okay. Now you disgust me Madonna.

[Dangerosa]

I don’t know what the culture is like in Malawi.

I know that in Korea, where we adopted from, the idea of blood tie obligations is very strong, but the thought that you can put your child in an orphanage and pick him up years later is not strange. Some adoptees (not many, but a few) have searched for and found their birthparents who abandoned them twenty years ago, and their birthparents expect them to care for them in their old age!

What I’m saying is that you can’t put our ideas of parenting and abandonment on someone else’s culture.

[Sarahfeena]

@Scotticher

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.

I think you are right that this scenario is probably how it happened. The difference between Madonna and the rest of us being that she HAD to know that people/the press were going to be interested in it, Madonna being who she is, and all that. What I was trying to say before was that if I was Madonna, I would be extremely careful to be sure that I understood all of the regulations and typical procedures before hand, to be sure that no one was doing anything (the officials, that is), that was not on the up and up. The various people I know who have adopted internationally have done TONS of research before hand, so they would know exactly what to expect. I suspect from all this outcry that everything may not have gone according to the regulations, and this is a huge problem, especially when you are someone so in the public eye.

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]

This is all true. I will say that I would have just as big a problem with ANYONE who I suspected may have cut corners in an adoption…not that I am saying she did, but if they were cut, whoever was responsible for that should have to answer for it.

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!!!

I won’t repeat what Dangerosa said about the culture being different, but I want to add that in ANY case of adoption, you have to be sure that the parents sign away rights to the child. If the father did not understand exactly what was happening…either because he was deliberately misled by officials, or because there was a cultural misunderstanding, or whatever, I believe this is an ethical problem.

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?

These people are in desperate situations. I don’t know where the father was, or why he did not come to visit, but I am not going to necessarily assume it was because he did not care about the welfare of the child.

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?

No, I don’t think he would have been better off being left there. That’s not what I am saying. I am saying that there are ethics surrounding adoption (discussed already ad nauseum in this thread), and the entire adoption community is better off when those ethics are adhered to.

[fessie]

Maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see this exchange mentioned in reports about Madonna’s recent adoption:

You met Mr. Banda once, in a courtroom. What did you say to him?

Obviously when you’re sitting across from the father it’s really heart wrenching. He was looking down at the ground all the time and I felt so bad for him. I said, 'I feel for you and I want what’s best for David. So if you want him, I don’t want to take your son from you. I just want to save his life. I can’t live in Malawi. I can’t move my family here. He would have to come and live with me and I would raise him as a son. But there’s another option. I can just give you money, and you can raise him.’ And he said no. But he still had a very hangdog expression, which crushed me.

From this week’s Time magazine.

Not that I really care or my opinion means anything, but for her to have made that offer dramatically changes my perception of the situation.

[kung_fu_lola]

I re-upped for the sole reason of posting to this thread, but now all I have to say is: Scotticher got it exactly right.

M and Guy have always wanted more children (Madonna always said she wanted three, even before she had her first), but they were advised against having them biologically. They decided to adopt in 2005. Madonna saw David for the first time in documentary footage. When she met him in person a handful of months later, he was deathly ill, and she got him lifesaving medical treatment that the orphanage could not have given him. This experience inspired her to advise her lawyers, seek out David’s father and ask permission to adopt David. Yohane assented (or at least appeared to).

I know that lots of people think that Madonna meticulously plots every little thing, but so much her life has come about by chance, or fate. She saw David by chance, and when he needed her most, she was there, ready and able to help him.

[Scotticher]

@Kalhoun

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.

You are probably quite correct and I hadn’t even considered that aspect of the situation. I was looking at this from my own point of view, which is that if any child in my family was placed in an orphanage I’d have visited every time I got the chance. But then, no child in my family would have been placed in an orphanage in the first place, because I’d have adopted him. Or if I couldn’t have done that, someone else in my family would have.

We are so very blest in this country, and we seldom recognize it. We have absolutely NO IDEA of the desperation that people feel in so many countries around the world.

It is good to be reminded of this, or at least it is for me. And I’m a schmuck for getting all indignant about the family not being able to visit the child.

[Scotticher]

@Dangerosa

What I’m saying is that you can’t put our ideas of parenting and abandonment on someone else’s culture.

You are quite correct, and I’m ashamed of myself for not considering this. I repeat…I’m a schmuck.