If you are involved in the world of international adoption, you will notice that recently the idea of “adoption ethics” has been getting much more attention. This is a good thing. As badly as potential adoptive parents want to add a child to their family, NOBODY wants it to happen illegally or unethically. Not if that would make the process faster. Not if that would guarantee a younger or healthier child. Not if that would cost less money. We realize that when our child someday asks us questions about their adoption, we want to be able to answer them honestly and with confidence that we did all we could to ensure their adoption was handled correctly. We want to know that being with us was their best option. And not just because we had more money or more power, but because they were in a desperate situation and we had the ability to help.
So it is beautiful to me to see the conversation of adoption ethics become more commonplace, especially when it’s happening among pre adoptive parents. There is an openness to input and an access to information that didn’t exist when Brian and I were making our way into the world of international adoption 7 years ago. But this information has come at a high price. That price has been paid by birthfamilies who didn’t understand what adoption really meant. It was paid by children taken from their families without understanding why. It was paid by adoptive parents who were allowed and even encouraged to take on children that had needs far beyond what they were capable of handling because it was “the right thing to do” and “love will fix those problems.” The international adoption community of today is not nearly as naive as the one that went before it.
Our adoption took place in 2007. We began filling out paperwork in 2004 (first for domestic adoption, then we changed to international), which was the statistical peak of international adoptions. The numbers have been going down since then, which I have mixed feelings about. Since the completion of our adoption from Liberia adoptions have become more expensive, more regulated, and more lengthy. Adoptions from Liberia have closed completely. Some of this is a definite good as more work is done to ensure that children being adopted actually need to be adopted. Some of this is concerning to me because for those children who do legitimately need a home outside of the birthfamily and even their birth culture, they will be spending more time without permanency. The idea of children without permanency doesn’t sit well with me.
I see this all as a pendulum swing. For many many years international adoption existed as an option for people who couldn’t make biological children. I have a friend adopted from Korea who is grown, married, and now mothering her own beautiful girls. International adoption itself isn’t new. But somewhere along the line, the branding changed.
I’m really not an expert on the “how” or the “why” of all this, but during our process I saw a shift in who international adoption was marketed to. It became not just a way for infertile couples to become parents, but a way for families (even LARGE families) to “do the right thing” for an orphan. I won’t get into my frustrations about people who went in unprepared, without the appropriate education or guidance because I’ve already written about those things. It’s enough to understand that children have been sent back to their home countries, have entered foster care, or in the worst situations they have died at the hands of adoptive parents who got in WAY over their heads. Many children have found wonderful forever families (and I am not advocating that families who can produce biological offspring should be unable to adopt), but because of the push that was happening some children and families fell through the cracks.
I think international adoption also seemed like a good idea to infertile couples who were uncomfortable with the idea of open adoption. Open adoption involves having some level of contact and ongoing relationship with your child’s biological family. People were promised in most international adoptions that that wouldn’t be possible, so it was an attractive option for adoptive parents who had fears or insecurities about birthfamily relationships. I don’t have those issues and in fact we have pursued more information about our internationally adopted son’s birthmother because we feel it is important to his understanding of who he is. But I know not all adoptive families feel the same way.
So as the pendulum swung in the direction of international adoption we had families pursuing kids they were unprepared to parent. We had orphanages recruiting children to meet the “demand” of couples waiting for the youngest, healthiest possible children. We had churches and communities advocating and even pushing for families to adopt without offering them appropriate aftercare services. We had a celebrity culture endorsing the idea of the global family. We had agencies operating without appropriate oversight and while some might say they were operating to serve adoptive parents rather than vulnerable children, I think many of them were actually serving themselves. We had heartwarming stories of sickly, malnourished children receiving a second chance at life.
As the ramifications of that culture have played themselves out, people within the adoption community have rightly discerned a need for change. The pendulum is swinging in a new direction. But my hope is for balance.
I’m afraid what is getting lost in this shuffle is a mother’s desire to choose. My children through adoption each had a mother. None of my kids was an “orphan” in the traditional sense of the world. But none of my children had a family that was capable of caring for them. This is true of my internationally adopted child and true of my two children who came via the foster care system. They had mothers that loved them. They had mothers who wanted a better life for them. But they weren’t able to parent.
I see this idea in the new debate of adoption ethics that the money spent on international adoption should instead go to supporting the family’s efforts to support and raise their child. That is a nice idea in theory. But from my time working with kids from crisis situations over the last decade (group home work/adoption/foster care), money doesn’t solve all problems. Not everyone with functional reproductive parts is ready to be a safe parent. And sometimes the issues that cause a person to not be able to safely parent are systemic. Grandparents/aunts/uncles may not be a solution when the problems that lead to a child needing a better situation exist in their homes, too.
I have read that women have given up their children in exchange for physical goods. This is cited as an example of corruption (which it is), but it also makes me concerned about the fitness of that parent. Every once in a while here in the US you will hear a story of a parent who tries to sell their child on craigslist. When people try to exchange their child for goods in our own neighborhood, we recognize that that is not a person who is fit to parent. That child goes into foster care until the safety of the situation can be assessed. The parent may face criminal penalties. I have yet to hear anyone blame adoptive parents for the fact that someone tried to make a financial gain off of selling their child. But when we hear of these situations happening in other countries, we blame adoptive parents for creating demand. Mothers, how much money would you take in exchange for your child? I want to freely admit that I can’t understand the level of poverty many of these women are living in. But if you decide the solution to your problems is to take money in exchange for your child, it may be for the best that you aren’t raising that child.
So this is what I want to see when the pendulum comes back into balance:
1) Informed consent from parents. INFORMED. Many of these countries do not have a cultural context for adoption. They may use an orphanage as their childcare provider until they’re back on their feet. These families should absolutely never be tricked into surrendering children for what they think will be a short stay only to find those children have left the country. The realities of adoption need to be spelled out for them. If it needs to take several meetings, a class, a picture book, WHATEVER it takes, parents need to understand what they are agreeing to.
2) Contact with adoptive families should be encouraged. Domestic adoptions are now almost entirely open. This is for a good reason. It eliminates the element of fantasy and allows children to seek accurate information about their history from the only people who can give it to them. Having birthfamilies participate in choosing the family for their child might also help them understand the reality of adoption. This isn’t a child going to the US for school, this is a child getting a new mother and father. And if adoptive families aren’t comfortable with contact, they may need to rethink their reasons for adopting. This should be about what’s best for the child, not just what makes you comfortable. As long as the biological family isn’t unsafe (which would have to be pretty unsafe when you’re talking about being a continent away), some level of contact should be possible, even if mediated by the agency.
3) Informed, educated, and screened adoptive families. Agencies need to care more about the kids than about money. They need to be willing to tell adoptive families “no”. No, you should not bring an older institutionalized child into the home with your very young biological kids without the appropriate resources and safeguards in place. No, love will not necessarily fix their problems. No, you can’t skip out on pre adoption training because you’ve already raised kids. No, we can’t promise this child will be healthy, or adorable, or bright, and even his age is just a rough estimate. Pre adoptive parents need to have a full understanding about what they’re doing. They need to know the risks and be prepared. They should be connected with adoptive parents who already have their children home. They should have a list of required reading or trainings from their agency.
4) Verification of all information and documents. There should be a HUGE difference between child trafficking and adoption. There should never be any fuzziness between these two issues. This requires getting appropriate documentation and then doing the legwork to verify that information. If the investigation brings up questionable results, those questions need to be answered. This will mean a lengthening of the adoption process. While waiting parents may have a hard time with this, the rest of their life they will be thankful to know their adoption was done ethically. The wait is short compared with the lifetime you’ll spend as the parent of your child.
5) Respect for parent choices. This is the one issue I am concerned about with how the pendulum is currently swinging. If a child has a living parent, that does not mean that person is capable of actually parenting. When we put ourselves in the position of saying, “Well, if we gave her money, or access to education, or a job, then this child wouldn’t need to be adopted” we are inserting ourselves in a very intimate situation. It may be obvious why this child may need a home outside his birth culture. Maybe there are medical reasons. Maybe this child has a birth defect that will stigmatize him for life. Maybe his mother has a substance abuse issue. Maybe she has mental health issues. Maybe she knows this child will be in physical danger from a boyfriend who she wants to still be with. Maybe the child was conceived in a way that will stigmatize him. In the US we offer mother’s many resources to help them out of their difficult situations, but some people are still not able to safely parent. We need to realize that this is true in other cultures as well.
As a woman who has dealt with families in crisis over the last decade, I want to tell you that some of the strongest women I know are those who have decided it was best for their child to live in another family. It is a heartbreaking decision that no one of any culture takes lightly. For the woman who has looked at her circumstances, wrestled with her options, has been appropriately informed and chooses adoption for her child, I have nothing but respect and support. She does not necessarily need a Western savior to come throw money at her situation. She needs compassion and respect and she needs what she is asking for- a family for her child. When we step up to love her child well, it is an act of love towards her as well. I try to imagine myself in the positions of the birthmothers of my children. What if I wasn’t able to safely parent? What if I looked at the relatives in my life and saw the same patterns, abuses, disfunction? What if I lived in a place where I saw that in not just my relatives, but in my neighbors and in my country? Wars, disease and poverty have crippled some countries and I want to respect that a mother might want her child to grow up in a different kind of environment. Amazingly enough, American birthmothers are actually making that decision right now.
I believe there is still a place for international adoption. I believe we are raising a generation of children who will have a love and compassion for their birth cultures along with an education and empowering from having stable families that will make them advocates for their country of origin. I fear for the children we leave behind when we decide international adoption is too colonial for us. I hope the pendulum lands in a healthy place for all children—those who need resources to help them stay in their country, and those who need families to help get them out.
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