"behind every great fortune is a great crime"
de Balzac (paraphrased)
While driving in the car yesterday, Jon mentioned this quotation to me in a totally different context, but I couldn't help but think of how these words can apply to the adoption process. I often look at my children, thankful beyond words for the boundless gifts that they've brought into our lives. We are truly fortunate. But at the same time, I often pause to contemplate the costs of our gains.
I believe that a lot of the time, adoption professionals and prospective adoptive parents view adoption through very rosy coloured glasses, talking only about the positive aspects of adoption and sugar coating or completely avoiding the tougher issues. This makes sense for a variety of reasons: it's self-protective and it allows everyone involved to feel good about the choices they've made.
For the past several months, I've been digging a little bit deeper in an attempt to better understand the long-term effects of adoption on everyone involved from adoptees to adoptive parents, families of origin, countries of origin, and adoption professionals. I'm doing this because I want to be sure that adoptions (particularly international transracial adoptions) are happening ethically and for the "right" reasons.
International adoption is becoming more and more popular as a way to build families, and anytime there is an increased demand for any resource, the potential for corruption exists. Adoption has become a business where the clients are those with the financial resources, and everyone else merely exists to help them get what they want. When the resources we're talking about are human lives, we need to be vigilant in our commitment to ensuring that the highest level of ethics is maintained at each step.
I won't presume to speak for (or about) all adoptive parents, as I know that we are a wildly diverse group with as many different perspectives as there are facets on a mirrorball. However, I will say that lately I have been feeling more and more distance between myself and other adoptive parents that I find myself interacting with. In my mind, I attribute this to the fact that I've moved beyond the bliss of being caught up in the process and learning for the first time who my children will be. I now find myself in a stage of questioning whether international adoptions really are in the best interests of the children who are being taken out of their families and countries of origin and inserted into completely foreign environments. Of course it's much easier for me to think about these tough questions since my children are already here. Nonetheless, I think these are important and often overlooked topics that merit discussion.
When talking with others about adoption (and most other things I feel passionate about) I have a tendency to be overly diplomatic because I genuinely can see a pretty wide variety of viewpoints. However, at this point, there are certain things that I believe just need to be said. I'm sure that my views are not going to be well-recieved among the community of adoptive families, but I am going to put myself out there because I think it is *that* important.
1. International Transracial adoption is not for everyone. There is no shame in admitting this. If a family is not willing or able to engage with their prospective child's ethnic community on a consistent, non-superficial level, then they need to seriously rethink why they want to open their home to a child of colour. There will always be a million excuses for why a family "can't" take the necessary proactive steps to make these connections, but by bringing a child overseas out of the only environment they've ever known to be a part of your family, you owe it to that child to help them feel some connection to their culture.
If you live in a homogeneous area and you want to adopt a child of colour, you have three options:
*MOVE
*Reconsider your choice to bring a child of colour into your family
*Make as many connections as you can locally, and make every effort to get involved in your child's ethnic community in other areas. This may mean spending weekends in the nearest city in areas you wouldn't necessarily have thought of going previously; taking vacations to cities or countries where your child's ethnic group is represented; changing churches, etc. It will not always be comfortable for you, nor should it be. We don't ask our children if they're comfortable with our decision to bring them here. It's only fair that we put ourselves on the line as well.
2. Adoption agencies should focus on finding families for children, not finding children for families. The purpose of a Home Study should not be to paint an idealized picture of prospective adoptive parents. Rather, it should be to screen families who are interested in adoption, determine which families will be most likely to provide good, stable, permanent homes for specific types of available children, and educate families about the realities of life after placement. Frankly, not every family who wants to adopt should be able to, and Home Study social workers should be able to deny certain families without fear of sanction by the agencies that they work for.
3. Children are not pizzas and adoptive parents should not be able to "place an order" for the type of child that they want. I realize that this is an extremely touchy subject for a lot of people, particularly those who have faced infertility and are desperately trying to regain some control of the process of building a family. I also believe that, when it comes to special needs, families need to be completely prepared to handle those things. Not everyone will be able to be good parents to children with special needs, and it is absolutely in the child's best interests to not place them with a family who cannot meet their needs.
However, I think that there is a big problem when people are choosing to specify gender and age and skin tone (which is distinct from race, and yes, there are families who will request a biracial but not Black child, as if the issues they will face will differ). The pandering to the whims of adoptive families has gotten so out of hand that people are willing to wait months and even years for the referral of their "perfect" child, while other children wait for families. What I believe ought to happen is that families go through the homestudy and are then presented with the files of waiting children to see whether there is a potential match. If there is not a situation that will work well for *everyone* involved, (most importantly the child), then the family should go on a waiting list, but there should be no promises made about how long a referral might take.
4. I get absolutely incensed when I hear waiting families whine about how long it's taking them to get their referral. Since when is it all about the adoptive parents? The sense of entitlement is ridiculous. I often wonder if adoptive parents realize that they are waiting and praying for a crisis to occur in another family just so they can add to their own family. It's a very heavy thought, and one that broke my heart as we waited for the referral of our twins.
5. Adoption agencies and adoptive parents need to broaden their focus from bringing families together and welcoming home little bundles of joy into freshly decorated nurseries to thinking about what is going to happen when these children grow up. Will they resent us for taking them away from their families, countries and cultures? Will they have trouble determining who they are and where they "fit" in society? How will we equip them to confront the racism that many of us have never had to face? How will we ensure that they grow up to be strong, self-confident, happy individuals. How will we help them understand their stories? How will we feel if they move back to their country of origin? If they maintain a relationship with their family of origin?
It's easy to overlook or brush aside these questions when you're looking into the adorable face of an innocent cooing baby. But these babies will grow up, and if we're not prepared to help them along their journey to self-determination, then they will go on without us.
6. Finally, the most important questions I have grappled with recently have to do with the ethics of international adoption as an institution.
On a personal level, do families who relinquish their children for adoption truly understand the finality of their decisions? Do those decisions actually have to be final? Why are so many adoptive families threatened by the existence of our children's family of origin? Why is it so difficult for us to expand our view of family to include the people who gave us our children?
On a societal level, who stands to profit from the practice of international adoption? How can we ensure that family preservation is the first thing attempted, and adoption is the last resort? Are adoptive families willing to dedicate themselves to the pursuit of family preservation and other social justice issues within our children's birth countries, even if that means the end to international adoption as we now know it?
I believe that a lot of the time, adoption professionals and prospective adoptive parents view adoption through very rosy coloured glasses, talking only about the positive aspects of adoption and sugar coating or completely avoiding the tougher issues. This makes sense for a variety of reasons: it's self-protective and it allows everyone involved to feel good about the choices they've made.
For the past several months, I've been digging a little bit deeper in an attempt to better understand the long-term effects of adoption on everyone involved from adoptees to adoptive parents, families of origin, countries of origin, and adoption professionals. I'm doing this because I want to be sure that adoptions (particularly international transracial adoptions) are happening ethically and for the "right" reasons.
International adoption is becoming more and more popular as a way to build families, and anytime there is an increased demand for any resource, the potential for corruption exists. Adoption has become a business where the clients are those with the financial resources, and everyone else merely exists to help them get what they want. When the resources we're talking about are human lives, we need to be vigilant in our commitment to ensuring that the highest level of ethics is maintained at each step.
I won't presume to speak for (or about) all adoptive parents, as I know that we are a wildly diverse group with as many different perspectives as there are facets on a mirrorball. However, I will say that lately I have been feeling more and more distance between myself and other adoptive parents that I find myself interacting with. In my mind, I attribute this to the fact that I've moved beyond the bliss of being caught up in the process and learning for the first time who my children will be. I now find myself in a stage of questioning whether international adoptions really are in the best interests of the children who are being taken out of their families and countries of origin and inserted into completely foreign environments. Of course it's much easier for me to think about these tough questions since my children are already here. Nonetheless, I think these are important and often overlooked topics that merit discussion.
When talking with others about adoption (and most other things I feel passionate about) I have a tendency to be overly diplomatic because I genuinely can see a pretty wide variety of viewpoints. However, at this point, there are certain things that I believe just need to be said. I'm sure that my views are not going to be well-recieved among the community of adoptive families, but I am going to put myself out there because I think it is *that* important.
1. International Transracial adoption is not for everyone. There is no shame in admitting this. If a family is not willing or able to engage with their prospective child's ethnic community on a consistent, non-superficial level, then they need to seriously rethink why they want to open their home to a child of colour. There will always be a million excuses for why a family "can't" take the necessary proactive steps to make these connections, but by bringing a child overseas out of the only environment they've ever known to be a part of your family, you owe it to that child to help them feel some connection to their culture.
If you live in a homogeneous area and you want to adopt a child of colour, you have three options:
*MOVE
*Reconsider your choice to bring a child of colour into your family
*Make as many connections as you can locally, and make every effort to get involved in your child's ethnic community in other areas. This may mean spending weekends in the nearest city in areas you wouldn't necessarily have thought of going previously; taking vacations to cities or countries where your child's ethnic group is represented; changing churches, etc. It will not always be comfortable for you, nor should it be. We don't ask our children if they're comfortable with our decision to bring them here. It's only fair that we put ourselves on the line as well.
2. Adoption agencies should focus on finding families for children, not finding children for families. The purpose of a Home Study should not be to paint an idealized picture of prospective adoptive parents. Rather, it should be to screen families who are interested in adoption, determine which families will be most likely to provide good, stable, permanent homes for specific types of available children, and educate families about the realities of life after placement. Frankly, not every family who wants to adopt should be able to, and Home Study social workers should be able to deny certain families without fear of sanction by the agencies that they work for.
3. Children are not pizzas and adoptive parents should not be able to "place an order" for the type of child that they want. I realize that this is an extremely touchy subject for a lot of people, particularly those who have faced infertility and are desperately trying to regain some control of the process of building a family. I also believe that, when it comes to special needs, families need to be completely prepared to handle those things. Not everyone will be able to be good parents to children with special needs, and it is absolutely in the child's best interests to not place them with a family who cannot meet their needs.
However, I think that there is a big problem when people are choosing to specify gender and age and skin tone (which is distinct from race, and yes, there are families who will request a biracial but not Black child, as if the issues they will face will differ). The pandering to the whims of adoptive families has gotten so out of hand that people are willing to wait months and even years for the referral of their "perfect" child, while other children wait for families. What I believe ought to happen is that families go through the homestudy and are then presented with the files of waiting children to see whether there is a potential match. If there is not a situation that will work well for *everyone* involved, (most importantly the child), then the family should go on a waiting list, but there should be no promises made about how long a referral might take.
4. I get absolutely incensed when I hear waiting families whine about how long it's taking them to get their referral. Since when is it all about the adoptive parents? The sense of entitlement is ridiculous. I often wonder if adoptive parents realize that they are waiting and praying for a crisis to occur in another family just so they can add to their own family. It's a very heavy thought, and one that broke my heart as we waited for the referral of our twins.
5. Adoption agencies and adoptive parents need to broaden their focus from bringing families together and welcoming home little bundles of joy into freshly decorated nurseries to thinking about what is going to happen when these children grow up. Will they resent us for taking them away from their families, countries and cultures? Will they have trouble determining who they are and where they "fit" in society? How will we equip them to confront the racism that many of us have never had to face? How will we ensure that they grow up to be strong, self-confident, happy individuals. How will we help them understand their stories? How will we feel if they move back to their country of origin? If they maintain a relationship with their family of origin?
It's easy to overlook or brush aside these questions when you're looking into the adorable face of an innocent cooing baby. But these babies will grow up, and if we're not prepared to help them along their journey to self-determination, then they will go on without us.
6. Finally, the most important questions I have grappled with recently have to do with the ethics of international adoption as an institution.
On a personal level, do families who relinquish their children for adoption truly understand the finality of their decisions? Do those decisions actually have to be final? Why are so many adoptive families threatened by the existence of our children's family of origin? Why is it so difficult for us to expand our view of family to include the people who gave us our children?
On a societal level, who stands to profit from the practice of international adoption? How can we ensure that family preservation is the first thing attempted, and adoption is the last resort? Are adoptive families willing to dedicate themselves to the pursuit of family preservation and other social justice issues within our children's birth countries, even if that means the end to international adoption as we now know it?
posted by jayme @ 9:26 AM
10 Comments
10 Comments:
Jayme, I've commented on here before-you have a great blog and bring up the same sort of questions I've always been interested in learning more about. We're waiting right now through chsfs, and before I started the process I met a really cool woman who does work for an organization that tries to diminish some of those issues you brought up. If you'd like to email her, she's a great resource-at least a good start-let me know...
I felt relief as I read your thoughtful post.
I am hoping that agencies will get to a place where they require a whole lot more from adoptive families than to fill out a couple of worksheets on what they are and intending to do to provide cultural support for their children.
I am hoping that agencies will get to a place where requests will no longer be honored. It is a shame that too many orphans are waiting for families while waiting-family lists are growing.
I am hoping that the Ethiopian government will get to a place where they expect more for their children being adopted to other countries.
Perhaps you can be an advocate for such movement!
Jayme, I really appreciate your thoughts. I agree with many of them, disagree with some of them, and am left to ponder again most of them. Thank you for being the mama that you are to those beautiful kiddos. Your thoughts stretch the rest of us, and wherever it leads us in our thinking, that's a good thing...
I love reading your blog as my husband and I are thinking about the possibility of an Ethiopian adoption. All of the points you raise are excellent (ThirdMom has a good blog with references for some of those points). The only thing that made me pause, was your comment on the referral process. I think that the referral length should be decreased. Many families are not waiting for a crisis to happen in someone else's family. That would be to imply that the amount of children who need homes is small compared to the amount of adoption requests. In fact, from what I have read, the number of children needing homes far exceeds the number of potential adoptive parents. As such, reducing the amount of time from the conclusion of the homestudy to the referral should be reduced. Just a thought and as a newbie to the adoption process, please redirect me if I am mistaken.
Hi Jayme, you know I love you. I’m only gonna say about 1/100th of what comes to mind after reading your post. You said, "I get absolutely incensed when I hear waiting families whine about how long it's taking them to get their referral". You also admitted that it's easy for you to say some of these things since your children are home and you are not in the thick of the process anymore. But I remember your own pain (and mine) of waiting for referral expressed over the internet very well like it was yesterday. I am ashamed that I did lots of thoughtless things too while in process, like discuss nursery themes (shopping discussions like these make me a little queasier these days than they once did because it’s such a striking contrast to what my sons’ birth mother would have discussed during her pregnancy). Are you perhaps expecting too much good and heroism out of newbie adopters who we once resembled? It’s true we move onto to different levels once our adoptions are “complete” and it’s important to constantly examine and shake down an enormously controversial and vulnerable system.
The questions you ponder absolutely need to be thought of significantly BEFORE, during, and after any adoption. That should be required education by agencies and I’m appalled by people already deep in process who act like they’re hearing these issues for the first time. Truth is, ALL adoptions face criticism and ever-lasting public scrutiny (from both within and outside the adoption community) and it’s tough on adoptive families. But I can only imagine after years of infertility and heart ache, after finally gathering the resources & research together to begin an adoption, only to call an adoption agency and have them say, wouldn’t you prefer to pay us to keep a family together instead of building your own? Yeah, right! And there are countries that basically catalog their available children for international or domestic adoptive parents to choose from (Ukraine); it’s not without its problems and I can’t imagine shopping for a child like that—the prettiest child only, please.
I agree with many things you say, but maybe I think we still got on our rose colored glasses from where we sit with our beautiful adopted children.
I have many thoughts on this topic as well, but I think it's hard to keep a clear head about it all since we're right in the midst of waiting for our referral...Thank you for bringing it up though!
These are really important issues to think about. It's hard to write the not-so-pretty side of things because a lot of people don't want to think about the negatives they may have been a part of through their adoption.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what our future children are going through now. We are about a month from being paper-ready (waiting for the 171) and while it is exciting for us to think about how to re-do the back bedroom and how life will change (dramatically) next year, our children are more than likely in a really rough place right now. They might be already in an orphanage, they may be watching a sick parent suffer, they may be watching their family struggle to find enough food for the day. My prayers lately have been much less about preparing myself for the upcoming changes but more for peace and comfort for the children that may be suffering now and have, literally, a world of changes headed their way.
I cannot believe that international adoption is wrong. On an individual level the children that are currently available for adoption need parents and we are able to provide that for them. On a grander scale, though, I think it would be irresponsible for us to not attempt to help alleviate the problems that lead to children having to be placed for adoption. My family can't care for all orphans, but we may be able to give a home to a few. We also can't independently change the financial and social circumstances that often cause families to place children for adoption but we surely can try to help through sustainable assistance programs, sponsorship, etc.
Ditto what Cindy said :)
We need to discuss these issues one of these days in person, Jayme - maybe over a glass of wine (or four).
Kellie, I'll bring a couple of bottles if I'm invited too. There's a lot to talk about :)! (Oh, how I wish all you cool mamas out there lived close by!)
The ethics question concerning agencies made me remember a certain adoption agency director named Orson Mozes. When I was looking into Russian adoptions a couple of years ago, his name came up over and over as the most evil name in adoption ever heard of. He had so many informal and formal complaints againt him--hopeful families lost thousands with no child, he lured clients in with lies and illegal pictures of beautiful babies and it was largely hoax. Everybody screamed, stay away from him, he's not ethical, he will rob you, he doesn't care about kids, families, or adoption. . . well, people still kept going to him despite what they heard with hopes of speedy adoptions and gorgeous young babies. I think he may still even be "practicing". The legal system didn't shut him down (or at least not fast enough) and prospective adopters still sought his services. Anyway, the point is, as adopters, we do have some responsibility when it comes to picking an agency--at the very least. And the good ones will welcome at the top of their lists good thinkers who question the system.
OK, one more thing (you can't shut me up now!). . . I researched many countries for many months and years before our adoption. I always sensed a taste of what was controversial with each country in regards to int adoption. With Russia, it was the real possibilites that your child would have attatchment problems and/or FAS. With Guatemala it was the ever-impending threat of closures due to corruption and the fact that mant Guat politicians were against int adoption (same with Russia). And so on. Now with ET it seems to be this "true orphan" thing (not to mention the celebrity/Africa stuff, etc, etc). There's always a controversy, always will be, that is the nature of adoption--still. But I still can't believe my ears when I heard a mother woefully regret the fact that her child still had living birth parents. I can imagine that convo in the future (sorry hon, your birth mom is still alive, sorry she's not dead). Sorry, I know that sounds awful, but that was the reduced message I got via the internet and I'm hearing the same thing now almost daily.
Anyway, don't expect resolution anytime soon, but let the discussion continue. . .
Peace & love.
Excellent post, Jayme. Thank you for sharing so many of your thoughts (and for unwittingly articulating so many of mine!)
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