Read Mirah's blog, Family Preservation Advocacy, for more on the skinny.

And while we are on the subject of international adoption, read about child trafficking in Asia from Australian radio where babies are brought in fishing boats, packed in styrofoam fish crates with air holes so they don't suffocate. This is from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

First world demand to adopt very young babies is driving a new twist in people smuggling, particularly in Asia.

One of Australia's senior law officers, John Pascoe, says more and more, smugglers are trading in pregnant women - the perfect incubators - for access to their newborns. Australia's Chief Federal Magistrate John Pascoe, Australia's Chief Federal Magistrate (analogous to our Attorney General) says that among the measures needed to fight the insidious trade should be a new system of children's rights. To illustrate the shift in focus for the smugglers, Mr. Pascoe describes a 2003 case that happened off Indonesia--where the babies were found in fish crates.

JOHN PASCOE: Sadly this is a crime which is very hidden, trafficking generally is very much a hidden crime, but there are increasing numbers of reports, there are fortunately an increasing number of arrests in this area, so we believe that it's increasing and that the numbers are probably in the thousands rather than in tens or hundreds.

Interviewer LINDA MOTTRAM: So why is this growing? Is it just because the trafficking progress is evolving? The traffickers are finding new and better ways, if you like, to move the people they want to move or are there other factors there?

JOHN PASCOE: We believe that trafficking is always motivated by economics, but also there is significant demand for children for adoption apart from anything else. I believe that most newly born children end up in some sort of illegal adoption process. There's huge demand from first world countries for very young children for adoption purposes.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Well, what can be done about this? There are international conventions on the rights and protection of children but clearly that's inadequate?

JOHN PASCOE: Yes, I think we need to encourage countries throughout the Asia Pacific region to become signatories to the various conventions that protect the rights of the child. and that is not universal across the region. And I am also putting forward that I think we need to move to a system that actually gives a child rights which crystallise the moment it is born and those rights should include a right to know its nationality, to know who its parents are and generally to be properly cared for.

And you know what? Every time a celebrity such a Madonna adopts, three little girls somewhere in the world decide they are going to do their bit for children...and adopt.

Though I thought the weekend would be adoption free, it was not. Someone I know was hosting a friend who adopted two children from Brazil, though from the story I heard, the adoptive mother found the siblings in separate orphanages or homes and reunited them when she adopted; a good thing, but was there no one in Brazil who could have done the same? And then I heard of someone I knew vaguely who had two children...and since the man telling us the story knew she was not able to have children (as he had once been her boyfriend), he asked the father who had had run into at his office...how this was possible? Surrogate mothers. I think it's more prevalent than we know. This is a story from the publishing world; Jane tells the same about the legal community, and Linda is always meeting adoptive parents by...accident?

Creating children, no matter how, in the quest to have a family

A Family, No Matter How It's Created. Hmm, well, that sucks if you are the one who is created in a petrie dish to make someone else's life "complete; or spirited away from your native land in Malawi because what Madonna wants Madonna will have....

Today the next chapter in the saga of my "missing" granddaughter will have to wait, as the letters in the New York Times in response to Ross Douthat's column, The Birds and the Bees (via the Fertility Clinic) that we wrote about last week garnered a number of letters in the Times today, under that headline: A Family, No Matter How It's Created.

Well, that sums it up because that is certainly the attitude of the loudest voices out there in society. We want children! We want a family! We aren't having any the normal way! WAAAH! (forgetting to add that most of the people with conception issues are past the age when fertility is at its peak). Yes, I know there will be commenters who will write and say, You are too cold, what about pollution, my mother was 46, disease, etc., but folks, look at the statistics. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine says it well:

"As women delay childbearing, there is now an unrealistic expectation that medical science can undo the effects of aging." 

Every individual and couple is unique and could be more fertile or less fertile as compared to the average for their age. Some 30 year-olds already have significantly diminished egg quality and dwindling supplies of eggs, and some 43 year-olds can be fertile. There are no guarantees that an individual woman will have a slow and smooth drop in her fertility potential as she ages. Although rare, it is possible to have a rapid decline in egg quantity and quality as early as the teens or twenties.

One letter--the first one!--in the Times today is from the medical director of Princeton IVF, Seth G. Derman, whose job obviously depends on supplying what infertile couples are buying. Derman writes that to deny the people who pay his salary the right to create babies with anonymous donor eggs and sperm "would indeed be cruel." Already I've got a bad taste in my mouth. But what made the hair on the back of my neck stand up was this statement:

"Restrictions would also lead to an increase in directed family donations (like sister to sister). As a fertility specialist, I have done a number of these types of egg donations and am far more concerned with the emotional health of these families than those who use anonymous donation."

So he admits that he is ONLY concerned with the adults in the room, not the child being created. At least if it is a sister-to-sister egg donation and maybe gestation surrogacy, that child is at least going to grow up among people who look like him and, say, have the same aversion to Brussels sprouts (which is genetic, by the way). Apparently, too bad for you if you happen to be a kid put together there from bought parts.You are not the client, not his problem 15 or 20 years later when you are burning with questions of identity.

And there is the usual, we created our child this way, but we LOVE that child, so there, letter. Really, folks, we expect that if you go to the trouble of having a child through sperm or egg donation, you are probably going to love that child, but does that love, Jeannie Lorenz, of Bethesda, MD., also include having answers for them when they want to know whose egg they are a product of or whose sperm? Why they can curl their tongues, hate the taste of caffeine, or constantly question authority, are good in math, all inherited traits? When you can't curl your tongue, love all things caffeine, believe in rules and are terrible in math?

However, adoptee, therapist and author, Betty Jean Lifton, as well as a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Paul Brinich, held up our side of the argument: that not knowing who you were at birth is the cause of much anxiety for a great many adopted people. Betty Jean wrote:

"However, he [Douthat] quotes a Web-based survey that says offspring of sperm donors are more likely than adoptees to have identity confusion.

"My in-depth work and that of other adoption specialists show that the adopted are just as much the victims of the “webs of secrecy” that surround them as the biological children of sperm donors.

"Adoptees wonder just as much about their origins, envy peers who know their biological parents, worry that their parents have lied to them about important matters, and wonder if someone who looks like them might be related.

Adoptees have worked for decades to end the secrecy and restore the rights of the adopted to their original birth certificates and knowledge of their heritage. The movement has already helped raise the important questions that donor-conceived adults are now asking."

Betty Jean Lifton
Cambridge, Mass., May 31, 2010

And Brinich adds:

"Gametes obtained from donors — paid or not — carry in their wake a host of emotional complications. Surrogacy adds further twists.

"The perennial question of childhood — “Where do babies come from?” — has always challenged parents. Likewise, every adolescent has wrestled with “Who am I?”

"As the answers to these very normal questions become more and more complicated, it’s clear that technology has leapt ahead of society. Assisted reproductive technology requires thoughtful, psychologically attuned responses by parents, professionals and our society"

Paul Brinich
Chapel Hill, N.C., May 31, 2010

To which we add: Amen. Anyone considering having a child with anonymous sperm or an anonymous egg, ought to attend a session with the children of sperm donors who wish to be able to answer natural basic questions about their identities. The U.S. Declaration of Independence, based on what might be called the laws of nature as men and women perceive them, (."..the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them"), guarantees all of the citizens of the United States the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Stripping an infant of its identity, as well as  telling a mother that she has no right to know what happened to that child once he or she is adopted, denies both of the parties the right to any normal "pursuit of happiness" that all others enjoy.

Personally, I've made myself a good life, more or less; I live in a beautiful place in a nice home that right now is being reshingled with red cedar, and the workers are pounding against the east wall of the house as I write today. It will be fresh and new within the week; then we start on the deck that is falling apart. I've had work and I've had love, but my life has been so indelibly marred by not only the loss of my daughter to adoption, but also by the 1935 New York law that took away the right for her and I to ever know each other. And that denied me whatever comfort I might have knowing she was alive, and well, until I went around the law, paid a searcher, and found her. She was the adopted daughter of two other people, but she was also my natural daughter and I had every right in the cosmos to know where she is.--lorraine
____________________
Before anyone starts going crazy over what is "natural" in the order of things, and how that natural can be interpreted to many misfortunes, I understand, but if you are going to bitch about my interpretation  here, bitch elsewhere. It just wears us all out.

Foreign Adoptions Cont'd and Thanksgiving Leftovers

By Linda Bolton

Somewhere in my family tree is an ancestor whose big toes look like reverse quotation marks and they passed that trait on to me. I have spent the past five days recuperating from surgery to straighten out my big left toe; the right toe was fixed about 15 years ago--twice--so I know I need to be relatively immobile. Of course I'm 15 years older, so I'm not bouncing back easily--I've spent most of the week in my chaise or napping. Complete recovery should take three to six weeks, which means I get to wear this heavy boot with everything from pajamas to business attire. The upside is my husband cooked Thanksgiving dinner for two (and did very well) and is making a turkey soup with the leftovers, so I can blog.

When Lorraine asked me to write about foreign adoption, I replied with the following e-mail:

I'm no authority on transcultural adoption. I'd rather see kids adopted in their own countries, of course, but if there are couples who want to spend their life savings and beyond to parent kids who are supposedly in need, how can I argue with that? I certainly don't have the means, financial or otherwise, to do it. What I am opposed to are the Angelinas and Madonnas who use foreign adoptions as publicity stunts. Of course I have no idea what their parenting skills are like, but I read this Associated Press blurb online last week:

Madonna and Ritchie have agreed to arrangements for their children. Their two boys — Rocco, 8, and David Banda, 3, are likely to split their time between Britain and the US. Lourdes, 12, Madonna’s child from an earlier relationship, will remain with her.

What kind of parenting is that? What kind of message does that send to a 3-year-old boy who's already lost his biological family and his culture?

Two families in my adoption support group received Angels in Adoption awards related to their transcultural adoptions; I hope these parents are the rule more than the exception. One couple adopted three kids from Romania and another from Guatemala. They've had trips to their kids' homelands; some, if not all, met their families of origin. The parents were almost in tears when the told of meeting one family, who thought they were seeing a ghost...they believed the stories that children relinquished to adoption became organ donors.

The other couple, who joined the support group when I did over a decade ago, raised two sons and then started a second family by adopting two girls from different regions of India, just a couple of months apart, so they're almost like twins. This couple is devoted to these girls. For several years one of the girls couldn't stop talking about how she missed her birthmother, and the a-parents were at a loss, the kids were practically abandoned by the side of a road (strict Indian culture and all) and there's no paper trail. It's a 100,000 to one chance that these girls will find their birth families. But two summers ago they had a trip to India, visited both girls' birthplaces, and were able to visit one girl's orphanage. They dress in saris on Indian holidays, of course eat a lot of Indian food, attend culture camps. The girls seem like any other pre-teens (they like to tease their father, who embarrasses them with his lack of cool). In other words, they're just an ordinary family.

A while back(March 2006)Lorraine and I read a NY Times article about Asian-born female adoptees coming of age. They were all about 18, and most said they were American, not Chinese, and we speculated about their sentiments in another 5, 10 years.

As most birthmothers on FMF have posted, we're not completely anti-adoption, and not all adopters are the enemy, and sometimes adoption is the absolute only course of action for a happy ending. Everyone agrees adoption is/should be about the child's best interest, not the adoptive parents with money to burn, nor should adoption add even more trauma to the distressed birthmother facing what's probably the most difficult crisis of her life. If only we could stick to that premise...

If you're around tonight, be sure to watch 20/20 on ABC (10 pm EST). One of tonight's stories is about [drum roll] foreign adoption. The web site teaser line says "'I Didn't Want Perfect Children' Adopting from overseas has created more pain than joy for some parents." And the first thing I thought was "THAT should make foreign-born adoptees really, really happy."

Finally, I wanted to tell readers that I've taken their advice. While I was confined to my chaise I was able to get a jump start on my holiday cards. And while I was addressing envelopes, I addressed one to my estranged daughter. It's the same card I've sent to family and friends, a photo of my mantle decorated for the holidays that appears at the top of the blog; a perfect seasonal greeting. No note. In my "Happy Birthday, Sarah" blog [October 2008], TheRightThing responded with the following:

"For 39 years I didn't want my mother sending birthday cards to me, but she did anyway. She never sent flowers or included a gift...I hated the cards. In fact, I would throw them in the trash. Of course this was after I read them...Now, that we are back in each other lives, I wished I would have kept every card she had sent me.
It didn't matter then that she sent them, but it matters now that she sent them. She showed me that she still loved me by sending the cards..."

Hopefully, one day my daughter will share TheRightThing's sentiments. Hopefully, one day seeing my return address in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope won't send my daughter into panic mode. Hopefully, one day she'll be glad she kept every card I have sent her, it will matter to her that they were sent, and she'll realize that I stay in touch (or at least try to stay in touch) because I loved her then, I love her still, and I'll love her always.

Hope your Thanksgiving was abundant in every way.

The Orphan Trade, Gay Marriage and Open Records Legislation

Though many of my friends seem astonished by the information that international adoption is not simply a great humanitarian gesture, but loaded with corruption and kidnapping for profit, the word is getting out. Yesterday Jane wrote about the commentary and story at the New York Times blog about Madonna and her quest for another child from Malawi. The other day Slate published a piece by E.J. Graff, along with a slide show of pictures and stories. We have trumpeted Graff's work before in Foreign Policy here at FirstMotherForum. Again at Slate, as the New York Times, comments come from "defensive" adoptive parents, some of whom call her journalism incompetent and otherwise attack Graff.

The comments remind me of lobbying in Albany with Unsealed Initiative for open records for adoptees. While most of the people we met were polite, and a growing number were sympathetic to our cause, every now and then we ran into someone who looked at us as if we were crackpots and that we represented only a fringe group.Well-adjusted birth mothers wouldn't be there; neither would good adoptees.

One such legislator, who was absolutely rude and nasty to the three of us who met with him was...Rosie O'Donnell's brother, Danny. I was with two adopted people. In less than three minutes, O'Donnell had the other woman in tears and the man--who had gone to court to get his original birth certificate but been turned down--was so mad that as we left he told the women who worked for O'Donnell that their boss was one of the worst human beings he had ever met. Our few minutes with him reminded me of some of the early talk shows I did back in 1979 when Birthmark came out. When the attacks were almost expected.

O'Donnell told us that he would never NEVER vote for an open-records bills. Rep. O'Donnell (whose district is in Manhattan) is on my mind today because there was a story about him in the New York Times yesterday about how he is shepherding a bill for gay marriage through the Assembly, and how he sometimes twists arms with threats and sharp elbows. Now I am all in favor of gays and lesbians having the right to marry and gain the advantages of legal coupledom, and expressed my views in USA Today some time ago. But just reading about O'Donnell made me crazy mad all over again.

O'Donnell, who is as out as his loud-mouth sister, is all about rights for gays, but all against rights for adopted people. To his mind, they ought to be glad they were adopted at all (by his sister, one supposes) and shut up about their birth mothers because they are all after Rosie's money. He told my group that we were well dressed and were probably nice people before he let loose. He seemed to imply: Hey, I'm surprised you birth mothers aren't all crack whores.

But thinking about the momentum for gay marriage makes me sad that we have not gone further in our campaign to give adopted people equal rights with the rest of us. That we still have laws in most states that prevent adopted people from learning their original names and heritage simply because they want to know. In any other area, curiosity is seen as a sign of intelligence; yet when an adoptee asks Who am I? Who was I at birth? some see it as a sign of ingratitude. O'Donnell is one such person. And so are many of the people who comment about international adoption.

We need more backers such as Paula Benoit in Maine and Lou D' Allesandro in New Hampshire, both of whom were instrumental in getting legislation passed that gave adopted people the right to their original birth certificates, withOUT a "contact veto" tacked on. (Contact preferences are fine.) Benoit is an adoptee; D'Allesandro is an adoptive father. Joyce Bahr of Unsealed Initiative (see sidebar) just informed us that one of the legal counsels of a legislator supposedly sponsoring the bill of adoptee rights in New York was actually very wishy-washy on the issue. No wonder we weren't getting further with his office. Now a new legal counsel is in place.

We need to find people in legislatures who can convince their peers that the time has come for open records. We need more people out. We need more adopted people angry they cannot have their original birth certificates. We need more birth mothers letting it be known they do not want to stay hidden from their children. Yes, I know some want to stay anonymous, and I know some of those children will read this. My heart aches for them but I do not know what to do about these women.

But somehow, we who fight for open records need to make a louder noise.--lorraine
-----------------
PS: Unsealed Initiative will be lobbying next week in Albany again. If you have a NY connection (relinquishment or adoption) please consider a day given over to lobbying. Even though you may run into some resistance (as above but I hardly think anyone will be as rude as O'Donnell was), the day is energizing and gratifying, and always results in picking up more sponsors for the Bill of Adoptee Rights. Check out Unsealed Initiative 's blog and contact Joyce at unsealedinitiative@nyc.rr.com.

And do take a look at the Slate story (link above). It's well worth your time. If you comment there, copy and post it here too.

We Did It! What happens when women are over half of the workforce

“We Did It!” screams the headline on the cover of this week’s Economist showing the famous picture of the woman flexing her right arm muscles. This drawing was used extensively during World War II to encourage women to take jobs, freeing men to fight.

Women hold 49 percent of the jobs in America and earn almost 60 percent of university degrees. Their workforce percentages are increasing now that jobs require more brainpower and less muscle power. The benefits of these new opportunities, however, are not spread evenly among women.

"Childless women in corporate America earn almost as much as men. Mothers with partners earn less and single mothers much less. The cost of motherhood is particularly steep for fast-track women. …Professional-services firms have an up-or-out system which rewards the most dedicated with lucrative partnerships.… This Hobson’s choice is imposing a high cost on both individuals and society. Many professional women reject motherhood entirely…. Others delay child-bearing for so long they are forced into the arms of the booming fertility industry."

The United States, the world’s biggest economy, lags behind other developed nations in accommodating working mothers. It provides no statutory maternity leave and only 12 weeks of unpaid leave. The US spends only 1.2 percent of its GNP on family benefits compared to France’s 3.75 percent and Britain’s 3.5 percent.

With the fate of the Health Care bill still undecided, it doesn’t look like the situation will get better for working moms any time soon. Fearful of cries that they are leading America into the jaws of socialism, politicians are reluctant to increase subsidies for day care, family leave, and other benefits which make it easier for women to provide for their children. It’s ironic that the most outspoken critics of family benefits are those like Glenn Beck who also proclaim the sacredness of the family.

The implications for adoption are clear. When the fertility doctors run out of tricks, women start knocking on the doors of adoption agencies. While they once wanted their own child, now any healthy baby will do. Agencies, ever anxious to meet the demands of their affluent clients, pressure poor women to “think of their babies before themselves and do what’s right for their child.”

The rush to adopt has slowed in the past year, however, apparently because the poor economy has dampened enthusiasm for other people’s children and foreign countries have imposed tighter standards as stories of rampant corruption have come to light.

Some of us adoption critics have postulated that the world envisioned by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid's Tale (1985) where a class of women are chosen to procreate for the benefit of the majority of people who can no longer have children may come to pass. Certainly society’s casual acceptance of adoption as reflected in Juno and Then She Found Me and the highly publicized adoptions by Angelina Jolie and Madonna portend a culture where the re-distribution of infants from the poor to the rich is common place. (Lauryn Galindo who facilitated Angelina’s adoption of Maddox from Cambodia in 2002 was sent to prison for fraudulent adoption practices.)

Now I’m thinking that if adoption continues to lose its popularity and women continue to outpace men in the workforce, we may instead develop into a sort of bee society. Talented but sterile women will do most of the work. Less educated women will bear and raise children at the subsistence level. Men will do, well, what men like to do.

Does surrender (for the birth/first mother) and adoption (for the child) lead to PTSD?

One adoptee Facebook friend, Robert Wilson Harrington McCullough, wrote a note a couple of weeks ago that I want to share with readers all--natural moms, nurturing moms (to use his phraseology), and adoptees because he discusses the brain wiring that makes some of us so sensitive to all matters adoption.

For instance, the other day, my neighbor and friend, Yvonne, whom I've written about before, and who has never heard of an adoption that wasn't peachy-keen and the adoptee just happy as a pig in a sty to be raised in a family not their own and original, told me that she heard that another neighbor, a young man whom we both like tremendously, and the girl friend who moved in with him a couple of months ago are now looking into adoption. I say young, because I'm in my sixties; he's probably either late thirties, most likely forties, and the age of his girl friend is probably the same. In other words, they are  like a lot of young people today...waiting and waiting and waiting to settle down with a partner until the time when conception comes easy is long over. I suppose we do have The Pill thank for this...the 50th anniversary of The Pill, incidently was...Mother's Day.* But I digress.

Their answer to the age old dilemma of fecundity decreasing with the onset of the forties and perhaps, peri-menopause? Adoption. If Sandra Bullock, Angelina, Madonna, Meg Ryan, Sharon Stone, Katherine Heigl, Michelle Pheiffer, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, Hugh Jackman, Senator (TX, R) Kay Bailey Hutchinson,** and the lady down the block all have adopted children, why can't we?

Yvonne then held up two fingers entwined, opened her eyes widely, and nodded her head in approval and hope. Not exactly the f!@#ing reaction I was having. I said a few things nearly incoherent words about stealing babies in China and India to feed the market here, that adoption screws up people way more than she's ever acknowledged, that why didn't they support the poor woman who couldn't keep her child, and that she had no idea what she was talking about before I left. Grrr...that was part of my buildup to Mother's Day.*

You wonder why this birth/first/natural mother went into a funk in the middle of the week? That did not help. I am not really sure what I am going to do about our "friendship." Our lives have been somewhat entwined for several years, and Yvonne is 80 and needs some assistance from a neighbor; there is much else about her that is worthy. She has called me "her youngest sister." It was only about a year ago I realized how truly far apart we are about the realities of adoption, and how much that would lead to such a split in our relationship. I asked her to read my memoir, Birthmark, and she did, and she was moved, she said...but that did not change her thinking. One of her oldest friends is an adoptive grandmother to a child or two from Siberia, and that woman's husband has called me: our greatest nightmare. Cool. They are my greatest nightmare.

Now I am not sure I even want to be around Yvonne. I spoke to my old-pal-in-arms Florence Fisher yesterday, and her advice is to simply stay away. I know that for the immediate future, I sure as hell need to do that. She may be one of those toxic people in my life that therapists talk about today.  But it's not going to be easy, she lives too close; we've been too close. She's like family, only she's not. Family.

But my reaction to Yvonne, while I do not think it was an over-reaction, led me back to the essay that Wilson Harrington McCullough wrote. We have written about the after effects of surrendering a child to adoption before: Does giving up a child for adoption make you sick? I maintain the effects of the trauma of relinquishing a child are real and lasting and can not help but be detrimental to one's health. A primal wound, in other words. And I doubt many women can somehow bury thoughts of the baby who is lost once they sign the surrender papers and move on without examining what has happened to them, and the child.There must be a group of them, and many of them are the women who reject a reunion with their surrendered "birth" children.

Anyway, all  of this is by way of a buildup to Robert Wilson Harrington McCullough's piece, which I found enlightening. Some of you on Facebook may have read it already, but I wanted to share it here:

An article in this month's Scientific American triggered some musings in my cabeza. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circuits The premise is that neuroscience is now using imaging to map what actually occurs in the brain in realtime for patients suffering depression, OCD, ADHD, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other mental health disorders.

The human brain is a complex mechanism which is constantly evolving, building new pathways along prewired inherited structures. I was particularly interested in their findings on PTSD, because many of the effects common to adoptees are similar to PTSD.

I believe Nancy Verrier's assesment of the Primal Wound as a trauma is essentially correct. The separation of an infant from the only environment he has known since quickening in his mother's womb has deep emotional effects at the beginning of life. Surrender of a child is likewise a trauma; though relinquishment usually occurs at a later age than adoption, a huge loss like this is no less a severe interruption of a person's personality than "battle fatigue".

What the article pointed out was that the brain has normal processes (called extinction) to gradually diminish the effects of trauma which under normal circumstances make the memory recede in significance. In PTSD, however, the person becomes stuck in a loop which bypasses the parts of the brain which normally reduce the pain; in fact, the brain rewires itself to the point where slight triggers can cause anxiety and stress equal or even more crippling than the original trauma.

The implications are that there are ways to rewire the pathways and learned responses to overcome this, by therapy and targeted medications. I agree with this; the way to overcome irrational fear is to expose oneself to the causes of fear in a controlled, nonthreatening environment, and gradually reinforce new responses instead of falling back into the old pattern of trigger/response.

While I was pondering that, I heard a segment on NPR dealing with foster children who age out of the system at 18. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125729965

What struck me from this was the similarity to adoptee experiences; the feeling of not fitting in, of high rates of involvement with criminal justice system, of becoming single parents at an early age, and of abandonment issues. The defining factor between success and failure seemed to often depend upon the parenting they received; most of them say had it not been for a good home placement, they would have had real problems like many of their peers.

This led me to recall an Ira Glass segment on This American Life I heard several years ago: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/360/Switched-At-Birth

It is about two girls in Wisconsin who were accidentally switched at birth, and the struggles they had fitting into their families; it's hard to grow up the only extrovert in an introverted family, and vice versa! This story pointed out that it is not adoption per se which causes the feelings of incomplete identity, but the transferrence from one's genetic family to a nonrelated family.

Mulling over all these topics led to this thought; Normal personal and social development involves building the mental pathways, control mechanisms and coping strategies necessary to become a functional, happy member of society. This development, training and education normally begins within a family setting. Much of this occurs through observing and interacting with family members - People who are genetically similar! It is no secret that physical traits (hair color, stature, features) are shared in families; I can attest in my own biological children and family that intellectual and emotional traits also run in families.

My insight is this; most people develop coping mechanisms to compensate for neurologically based behaviors whether they be good or bad. They pass physical traits as well as behaviors along to their children, through both nature and nurture. For example, a biochemical tendency toward depression because of an imbalance in serotonin reuptake, or to ADHD because of similar imbalances, can be inherited - but successful strategies the parent learned to compensate can also be taught, and indeed are observed from infancy by the child. That is the normal course of human development over most of our history. However, it works best when parents and children share DNA. (Of course, unsuccessful behavior can also be taught - not every family is functional. Some families keep the "fun" in "dysfunctional" from generation to generation!)

When a child is transferred to a different biological family, the strategies may be inappropriate. Indeed, they may even aggravate the problem, by using the wrong methods, or disciplining incorrectly. For example, a non-musical family cannot understand why their non-biological child is always whistling or singing or beating time with their hands; not understanding it themselves, they decide the child is inattentive or preoccupied so they may even punish them for behavior which would be encouraged and developed in the correct biological family! It's like trying to read a Russian novel without a Russian/English dictionary. My point is that half the resources available to the biological child are missing in nongenetic families.

I believe this is at the heart of why so many adopted children, foster children and even children of divorce sometimes have social adjustment problems; they lack the appropriate compensating mechanisms which children raised in their biological families gain by proximity to those who share their emotional and intellectual hardwiring!

Certainly there were behaviors of my daughter that she was "corrected" for. In some ways she did fit into her new family of genetic strangers; in so many other ways, she did not, and the more I learned about them, the more difficult it became for me to accept what her being adopted meant to her sad life.
______________________
*For those who follow astrology even a bit, this year Mother's Day came during Mercury in retrograde when all kinds of communication and travel gets screwed up: Ergo the Greenland volcano erupting and disrupting traffic, the Times Square would-be bomber, the eruptions of anger that various comments have unleashed in the blogosphere, dishes sent from Michigan that were largely broken because the UPS guy did not mark them "Fragile"[a personal reference], flowers not delivered [ditto], flashes of anger when I spoke to my husband, and there's more. The good news is that Mercury goes out of retrograde on Tuesday (tomorrow), though it will take a while--a couple of weeks--for everything and everyone to calm down.

** If you know any more celebrity adoptions, please add them in comments. Thanks.  

We want to have a family. Is Adoption ever a good solution?

Sometimes we get comments on earlier posts that are simply begging for a response, as was this one left the other day at the blog: They call me "biological mother." I hate those words.

I am a potential adoptive mother and am curious if, as mothers, you feel that there is ever an acceptable situation for an adoption. I very badly would like to raise a family and adoption is our only option. If we are successful in adopting, I would like for it to be an open adoption (if the child/ren's mother is interested in that).

I guess my questions are: IF mothers (and adult adopted children) see adoption as an acceptable situation, is open adoption generally the most desired choice (within the community of mothers who share feelings about such things)? Also, in your opinion what IS the most loving, sensitive way to distinguish to a child their parentage? It would be my desire to ensures/he knows that s/he is loved by both the mother who allowed him/her to be adopted and the woman who is raising him/her with love. Of course, as the child/ren's adoptive parent, I would want for him/her to call me mom (or some derivation) and still treasure the mother that allowed me to share the joy of motherhood.

I hope that my questions don't offend. I simply want to have the joy of a family and to instill a love in the child/ren I raise both for the family they lost and the family they've gained. I hope you can help as the opportunity for me to parent via adoption may be near. --Hayley

Let's start out about whether answering whether we approve of adoption in the first place, an issue that comes up here every now and then. We are not against all adoptions, but we want to insure that any adoption that does occur is done purely because a child needs a home, not because someone has a home she/he/they want to fill. There is a huge difference between the two. The pressure to find children to "build families" for people who knowingly postponed pregnancy past their fecund years has led to all sorts of abuses in adoption, particularly in the international marketplace for children, something we have written reams about here at First Mother Forum.

Because of the pressure to supply babies, and the money to be made from that, a whole culture of adoption has grown up here in the United States with little emphasis on how to help women keep their babies. Pregnancy crises centers are often places that might be more aptly called "shotgun adoption centers." At the same time, various church groups, such as the erroneously named Christian World Adoption, and a Mormon group that was found to be snatching children from Samoan families, and others have gone over seas to harvest children for the Western market. Fully half of the babies exported from Guatemala during that country's civil war were found to be have been stolen, as a recent government investigation revealed.

But these stories, while they are in the news, somehow do not filter down to many prospective adoptive parents, or society at large, and we end up as we are today in a culture that promotes adoption to the point where young women on The Bachelor start saying that when they want to have a family, they want to "adopt." When celebrities such as Madonna and Angelina Jolie make news when they adopt, again more people think that is a good way to fill their bare bassinets.

Given all that, Hayley, there are children right here in America who do need stable, loving homes. They are the children in foster homes whose natural parents can not, or will not, ever come back for them. They are the children who need homes. These are the children we hope you will consider adopting. And we know that there will legitimately be children with no resources in Haiti, but rushing to adopt there and remove children from their culture is not something we encourage.

We do encourage all young women who have babies to try to find ways to keep their children, as we have dealt with the grieving aftermath of having relinquished, and have heard the unhappy outcomes of many adoptions--from the point of view of the adopted. As an adoptive father, and a psycholigist, once said in a court case of a woman hoping to get her records unsealed: Adoption is always painful.

It is certainly always painful for the actual mother, the one who gives birth to her child, and it is always painful for the child to learn he/she was relinquished by someone for reasons unknowable, incomprehensible, reasons that always feel like abandonment to the child who becomes an adult one day. Adoption always leaves scars. We appreciate that in researching adoption you stumbled upon First Mother Forum, Hayley, and hope that we give you some food for thought, no matter what you eventually do.

You raised other issues, and we will deal with them in future posts.

Helen Gurley Brown Gave Early Ink to Adoption Reform

Helen Gurley Brown in 1964

Helen Gurley Brown was a friend of mine. She was one of the few editors back in the day when I was "coming out" of the birth mother closet who supported me, gave me a pat on the back, and gave me an assignment. It was for Cosmopolitan with Brown as editor-in-chief I wrote my first piece about adoption reform, after reading a story in The New York Times about this woman named Florence Fisher and how she was shaking up adoption and demanding that adopted individuals be given their original birth certificates.

When Birthmark came out in 1979, I happened by the office and gave Helen an autographed copy; she wrote me a nice note later that I must have somewhere in my files. Although she was reviled by some of the feminists for her stance on using sex as a means to security and a better life, Helen went her own way and was certainly a feminist in the Madonna mold.

People say the strangest things to first mothers

Lorraine

As a birth mother you hear the strangest things. And just as adoptees have "trigger" words and ideas that are upsetting, here are a few situations and words that trigger us:

We tell our found or reunited children what a terrible experience giving up them was, and they listen intently, seem to comprehend our pain, but later we hear them saying or writing something to effect that that adoption is such a great institution and they are "glad" they were adopted. We hear: I am so glad you worthless, lower class, fill-in-the-blank person did not raise me. I am so relieved that you didn't get your clutches on me and I was lucky enough to escape. This attitude has found its way into more adoptee memoirs than I can count, starting with Sarah Saffian's Ithaka  and continuing through The Mistress's Daughter by A. M. Holmes.

First Fathers Matter

Jane

It’s easy to understand why first fathers think they don’t matter to their children. The fact is that they do matter in spite of efforts by law makers to obliterate them. Many states prohibit vital statistics registrars from including the names of unmarried fathers on birth certificates unless both parents file affidavits of paternity, something they are likely unaware of.

Hollywood celebs beget babies any way they can

Having children via surrogacy and adoption continues to be popular in the world of fantasy and entertainment. Sixty-eight year old Robert De Niro and his wife, 56-year-old wife Grace Hightower, became the parents of a daughter, Helen Grace Hightower, via a surrogate this past December. De Niro has three other surrogate produced via surrogate, a son with Hightower ands twin sons with former model Toukie Smith.

Rickie Martin, Mathew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, Elton John, and Nicole Kidman have all become parents in the past few years thanks to women who "donate" their eggs and women who carry the babies.

Can International Adoption Be Fixed? As well as the drug trade.

The case of seven year old Artyom Savelyev (Justin Hansen) whose adoptive mother, Torry Hansen, sent him back to Russia is only the latest example of intercountry adoption gone horribly wrong. According to Marley Greiner's blog, The Daily Bastardette, fourteen Russian children have been murdered by their American adoptive parents. Disruptions in foreign adoptions are not uncommon, and as we have reported here, corruption is widespread.

While these parents must be held accountable for their horrific acts, another villain, lurking behind the scene, is the demand for foreign kids fueled by aggressive marketing on the part of the adoption industry. These children are attractive to those seeking to adopt because they are thought to come with less baggage (such as mothers) than American children. Glossy ads on the web perpetuate what David Smolin of Cumberland Law School describes as “the adoption myth in the United States [that] sends the message that the love and care found in any normal American home is enough to heal any child.”

Experts have recommended actions which might prevent these tragedies -- better screening of prospective adoptive parents and providing them with accurate information about the child, preparing them for the difficulties that they and the child will encounter; and offering on-going support. (How to Prevent Adoption Disasters, NT Times, 4/15/10). However, there does not appear to be any authority with the power or inclination to force the industry to change.

Intercountry adoptions are regulated by the US Departments of State and Homeland Security, state child welfare agencies, and the governments of the countries which supply the kids. The laws are weak and enforcement sketchy.

This seems unlikely to change. Congress is having difficulty clamping down on the Wall Street practices which brought the economy to its knees. Reining in an industry which “saves children” would be a herculean task. According to The Daily Bastardette, the industry trade group, the Joint Council on International Children's Services has already begun flooding the market with “positive adoption stories” and lining up supporters. When the government has made even feeble efforts to control abuses in adoption in the past, adoption agencies, many operating under the banner of Christ, unleashed an army of prospective adoptive parents to bang on Congressional doors and yammer about bureaucratic red tape preventing their child from joining his American family (albeit they may never have laid eyes on “their child”).

Federal and state officials have shown little ability to respond to even the worst cases of corruption and abuse. The United States Attorney in Salt Lake City allowed Scott and Karen Banks to plead guilty to misdemeanors and receive probation for a massive fraud involving Samoan children which we wrote about here. The Pennsylvania adoption agency Reaching Out Thru International Adoption which placed Masha Allen with pedophile Mathew Mancusco is still in business.

As long as demand exceeds supply, increasing regulation, even if politically possible, is unlikely to have a significant impact. We need only to look at the drug trade where tough laws and billions spent on enforcement has not made a dent. Attempting to impose more regulation over the adoption industry will simply result in a moving cascade of countries using adoption to fill their coffers and empty their orphanages. Where Angelina and Madonna tread, others are sure to follow. As long as there is a buck to be made, someone is there to make it. Congress could take a bite out of that buck, however, by limiting the $12,150 Adoption Tax Credit to adoptions from American foster homes but that’s as unlikely as Congress restoring the estate tax to its pre-Bush level.

The best approach for those wishing to curtail abuse in intercountry adoptions would be an “Adopt America” campaign, encouraging those wanting to “form their family through adoption” to look to their state’s child welfare agency.

An encouraging note is that the demand for foreign children may be waning. International adoptions have declined from a high of 22,990 in 2004 to 12,753 in 2009. Of course, some of this may be fallout from the poor economy. It may also be that as cases of corruption are reported and adoptive parents admit publicly that they cannot handle their kids, fewer people are willing to adopt children from overseas. The Artyom Savelyev case has caused more adoptive parents to speak up, dispelling fantasies about international adoption.

The other side is as Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Bartholet argues, that reducing foreign adoptions “punishes more children, denying them their best chance to escape institutions into the adoptive homes that are generally available only internationally.” Restricting adoptions because of the Artyom Savelyev case would “ignore the larger story about child tragedy and related policy lessons. That story has to do with the systemic abuse that victimizes the millions of children in institutions worldwide.”

While we at FMF do not want to see children abused or languishing in institutions, we recognize that adopting a few thousand of these children each year does nothing for the millions who are not chosen. In fact these happy adoption stories damage children who are too old, too disabled, or too dark by diverting attention from them. Systemic abuse requires systemic solutions. Money spent on bringing children to the US is better spent on relief organizations like those we’ve written about in India and Ecuador. Finally, of course, foreign governments need to step up and protect their children.

Will NPR Report the Truth about International Adoption? It's legitimated kidnapping in many poor countries

Although Neal Conan introduced Talk of the Nation on Tuesday, April 7 by referring to the brouhaha over Madonna’s attempted adoption of a little Malawi girl, the program, “Why Did You Opt for International Adoption” was simply an international adoption promo piece.

The program perpetuated the myth that millions of infants and toddlers have been abandoned at train stations, along roads, or church doorsteps and are living in crowded orphanages waiting for generous American to take them home, and that the children thus blessed live happily ever-after in middle-class America.

Conan interviewed Susan Soon-Keum Cox, Vice-President of Public Policy and External Affairs for Holt International of Eugene, Oregon, the largest US agency specializing in arranging adoptions of children from poor countries, and Isolde Motley, adoptive mother of two IA children, former editor at Time, and co-author with Susan Caughman, editor of Adoptive Families, of You Can Adopt: An Adoptive Families Guide to be released in July 2009.

Cox and Motley reminded me of the old dope peddler in the Tom Lehrer song, “Doing Well by Doing Good.” Thus Cox, (who is well-paid from the money Holt rakes in pedaling foreign children for $35,000 a pop) and Motley (profiting from her status as an adoptive mother) told listeners that adopting a foreign child had the twin benefits of “building a family” and “saving a child.”

To her credit, Cox did dispel the notion expressed by some callers that adopting internationally kept those pesky bio-families out of the picture. She noted that many foreign-born adoptees including herself search for their original families and that some agencies encourage ongoing contact with birth families. Cox also stressed that prospective adoptive parents adopting a child of a different race will face difficult cultural and racial issues as the child grows up.

Interestingly, Motley and the adoptive parents who called in had biological children as well as adopted ones. Cox noted that infertility was only one of the reasons people adopted from abroad and adoption was contagious (my word). Once someone adopts, Cox said, their friends often decide to do the same. (Keeping up with the Joneses I would call it-- Lorraine adds that she has seen it spread among the Hamptons like …well, not quite like wildfire, but spread just the same.)

Neal Conan approached the topic much as he might have in discussing whether to buy an American or foreign-made car. He and his guests omitted any consideration of the parties most affected: parents who lost children to adoption and the children themselves. Indeed this may be a habit of NPR – when discussing adoption. A recent program on open records did not include a single adoptee; instead adoptive father and head of the Evan B. Donaldson Institute, Adam Pertman, spoke on their behalf. Maybe they would like to have us on as bigtime bloggers speaking on behalf of – adoptive parents.

I’m emailing TOTN suggesting it does another program on international adoption, as it claims that its coverage “must be fair, unbiased, accurate, complete and honest”. A good place to start to reach that goal would be to interview the authors of two recent articles exposing the realities behind the international adoption myth: “The Lie We Love” (Foreign Policy November/December 2008) by E. J. Graff and “Red Thread or Slender Reed: Deconstructing Prof. Bartholet’s Mythology of International Adoption” (Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, 2008) by Johanna Oreskovic and Trish Maskew. Graff is a senior researcher directing the Gender & Justice Project at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. Oreskovic and Maskew are attorneys. Maskew is also the founder and former president of Ethica, Inc, a non-profit dedicated to adoption reform. (See side panel here –Ethica is raising money to support Mercy in Malawi; let’s all chip in.)

Among their findings that we have reported here and here previously is that babies in many, if not all, countries are systematically bought, coerced, and stolen away – i.e., kidnapped--from their birth families. Nearly half of the 40 countries that are the top sources for adoption have at least temporarily halted adoptions or have prevented agencies from sending children to the US. Yet though this will prevent more children from being kidnapped, this policy was soundly criticized by Cox and Motley on the NPR program.

In reality, there are very few young, healthy orphans available for adoption around the world. Orphans are rarely healthy babies; healthy babies are rarely orphaned. Ninety-five percent of orphans are older than five, living with extended families that need financial support. The supply of adoptable babies rises to meet demand and disappears when Western cash is no longer available.

To add grist to the mill, a 2008 report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) unequivocally states that the intercountry adoption business in Nepal has created a culture of child abuse including the abduction, trafficking and sale of children.

Of the some 15,000 children in orphanages or children’s homes, a significant number of admissions in these homes are a result of fraud, coercion or malpractice, according to the 62-page report. Only four out of every 100 children adopted in Nepal are adopted by a Nepali family and many children put up for adoption are not orphaned but are separated from their families.

Let’s hope NPR does a report on that.