It’s not cool to adopt kids who have known living parents.
It’s not cool to kidnap children.
Not only does this have the potential to cause exactly the same wrenching pain for parents as if someone grabbed a cute blonde girl out of Walmart and trafficked her to a loving Somali family. It poison relationships between cultures. Foreign organizations that provide life-saving aid and investment end up kicked out or mistrusted because of this bullshit. Giving people good reason to be suspicious of foreigners can set back entire economies as poor countries decide to close themselves in rather than risk violations like their own children being appropriated for rich foreign families.
Those articles both mention in a lot of these cases one or both of the child’s parents are involved in the trafficking, so for a lot of them I don’t think it causes so much wrenching pain for the parent.
Plus, life is genuinely cheaper and less valuable in non-modern societies, people produce lots of children in those cultures.
This is not a widespread problem in the States or Western Europe.
It’s deplorable, sure. But there are already penalties and enforcement mechanisms.
Celebrity habits notwithstanding, African kids are still the least desirable on the adoption market. Many white couples will only consider white or Asian kids. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Different strokes.
Both of those articles are very light on facts, but in fact the second article is talking about a German couple that was adopting a child who disappeared off the streets and whose father was looking for her the entire time she was missing.
I don’t really know that there is any evidence the German couple had done anything wrong, though, if they were following Germany’s laws and Mali’s laws then it’s not their fault if Malians were doing shady shit to provide a child.
This isn’t an isolated thing. There was that wonderful plane load full of decidedly non-orphaned children being sent from Chad to France a few years back as “war orphans.” That set being able to deliver much-needed aid to Chad back quite a bit.
If you are adopting a child, I do think it is your responsibility to do your research and do it ethically. The problem has larger implications than just you or the kid. And I don’t think it should be treated any differently than if, say, rich Chinese parents were kidnapping American kids to raise as their own. We expect our companies not to sell outright stolen goods- Walmart couldn’t start robbing factories in Mexico and selling the stuff legally in the US. We can expect our adoption agencies to do the same.
If rich Chinese parents wanted to adopt an American baby and were told it was all fine and above board and later found out they’d been lied to, then it might be a better parallel.
What if they simply closed their eyes when the cash changed hands? Or what if they were genuinely convinced that they were saving that poor child from a horrible life in New Jersey? Or that life is cheap in Seattle and the parents won’t miss the kids anyway? Do you really think that these parents are doing their due diligence, or are particularly unaware of what is going on?
I’m not really upset at the parents (though I call bullshit on the plausible deniability- you owe the world more than that. You don’t get to selectively close your eyes just because it’s something you really want.), but international adoptions have go-betweens, and often these go-betweens are non-profits based in countries that ostensibly have some kind of rules and regulations to make sure that organizations in their jurisdiction are not child trafficking rings.
Again, when outside NGOs traffic children, it makes it harder for legitimate NGOs to do necessary, lifesaving work. The Zoes Ark thing caused people to die as aid agencies lost their ability to respond to emergencies, no doubt fueled some nice Islamic radicalism (nothing mobilizes fear and hate like “The foreigners are actually stealing your children”) and just made a whole lot of things worse for everyone.
Seriously, stealing children is bad. We (the royal we) should avoid it and call the hell out anyone who does.
This is a terribly weak Pitting - I think we can all agree that stealing children from parents who want and love them is a bad thing.
I just wonder how you think this “due diligence” is going to happen. If someone in America is interested in adopting a Chinese baby, it’s a pretty good bet they’re not goiing to be fluent in Chinese. How are they supposed to investigate an organization when they can’t read the paperwork or speak the language?
I don’t think very many adoptive parents go looking for a stolen baby. If they receive a child that has been illegally taken from its parents, the potential adopters are as much of a victim as the birth parents.
For many people this is a matter of due diligence, actually: finding information on how to adopt a kid from China, Korea or a number of Latin American countries is, at least in Spain, a lot easier than finding out how to adopt a kid from Mali, Botswana or India (yes, I know India isn’t in Africa: adding it as a sample point of “countries wherefrom I’ve never met an adoptee”).
I’m a little disappointed by your lack of cultural sensitivity even sven. Stealing Africans is a time honored American tradition. It’s wrong (and I hate to bring it up, but it’s frankly a bit racist and classist) for you to insist that your world view and way of doing things are better. Americans have a rich and fascinating culture; there’s much you could learn from them.
I have no problem with the incredibly brave stance the OP is taking, what with being willing to state boldly upfront without the bat of an eye that babystealing isn’t all that kosher. That’s one hell of a hill to die on, and I salute you, a modern Joan of Arc daring to speak against the barrage of support for stealing kids from unknowing parents, even though flames may lick at your feet while so doing.
But this…
Wait, what? Are you missing a word in here or are you seriously suggesting that adoption is only “cool” when the parents are dead? So now a teen mother has to kill herself in order to adopt out her kid?
You haven’t been lending your account to someone with the word Zealot" in their screenname, have you?
I think the Pitting is weak because even sven is putting too much (imho) blame on adopting parents. Yes, there are cases of children being sold, er, adopted without their parents’ consent or sometimes the adopting parents know about it (or if you’re Madonna, I guess). Honestly, though? I think for the most part, parents who really really want to be parents are doing the best they can with what they’ve got. I know people who have adopted from overseas and while it’s not my cuppa tea, it’s often easier than American adoptions. And yet - it’s still really friggin hard! There is so much red tape - good on one hand, but one other, there are lot of babies and not enough parents (with means) to go around. So are adoption agencies the catalyst for these willing birth parents or just filling a need?
Finally, most adoptive parents don’t go to a foreign country and hand over wads of cash for a cute baby. There’s a process…and the US seems to be pretty good at holding up basic international rights standards. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen…I’m just not sure how often it really does.
Quality of life is much higher in the US than Mali or China. An unadopted child in the US will probably have 95% of the lifespan of the average American. An unadopted child in Mali will probably have 60% of the lifespan of the average American (at a guess).
Sorry- not cool to adopt children with living parents who have not fully given up custody. 4/5 of orphans in sub-Saharan Africa have nearby parents. In most of these cases, the kid was given up due to poverty. Often the parents would love to have the kid back, and view the situation as a temporary fix to get through hard times.
Those kids should not be adopted out without their parents’ consent.