No, but the bottleneck is not currently in appropriate homes, its in red tape and quotas.
When we have a situation where children are sitting in institutions and the only people who want to adopt them have only altrusitic motives, then let those people adopt them. Until that point, there are better parents waiting.
Poppycock. I’m 45 years old and there’s a good chance I’m past the point of being able to bear children naturally. My heart and my life are full of love and happiness, not big ol’ gaping holes. My husband and I talked about fostering and adoption as an alternative to fertility treatments, surrogates or other options that might give us a “biological” child. Why? Well, because we’d very much like to be parents, so why not parent a child who already exists, who might not otherwise ever have a home with two loving parents? Why not relieve the aching heart of a girl or woman who hopes her child can have a better life than she can provide? Why not do our part for humanity and open our hearts and home to a child who’s longing for a permanent roof over their head instead of creating a new one? If our altruism in this regard is distasteful to you, why should I give two hoots?
And I say this as someone whose entire extended family on both sides wouldn’t even exist were it not for adoption, so I know a little about the issue, myself. Frankly, none of our reasons for fostering or adopting are any of your concern.
And if Social Services thinks we have to have holes in our hearts and long to be parents, they sure don’t mention it.
Nope, nothing about a hole in your heart there.
This Christian adoption organization lists its first priority “Christian families desiring to adopt as part of a calling and commitment we have been led to.” (Bolding mine). Further qualifications have nothing do do with longing for a child to fill an empty heart.
I’ve read all through the North American Council on Adoptable Children website, including their page on ethics, and nowhere to be found is the criteria that one must be anguished at the thought of life without a child in order to qualify as an adoptive parent.
The “Self Assessment” they ask prospective adoptive parents to do consists of the following:
Don’t see anything that says *strong desire to fill a hole in your heart.
In fact, if you look at their research on how parents feel about the adoption process, you’ll find that unresolved fertility issues can be considered in screening OUT applicants! (Bolding mine)
So the very fact that you cannot have a natural child and long for one to fill some imagined hole in your heart, might just disqualify you from consideration.
I’m not speaking to the Madonna situation, only the “adopting because you are a good person situation.”
I don’t know Madonna, I don’t know her motives, I don’t know what sort of parent she is or will make. I don’t know if she wanted to fill a hole in her heart AND give a needy child a home (appropriate) or if needy child was the last thing in her mind when she fell in love and discovered the hole (appropriate) or if she said “Hey this will get me great press and I can talk adoption with Angelina Jolie” (inappropriate). Can’t comment on any of that. (She does need to get better at using adoption language, but that’s a nitpick - I’ve been doing this for years and I still can’t get my mouth around “make an adoption plan”). I haven’t followed her career - it seems to have gone through a few flaky stages as well as a few charitble stages from what I see on the front of People in the grocery store. I’m not very qualified to do Madonna’s home study.
If those red tape and quota issues aren’t going to be resolved right now, then punishing the kids for it is ghastly. And that’s the result of what you’re saying. It isn’t a punishment to someone who would do what you’re accusing Madonna of doing. It’s a punishment to the kids. A less-than-ideal adoption is still better than the orphanage. Unless you can show that all of those kids were going to go to ideal adoption situations, then I think the complaint is awful.
And since we don’t know that Madonna is even a less-than-ideal candidate, it makes the complaint more awful.
These are exactly what I’m talking about:
How in the world does your example fit the “good person” situation?
But the thing is as long as there are plenty of waiting parents, and the red tape keeping the children in institutions, why not place the ones coming out in the homes where they have the best chance of success. The children coming out are a limited and precious resource.
Little “Cho-Li” can be places in one of two homes. One that very much wants a little girl in their lives and has chosen to do this via adoption. One that is adopting in order to “save” a child from the orphanage. We have evidence that Cho-Li will be much more successful in the first home.
While we care about the thousands of children that won’t come out of the Chinese instutitional system, they aren’t coming out one way or the other right now.
According to one site:
I doubt, though I am willing to be convinced otherwise, that there are that many people waiting to adopt. Another site says 2 million orphans. And this is just one country.
So how many people are on the waiting list to adopt these kids?
Oh, and I found a number of sites where there are photographs of kids in the US waiting to be adopted. How is this not essentially shopping for a kid?
Again, you’re talking about American orphans; this doesn’t address the untenable situation that’s growing in Africa.
The numbers of children who have virtually no chance of being adopted continue to rise. As long as an adoptive parent can help, it makes no difference whether they have a hole in their heart or a checkbook in their pocket. It’s about the welfare of the child. Languishing in substandard housing with substandard food and medical care can not be better than living with someone who wants to care for them and make their lives better.
According to the BBC, the number of orphans double to 25M by the end of the decade.
We can’t even place the children we have in the U.S. where money and hearts with holes are abundant. You can bet the situation is 100 times worse in third world countries.
Ouch.
Where did I say hole in your heart = unresolved infertility issues. Unresolved infertility issues is another thing that will put you on the reject pile for a home study.
Some are pretty obvious: Felony conviction, drug use.
Some are less obvious but will probably be show stoppers: Uncontrolled disease, unstable marriage. Most countries (and it is the country you are adopting from that controls this) want two parent families (one of each gender). Living in a “trash house.” My husband had to lose weight to complete our adoption.
Some are attitudes - two that will catch you in a home study are “I want to give a needy child a good home” (fine as a secondary motivation - but if your primary motivation isn’t “I want kids” throws up red flags), the second is “unresolved fertility issues” - an adopted child cannot replace a biological one - you have to finish mourning the biological child you may never have before you are ready to adopt.
Things that won’t put you on the reject pile: Living above the poverty level (you need to do a little better than the poverty level to qualify for the visa), not being religious (though certain agencies will not take you),
No I’m not talking about American orphans. I’m talking about the worldwide problem of getting orphans out of institutions.
For instance, before 1984 the majority of Korean “orphans” (mostly abandoned children) were placed in adoptive homes in the West. In 1984, under the scrutiny of hosting the Olympics, South Korea came under international criticism for “not taking care of its own.” Korea put a quota in place. Where formerly over ten thousand children came into the U.S. a year to be placed in homes, since 1984 that number has been usually between 3,000 and 4,000. Some children in Korea are now placed in adoptive homes. Some are now kept by their birthmothers that may not have been kept previously, but many more are institutionalized as a result of that policy.
When only 3-4,000 get out each year, don’t the ones that do deserve the best possible situation.
Other countries have other reasons for limiting the number out (I suspect mostly economic - keep the supply low and the amount of graft the system produces is much higher). Sometimes just infrastructure.
Indeed. According to my linked sites above on Ethics and Adoptive Family Recruitment: (All emphasis mine)
I watched the Oprah interview. As it happens, this child had pnemonia when she arrived in Malawi. Madona’s first act was to wisk him off to a hospital because there was no way for the orphanage to provide antibiotics. She said there was malaria and TB in the orphanage, but so far he was ok. It is also a country where 20% of children do not survive to their 5th birthday. The number is worse for children in orphanages. This child had been in the orphanage from the time he was 2 weeks old until the 16 or 18 months he is now with no visitors. The government had to track down his father to sign papers, because he had not been at all involved. The chances are pretty good this child would not have made it to his second birthday without her. Now he will be brought up in an extreemly privileged household, where he will be educated, cared for, and my guess is loved. Quelle horror!!
Photolisting was not what I was referring to when I was talking about shopping for a child…I was referring to in-person orphanage visits.
I do think that photolisting is a questionable practice, but it does seem to be accepted by many.
And her actions are great and admirable. But it doesn’t sound like the child had proper release for adoption at that time and that his father may have been pressured for release. That isn’t. And its completely possible, probable in fact, that Madonna herself was unaware of that.
Its also completely possible that dear old Dad is kicking up a fuss hoping for compensation - that would not be inconceivable under the circumstances.
The problem being that as Madonna, there is such an intense spotlight on her that even the appearance of something that violates international treaty is not good. One of the reasons celebrity adoptions are strange is that they can have stranger ethical concerns around them - with birthparents having motivations that might not be there if the child was being adopted by John and Jane Martin from Tusla.
I definitely would say that I am more suspicious of the officials in this case than I am of Madonna…she can’t speak the language, and if the father was lied to, she may not have been aware of it. That being said, if I was an internationally famous celebrity, involved in something SO high-profile, I would make darn sure that I was completely positive that everything was on the up-and-up, for my own sake, if nothing else.
I think that’s a strong possibility, as well. In fact, I was just saying to my husband the other day (before this thread started), that I wondered if the guy was really confused, or if he was trying to hit her up for some cash.
That’s the thing…exactly the reason I would be extremely, extremely cautious if I were in her shoes. I think the questions that have been raised are completely legitimate, and any possibility that international treaties have been violated is a very, very serious matter that should be investigated…no matter who is involved. It IS very easy and tempting for birth parents and/or officials to be bought off, and I believe this is a big ethical problem.
I just wonder if anybody on this board bothers to click through to links when they’re provided, in threads they’re purporting to make educated arguments in. As a matter of fact, crazyjoe posted a link on the very first page of this thread (Post #9), to a blog of his cousin’s, who happens to be in Malawi doing work for USAID and is familiar with Malawi adoption procedures. Those procedures call for any living family member to be tracked down and contacted to see if they would prefer to take in the child afterall, instead of allowing it to be placed for adoption. [
](http://the-sparks.livejournal.com/) NO child can be “released” until any family members are found and give permission, so there was nothing unusual in this case.
I thought that too. I was impressed that she was extreemly careful not sugest any such thing. She said the man is an uneducated farmer with the full weight of the world’s press arriving on his doorstep suggesting he did wrong. That it is pretty possible that may have pushed him to rethink the question, or that he is flat out being taken out of context, which can happen to people who are pretty press savy.
I am not sure how she could have predicted the feeding frenzy. Angelina Jolie did it while dating someone elses husband and a far less stable home life, and became the darling of the press. Madona does it after starting a foundation that gives millions to orphanages in Malawi, and as part of a family structure that has been stable for several years, and somehow nbecomes the evil kidnapping bitch. I don’t get it.
There are lots of reasons to dislike the woman. I think the whole kabalah thing was pretentious, and the English accent she is affecting now is worse, but I think this whole uproar is kind of stupid, and could hurt a lot of children in the process.