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.

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

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)
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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.