But I think the question is whether or not this was properly done in this case, since the father is now claiming he didn’t understand. (Again, he could just be confused, or he could be lying, but isn’t it worth investigating?)
(She lives in London…plenty of people pick up accents here and abroad after they live there for a while.)
I just saw him on Anderson Cooper 360 and he said he wants Madonna to raise his son. He denied being pressured by the government but said lots of non-government human rights groups and the like had been pressuring him. He’s moved out of his house due to the pressure from the press. He’s now living in a hut with his sister.
There’s no way we’ll ever know who pressured him to say what, but he is now saying that he wants Madonna to raise his child and hopes to see him in the future. I believe they said both his other children died before they were two years old. At least there is a chance he’ll see this kid grow up.
I’m well aware of that. I’m also well aware that many countries (Vietnam, Cambodia) have been shut down when parents have signed away rights, but the signatures come under pressure. The signature IS important, but it is also important that the father gave his son up willingly, made a concious and independant decision not to parent permanently. Some of his statements post adoption make it sound like he didn’t. Now, if that is a scam on his part or a misunderstanding…I don’t know. If its a misunderstanding - it is still a huge problem and violates treaties - regardless of the signature.
As I recall, Jolie had similar problems with her first adoption, though she was not, at that point, such a huge star (she certainly was a star and tabloid fodder, but not to the level she is now, or Madonna has been for twenty years).
I suspect her subsequent adoption involved a child where no living relatives were found during a search - a true orphan instead of an abandonment situation.
Abandonment has, since the first days of international adoption, been a sticky situation. Some cultures treat orphanages like foster care for periods of time when the family is too poor or the child too sick. When times get better, they expect the child to be there to pick up. It isn’t always clear which children have been permanently abandoned and which are just being “held.” For a country like Malawi, which is new to the international adoption scene, it always takes several years for these issues to work themselves out and the country to develop good processes. (Established countries - Korea, Columbia - nowadays China and Eastern Europe - have far fewer of these issues - though Eastern Europe has enough political instability to close down over beaurocratic changes.)
The history of international adoption (which really started with the Korean war on a large scale) is facinating.
It’s quite possible that the problem with the father WAS a cultural misunderstanding. I was actually a little surprised that the child selected had a living parent, not because a parent can’t relinquish if they want to, but because it seems that there would be a lot of children there with no parents or family at all, which would make things a lot less complicated.
I think there probably is a lot of corruption involved in many international adoptions. But that doesn’t make Madonna the bad guy. She’s doing what she can to help the helpless. I understand the cultural reasons for wanting to keep the kids in their home country, but it doesn’t hold much water when we’re seeing deplorable conditions and a nation unable to provide the most basic care for it’s citizens.
This man could not take care of his child. That’s the reason he put him in the orphanage at 2 weeks old. The poor kid has been sick nearly his entire life and the track record indicates he would probably not receive adequate medical care. I have no interest in “following the rules” at this point in time, and I’m sure his father doesn’t, either. A rigid approach to adoption, at this point, doesn’t serve anyone. If someone can get through the red tape more quickly (and I’m not convinced she did) and if someone can salvage something amidst the fallout of poverty and disease, why wouldn’t they?
The rigid approach to adoption keeps the country open to international adoption. For the U.S., the country must be approved by the State Department or they don’t issue Visas. Getting one child through may impact the ability to place thousands of others.
I could understand being rigid on some issues, disease factors, etc., but I would like to see a cite on that so I can understand more fully what you’re talking about. Do you have a link?
Let me spend some time Googling…but it may not be in the near future, I’m supposed to be working…
This is what I’m afraid of:
Thanks. I appreciate your effort.
Doesn’t Madonna already have 2 kids? Why does she feel she needs more? crazy.
She didn’t “need” any of them. What’s your point?
Here is the state department fact sheet on why they suspended adoptions in Cambodia:
http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/questsans/QAadopt.htm
Although they say in this sheet that they never suspended Visa processing, I know people who got caught in the Vietnam thing, and to adoptive parents it was the same scenario - they couldn’t get their children out.
Also, countries will voluntarily suspend adoptions - Russia does it every few years - it seems. And its happened in India in the past decade as well - at least in some locations (as I understand it, adoption in India is controlled at a “state” level - not federally).
This paper (which I read to be Australian) seems pretty good at first glace at explaining some of what I am talking about.
http://www.angelfire.com/or/originsnsw/icadopt.html
Basically, the international community is very shy of allegations of baby trafficking, kidnapping, baby selling. I’m not saying that this is what Madonna engaged in - and if there was any unethical behavior here it is unlikely to have been on her part.
BTW, here is the international adoption fact sheet from the U.S. State Department on Malawi:
http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/country/country_417.html
Note that the State Department only controls visas being issued. You can adopt a child overseas in accordance with their local laws - the issue is that the State Department doesn’t have to issue them a visa to enter the U.S. To get the visa, the child must meet the State Department’s rather strict definition of legal orphan.
By the way, I was wrong - its down to between 1,000 and 2,000 kids a year (sometimes a tiny bit higher) into the U.S.
Thanks for looking that up for us. I can’t concentrate on it right now (I’m supposed to be working, too) but I’ll take a look later. I appreciate it.
Very interesting and informative. I admit I hadn’t thought of many of the reasons that the safeguards are in place. Nonetheless, I believe Madonna and her attorneys did think of them, and any questionable behavior would most likely be on the hands of people other than her or the father of the kid. I believe that he wants Madonna to raise his son and I believe that he hopes to see the boy again some day. I also think Madonna will probably raise the boy with an awareness of his father and his previous home and country.
I haven’t followed this adoption like some of you apparently have, but the way it appeared to me was that Madonna and her husband wanted to add to their family and decided that instead of biologically having another child they would adopt a child who would otherwise not have much of a chance of having a long and healthy life due to the desperate conditions in their birth country. They had been doing some work with orphanages in Malawi, and they met this child who they fell in love with. They looked into adopting that particular child and the father was in agreement that he wanted his child to have the chance at a better life. All of this was a private family matter, and Madonna and family had no intention of publicizing it…although they didn’t appear to be trying to hide it, either. Why should they? The press picked up on this, as is their wont, and [sub]as is also the way when anyone famous is involved[/sub] started looking for trouble. [sub]And…if they don’t FIND trouble, they CREATE. It sells. Which is a sad commentary on the general public, if you ask me. Which you didn’t, but that is my considered opinon.[/sub] So Madonna went on Oprah to defend herself. Just as you or I would do, in a similar situation…if we had a way to answer the critics just ONCE instead of having to do it every day at the grocery store, the post office, the water cooler, the library…and every other place they happened to run into someone who was looking to criticize whatever they had done.
Am I missing something here? Because I’ve never been a Madonna fan*, and I don’t think she has done anything wrong. They wanted to expand their family, they chose to adopt instead of having another biological child, they fell in love with a child, they adopted him. If she had not been famous, the press wouldn’t have gotten all crazed on her and everyone she knew (most people, anyway…) would be applauding the fact that she chose to adopt a child from an unfortunate situation instead of having another baby and adding to the population explosion. [sub]Not that there is anything wrong with having your own children in a biological way, so please don’t climb my frame. I’m delicate.[/sub]
I don’t want to get into a fight with you. [sub]And I won’t, actually.[/sub] But I would like to point out that if there were any “extended family” that wanted to adopt this child themselves, he wouldn’t have been in an orphanage. Would he?
And THIS makes my skin crawl!!!
That poor child had been in that orphanage for at least 16 months…and he had had NO VISITORS? The government had to TRACK DOWN HIS “FATHER” to sign papers?
And some of you are trying to say that that poor child would have been better off having been LEFT there? Do you think that the child gets enough love in an orphanage that he’d be better off THERE than in a home with a brother and a sister and two parents and three square meals a day and an education and medical attention when needed?
I’m sorry. I just don’t understand. Yes, I understand that there need to be strict regulations concerning adoptions. America learned this, or at least I learned this, during the Lisa Steinberg case.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/family/lisa_steinberg/1.html
I live in a small town, and maybe to some degree, I was sheltered. Not that horrid things never happen here, but…seldom are they things that make the news. I know that bad things happen all the time, everywhere, that are never brought to light, and I know that lots of them are going on right here. But I don’t think I had ever been aware of the fact that people would adopt children unless they wanted to love and nuture them. This made me sick to my stomach, and it still does. I’m a Christian, and God directs us to forgive. I find it hard to forgive that man, Joel Steinberg, and frankly? I still hope he rots in Hell. I know that is wrong of me. Maybe someday I’ll get more forgiving. Right now, I’m not there yet.
Still, I don’t think that Madonna and family adopted this boy with anything other than an intention to include him in their family. And it seems clear that his birth family didn’t give a rip about him…if they had, they’d have visited him after he was placed in the orphanage. He is clearly better off now than he was before he was adopted, and I doubt seriously that the Ritchie family is going to allow the negative press to force them to abandon him. He was already abandoned. If anyone should be getting bad press, it is the family who didn’t visit him in the 16-18 months that he was in the orphanage.
Very well put. In defense of the family and visiting, I’m not sure where they’re located in relation to the orphanage, but my guess is they had no way to get there. I could be wrong.