Strollerderby : international adoptions

Madonna/Angelina Dichotomy: Why is Adoption Okay for One Star but not the Other?

Shannon LC Cate — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

This is something I just don't get. Why is it that Angelina Jolie is supposed to be a saint for adopting children from poor countries while Madonna is criticized for same?

All the pros and cons of international adoption aside (it has well justified groups of both supporters and detractors), it seems that when Jolie swoops into a country and adopts a child, she is considered to be, well, some kind of Madonna, whereas when, er, Madonna goes to Malawi and adopts, leaving an NGO to support the entire country's children in her wake, she gets all kinds of push-back from the press who bother to ask international adoption critics what they think. For example, a UK charity, Save the Children spokesperson commenting on Madonna's plan to adopt a Malawian sister for David said "You cannot literally take every poor child who may only have one parent living, or no parent living, across the world and transport them all into Kensington in London. It's not a solution." Well, duh, hence Madonna's NGO.

I am awfully sympathetic to the view that that children should, whenever possible, stay in the countries and/or communities of their birth and be cared for by their own relatives or at least community members who share their cultural origins. I chose domestic open adoption to make sure my own kids would not lose contact with their biological and cultural origins. But I'm also sympathetic to the fact that Madonna, having adopted one child from Malawi, sees the need for him to have another member of his family share his background. I'm a transracially adoptive mother of two, (rather than one) for similar reasons.

There is some pretty good evidence that the orphanage where Jolie adopted son, Maddox, is corrupt in its practices, perhaps manufacturing "orphans" for lucrative international adoption placements. Madonna's adoption of son, David (who retains his original surname, Banda), was a case in which no one pretended the child didn't have living relatives--indeed he has a father who apparently visited David in the orphanage regularly and agreed to his adoption. Madonna has taken David to visit his biological father on several occasions since his adoption. In fact, she seems to be doing international adoption as well as it can be done.

Now mind you, I pity any child raised by a celebrity, regardless of how she ended up in the family. I can't imagine a much worse environment for a kid, except perhaps an orphanage--but even that would depend on the orphanage. I'm neither advocating, nor poo-pooing Jolie or Madonna's adopting ways. And I'm not a big fan of either of them. I simply don't understand why the media treats them so differently when it comes to their children.

Is it age? Madonna is fifty while Angelina is 30-something. Is it public image? I didn't think Jolie's celebrity identity was all that squeaky clean before she started having kids, am I wrong? Maybe people just don't like Madonna. Maybe they just like Jolie.

Then again, maybe the strong light cast on Madonna's first adoption, in which questions were raised about the biological father's consent and the laws of Malawi has allowed people to see the complexity of international adoption in a way that Jolie's less publicized adoption details do not. But the fact is that all adoption is fraught with controversial details and questions about what is truly in a child's best interest. All adoptions raise the spectral question of how to help all the children who are left in need, and not adopted; of how to help parents and communities keep their own children and raise them to healthy adulthood. No adoption is pure and uncomplicated. Not the purest, least complicated one. Madonna deserves no more criticism than I do, or than any adoptive parent does. But all members of wealthy societies--adoptive parents or otherwise--need to take a look at their own culpability in perpetuating systems and governments that render some parents and children so desperate that adoption becomes their best option.

Parents Must Give Adopted Son Back: Another Side of the Story

Shannon LC Cate — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

My fellow Strollerderby blogger, Jeanne Sager, reports this morning on the case of an American Indian baby adopted outside his tribe being ordered to be returned to the tribe by his adoptive parents at the age of six months.

When my children (both adopted) were babies, one of the most common questions strangers would ask us is "can her real mother take her back?" Setting aside the problematic word "real," what annoyed me most about this question was the evidence it gave me that the population generally buys into the myth that adoption--especially domestic adoption--is a dangerous game in which tentative families are made, then torn asunder willy-nilly by impetuous birth mothers "changing their minds" about their adoption decision.

The fact is, in spite of the high publicity cases like the one Jeanne shares with us receive from the media, real adoption disruptions are incredibly rare. In the Utah case, bad adoption law met the Indian Child Welfare Act, met questionable adoption agency practice met complicated race politics for a perfect storm.

For one thing, Utah allows a woman to sign away her child for adoption only 24 hours after giving birth. Adoption ethicists disagree over how much time should be required to pass before allowing terminations of parental rights to be signed, but none I've read think 24 hours is anywhere near long enough. And it is the shortest time in any state in the U.S. Not enough time was allowed, in this case, for the mother to make her decision.

For another thing, the Indian Child Welfare Act, like it or not gives the tribes jurisdiction over placement of tribal children for adoption. The agency the prospective adoptive parents used ought to have apprised them of the legal risk they were taking in accepting this baby as their own before the tribe had ruled on the decision. It should have been made clear to them that this could happen and they should never have been led to believe the case was closed until the case was...closed.

As for race politics, people can argue about it until we all explode--it shouldn't matter what race the adoptive parents are as long as they are fit parents versus Indian children should be raised within Indian communities at all costs--and we will never settle it. Because in transracial adoption--as in all adoption--paradox abounds. The fact is that while it is true that love has no color, people do. And race matters.

I'm the white adoptive mother of Black children and our love for each other "has no race" as they say. Of course I can love them and they can love me as fiercely as any mother and children ever loved each other in the history of humanity, but that is a completely separate issue from what they need as people of color in what is still a white dominant society. Plenty of research suggests that transracially adopted children grow up isolated and alienated and unsure how to be adults in their own skin. As a transracially adoptive mother I watch and listen and read and work as hard as I can to prevent my children from having this kind of experience. I think I can learn from the mistakes of the past and the pain adult adoptees share and do a better job for my kids. But this is not a simple matter of love.

The Native American tribes have special consideration in adoption and were an exception to the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act (making racial consideration in adoption placement illegal) because of their special legal status as sovereign and because of an ugly history that included taking away tribal children as a form of real, intentional cultural genocide. Because of this, transracially adoptive parent though I am, I think that exception is reasonable.

Finally, I know that the mother in the Utah case had a serious drug addiction and had been declared unfit to raise her older four children. The baby in question was born drug-addicted. But having a disease like addiction does not automatically render women deserving to lose their children forever. Plenty of women can and do get clean and get their children back. The trouble is that people in power would rather take children out of sick families and sick communities than support those families and communities and help them heal. Putting our resources behind those kinds of efforts is in the best interest of children--both for their immediate survival and for the long-term health of their culture.

For part two of this debate, see:

Defending the Indian Child Wefare Act

Indian Child Welfare Act: Bad for Parents?

Madonna's Malawi/UNICEF Fundraiser Gets Criticized

Madeline Holler — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:57:00 GMT

Critics say Madonna's recent fundraiser at the U.N. was actually a Gucci store opening attention-getter in disguise and also an indirect promotion of Hollywood's favorite mystic religious center. These same critics think the U.N. should never have allowed the event, which raised more than $3.7 million for relief efforts in Malawi, the country of origin for Madonna's adopted son, and UNICEF.

Yes, but she brought Lourdes. We never see Lourdes! Doesn't that count for something?

From UPI:

The Guardian said Internet bloggers and some mainstream media outlets have blasted the United Nations, claiming the event -- which was presided over by pop star Madonna -- was used to drum up publicity for the Kabbalah Centre and a new Gucci shop in New York.

They say it was inappropriate because half of the funds would go to Raising Malawi, an organization run by the Kabbalah Centre. The rest of the money was donated to UNICEF (weren't they critical of Madonna's adoption, by the way?)

Still, where's the critics' sense of fun? The turnout was all star and loaded with celeb moms and dads. Jezebel's got pics of the best and worst dressed and pics of Gwen Stefani and a very preg. Jennifer Lopez.

Photo: via Jezebel

Ranch for Adopted Kids Gone Wild

Madeline Holler — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:02:00 GMT

This is one of those things where you're happy that there are people out there doing good things so that you can live in complete and comfortable oblivion about the problem they live with and deal with and try to make better on a daily basis: a ranch for adopted children whose desperate families cannot handle them.

It turns out, a statistically small but growing number of adoptive families -- particularly those who adopted internationally -- are pushed to the point of wanting to give up their adopted child. They realize that their adoption agencies glossed over or falsified their child's history of abuse or living conditions, all of which wind up contributing to abusive and dangerous behaviors the children start exhibiting in their tweens and teens.

Which is how Ranch for Kids in rural Montana got started and also why it's therapy of hard ranch work and responsibility will likely be needed for years to come.

The Ranch isn't a first stop for adoptive families whose children are going through hard times, of course.

The LA Times:

Most had already logged countless hours in psychiatric units, wilderness programs and residential treatment centers, searching for answers to their disturbing behaviors. The goal is that, through intense intervention and structure, their conduct will improve enough that they can go home.

But some will never return, moving on to new families. They are part of an expanding phenomenon known as adoption disruption -- the official term for parents attempting to return their adoptive children.

It's heartbreaking, as is this story in Newsweek a while back of an American adoptive mother who is in prison for beating her adopted daughter to death. Also a tragedy, also the result of a lack of real information about her girl's early childhood history, which may have been helpful in understanding and treating her subsequent behaviors.

The ranch, started by an American woman who lived and worked in Russia, where she also adopted her daughter, has a pretty good sucess rate. Of the 150 kids that have gone through the program, which is not cheap, only six have gotten the boot (all, incidentally, within the last year). One third of the kids go back home after their stay at the ranch, another third, usually teens, go on to Job Corps, a government program that trains them for work. The last third, sadly, wind up being relinquished by their parents.

Sometimes, the task of telling a child he or she will be joining a new family falls to Bill Sutley, an electrical engineer by training. "I just say: 'This is not your fault. You have a screwed-up brain.' And then I do my best to explain why the current situation isn't working."

Which is when yet another group is called on: A Child's Waiting in Akron, Ohio -- one of the few adoption agencies that works with youth they did not originally place.

The kids are rated according to levels of difficulty and then the search for a new family or living situation is begun.

Truly, truly sad.

Does anybody have any experience with this or adoption disruption?

Photo: rainbowkids.com

Babble Talk: Dr. Jane Aronson - Adoption Rules

aprilpeveteaux — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:44:00 GMT

Thinking about adoption but afraid that a) all the good ones are gone; b) people will think you’re copying Angelina; or c) that do-gooding money could be better spent on a Prius? Dr. Jane Aronson, pediatrician, adoption specialist and founder of the Worldwide Orphans Foundation sat down with Ada Calhoun in this week’s Infant Industry and explained why you would be wrong in those assumptions.

Dr. Aronson has been dedicated in her quest to ensure the health of adopted (international and domestic) children for over a decade, working closely with many of those celebrities we love to analyze. Aronson gives clean answers to the muddy questions that arise around the subject of adoption and dismantles typical fears without sugar coating the realities of adopting from countries that are plagued by AIDS and other infectious diseases. And while guessing the reproductive status of the Jolie-Pitt family is practically a daily sport here at Babble, the doctor also explains why we really should look to Angelina as role model, rather than punch line.