Strollerderby
The Orphan Trade and International Adoption
E.J. Graff has investigated and written extensively about international adoption, and what she has found is hardly a feel-good story of child rescue. Rather, she concludes that hopeful parents from wealthy nations (the U.S., European countries, Australia) have created a market where babies are bought and sold.
Here’s what she has to say, in a New York Times editorial, about international adoption and Madonna’s latest attempt to add to her family.
But in trying to adopt a child who already has a family, Madonna is
inadvertently exposing the seamier underside of international adoption:
the fact that, too often, the amounts of money that Western adoption
agencies spend in poor countries is helping to defraud, coerce or kidnap children away from families that wanted to raise them to adulthood.
Graff writes that happy families created in the adoptive countries have, in countless instances, left anguished ones in search of their missing children. Even more heartbreaking is that families who search for — and, against all odds, eventually find — their stolen children aren’t necessarily reunited with them. So has been the case of a number of children born in Nepal and adopted in Spain.
In a slideshow on Slate, Graff tells the stories of some of the families who were affected by an often corrupt international adoption system.
So how has this happened? With millions of abandoned babies and toddlers throughout the world, how could a baby-selling market thrive? For starters, those millions of babies? Total myth, Graff writes.
From Slate:
Westerners have been sold a myth that poor countries have millions
of healthy abandoned infants and toddlers who need homes. But it’s not
so. In poor countries, as in rich ones, healthy babies are rarely
orphaned or given up
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7 Comments
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amalissainaustin, somehow I think that neither Madonna or Angelina are looking for your sympathy. There is nothing wrong with iternational adoption as long as it is above board. More regulation is certainly needed. Demonizing adoptive parents famous or not is horrible. Not too long ago there were people complaining about the fact that white Canadians were adopting Black kids from the U.S. No one was thinking aout the best interest of the children in that situation, they were more interested in complaining about the reaces involved.
Create better oversight and regulation and enforce it and things will certainly get better for everyone (except criminals) involved.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amThe problem with any research on intercountry adoption and any rebuttal of it is that we lack the data to tell us what is really going on.
When I read Graff’s articles, I read them with greater concern for instances of corruption than trends. From my point of view (admittedly biased because of personal experience with an adoption that turned out to be less above board than the facts we were given would have lead anyone to believe), Graff’s overarching argument is sound: Not every child placed in intercountry adoption truly needs to be placed overseas.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amIndia has millions of orphans too especially girls. Many African countries have thousands of orphans due ot AIDS. The majority of children abandoned are from poor families who cannot feed them. Her article is sensationalist and incorrect. I have visited orphanges in third world countries and there were many, many babies, toddlers and children languishing with poor care. Every one of them had their photos printed in the paper with their details in case a family member wanted to claim them. Every one. Every child needs a family whether they are here in the US or abroad so let’s cut out the ethnocentricism please.
TheNewsJunkie commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amRobyn,
Thanks for the link. I added it to the end of this post, too.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amPlease read the rebuttal to the Graff articles. Graff may be fabricating the “evidence”.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI have no sympathy for Madonna or Angelina Jolie and their rainbow adoptions. If people who can and do hire nannies for each child adopt, they should be adopting the many needy disabled kids looking for love and care in this country.
Shannon LC Cate commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amExcept many of them DON’T need a loving home. And therein lies the problem. I don’t understand why it should be all or nothing. Why not, reform, reform, reform. Make sure the babies and children adopted do in fact need homes. Support in-country programs to help children left behind. The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption is not a bad starting place.
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