Notice to adoptive parents: Your child is not a gift

Jane

I hoped I could go one Mother's Day without reading a piece by an adoptive mother expressing her gratitude to her adopted child's first mother for "the precious gift you gave me" and also insisting that giving up a child is a brave and loving act. No such luck. There it was on the first page of the Portland Oregonian's Opinion section "A message to my daughter's birth mother" by Ann Grimmer of Boring (that is the actual name of the town outside of Portland), Oregon.

The characterization of children as gifts given freely to deserving strangers is just nonsense. Children are not baubles to be passed around. It's wishful thinking on Grimmer’s part when she writes that the birth mother “made the decision that she [the daughter] was better off without you, better off with me, thousands of miles away.” If Grimmer had read even one book by an intercountry adoptee or an inquiring journalist, she would have known it is unlikely that the surrender was a voluntary, thoughtful decision.

Lion: An adoptee returns home

If you haven't already seen Lion, grab a hankie and catch it before it is gone. Besides being a compelling story and a well acted film, it reinforces what we who live adoption know to be true: the need to know one's original family is universal. It could be the story of a young girl from Kansas or a weary warrior in Greece. No matter how difficult the journey, it must be attempted.

Lion is based on the Saroo Bierley's memoir "A Long Way Home." Five-year- old Saroo lives in abysmal poverty with his mother, sister and older brother, Guddu, in a small village in India. One evening he goes with Guddu, whom he adores, to the train station. Guddu tells him to wait there while he seeks work. When, after many hours, Guddu does not return, Saroo crawls into a train and falls asleep. The train leaves the station. He is unable to get off the train until it arrives in Calcutta several days later. Saroo has to survive on the mean streets, which is particularly difficult because he speaks Hindi, not Bengali, the language of Calcutta.  Eventually he is taken to an orphanage which arranges his adoption by a kind and loving Australian couple, Sue and John Bierley. The contrast between the hovel where he lived for his first five years and the Bierley's beautiful home and opulent surroundings in Tasmania could not be more stark.

What about those babies in....any-poor-nation?

The previous post dealt with the prevailing attitude towards adopting in America today--that there must be a lot babies who need adopting--when they aren't. Continuing that theme of What About Children Who Need adopting, today's post talks about going overseas to adopt:

In the quest to rescue children from deplorable conditions in another country, the number of children adopted from South Korea ballooned to more than 100,000. The exodus of babies began after the Korean War with the mixed-race babies left behind by GIs, but the flow of children didn’t stop when most of those children were settled in America. Exporting children to America became a cash cow for the country, and only lately has this become a national embarrassment.

NOW HOLT HAS ADOPTEE TOURISM 
Today, Holt International Children’s Services, the same agency that facilitated a great many—if not most—of the Korean adoptions, now advertises a side business of guided trips back to Korea for adult adoptees, who may be in search of their parents. If they are lucky enough to find them, now a language and cultural barrier separates parent and child.

What about children who need adopting?

Lorraine at her desk 

While we have been discussing the great damage done by people like Catelynn and Tyler for their continuing advocacy of adoption as shills for Bethany Christian Services, I thought it might be useful to post an overview of adoption attitudes and practices in America. Surely some readers who find themselves here read our posts and say--What about all those children who need to be adopted? 

As I was writing Hole in My Heart, my upcoming memoir, I realized that some readers would have that very thought, and so I include a section under the rubric of "Facts and Commentary" to answer them. It will be posted over the next week in three sections. Part I is today below. 

As for Catelynn and Tyler, it appears that they will meet with the adoptive parents of their first child, Theresa and Brandon Davis, in a segment of Monday's show of "Teen Mom OG" (10 p.m. EST/9 CST). Of course it's edited, but it will be interesting to see the interaction of the four parents of daughter Carly. As for how deeply Catelynn is involved in pushing adoption, I just picked this up from Catelynn's Twitter feed online: Hi, I'm Catelynn from Teen Mom. My goal is 2 be an advocate 4 adoption. Contact us on website 4 speaking engagements & join our fan page!

South Korean adoptee faces deportation

Jane

With few restrictions on who can adopt internationally, children from abroad may be subjected to abandonment, abuse and even death at the hands of their adoptive parents. No one knows this better than Adam Crapser who was not only excised from his "forever family" and abused in foster care, but now faces deportation.

Adam and his sister were adopted from South Korea by an Oregon family* in 1978 when he was three. The family did not apply for citizenship for Adam. The adoption disrupted when he was ten and the children were separated. Adam was placed in a series of foster and
group homes, ending up with Thomas and Dolly Crapser who abused him over the next four years. They also did not apply to make Adam a U.S. citizen. Eventually the Crapsers were convicted of abuse.

Adoptionland: Brutal essays by adult adoptees expose the truth of intercountry adoption

The Vance Twins--Jenette on left and Janine 

With news that Vietnam is once again going to allow their children to be adopted out of country, reading a collection of essays by people who were uprooted and transplanted into new cultures is ice water on all those squishy ideals of what intercountry (or international adoption) does. The writers whose essays come together in Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists portray the dislocation as wrenching and brutal, an experience that leaves a scar neither time nor distance can temper.

Though I am no fan of adoption in general I recognize that sometimes adoption is the best solution to a bad situation. But I have read enough about intercountry adoption to see it as

Encouraging intercountry adoptions with hard cash

When half the faculty at Harvard and Boston College Law Schools endorse a bill that encourages poor countries to take children from their mothers and send them to the United States for adoption, you'd think something was amiss. We are talking about a bill  that offers financial incentives to poor countries to facilitate intercountry adoptions.

The learned academics in Boston did not do their homework. They signed a petition endorsing Sen. Mary Landrieu's Children in Families First (CHIFF) bill at the urging of two colleagues:  Prof. Elizabeth Bartholet, an adoptive mother of two from Peru and director of Harvard's Child Advocacy Program, and her former student and professor at Boston College, Paulo Barrozo.

When adoptive parents meet the birth mother

Lorraine

"Untying a Birth Mother's Hands" yesterday in the Modern Love column in The New York Times was inadvertently a stealth argument against international adoption because it adeptly portrays the anguish and pain of a woman who surrendered her child because of poverty and shame. 

The writer/adoptive mother, Elizabeth Foy Larsen, and her family--who ups and visits Guatemala so that their daughter can visit her natural mother--clearly has the wherewithal to prevent at least that single adoption. The amount of money spent merely getting everyone down there and in a decent hotel--adoptive mother, adoptive father, their two biological children, the two adoptive grandmothers--(unless they used frequent flyer miles, of course) would have undoubtedly lifted the natural mother from the crushing poverty that kept her powerless to keep her daughter. The girl's birth mother, after all, "scrambles to find jobs that pay a living wage" while her replacement family lives in a four-bedroom with remodeled bathrooms. I'm guessing but there's probably lots of marble there.

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.