Whatever Things Are True: the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful in the World of International Adoption

Mixed Roots Foundation Adoptee Comedy Show May 21st « Alice@97.3

If you happen to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you may want to check out an upcoming Adoptee Comedy Show/fundraiser at The Punchline for the Mixed Roots Foundation, which provides support to the adoptee community. Mixed Roots was founded by Holly Choon Hyang Bachman, who was adopted as a young child from South Korea and raised in the Midwest. Check out the link below for details about the event.

Mixed Roots Foundation Adoptee Comedy Show May 21st « Alice@97.3.

US Refuses to Return Girl to Guatemala

Breaking from the Associated Press:

The U.S. government has told Guatemala it won't return a girl adopted in 2008 after being snatched from her Guatemalan mother, because the two countries had not signed the Hague Abduction Convention at the time of the kidnapping, a Guatemalan official said Monday.

You can read the full story here.

Time's Breastfeeding Mom is Also an Adoptive Mom

Of course she is.

 

Apparently the beautiful blonde Madonna nursing her (biological) toddler on this week's cover of Time is also the adoptive mother of an young Ethiopian son. Jamie Lynne Grumet, 26, is an attachment parenting advocate who also blogs about life in a transracial family at her blog, I Am Not the Babysitter. That provocative cover shot has so many people talking and kvetching that her site is crashing, but you can visit her blog's Facebook page here.

I'm sure Jamie Lynn is a lovely woman and great mother, but I'll confess, I groaned a few minutes ago when I heard she's also parenting transracially. I predict it won't be long before attacks about her adoption (entitlement) get stirred into the frenzy of criticism around that cover shot.

It will get ugly.

And then she will get a book deal.

UPDATE:

Time has posted a Q & A with Ms.Grumet. Here's what she has to say about breatfeeding her adopted Ethiopian son:

We were able to bring our son home in November 2010. I know so many amazing women who have induced their lactation, but I had milk [from feeding my biological son]. I had one of the easier situations as far as adoptive breast-feeding is concerned, but it was considered extended breast-feeding. And it was transracial. And he was adopted. I was ready for attack as soon as I posted one of the pictures [on my blog].

Being able to give him that [comfort] with the trauma that he faced was really, really important to me. But I didn’t realize how much it would help my attachment to him. When his English improved, because the connection was there, he didn’t do it as much. So now he’ll do it maybe once a month.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/10/q-a-with-jamie-lynne-grumet/#ixzz1uZnttnk5

 

 

Are Adoptions Really Worse in Ethiopia?

 

 

For the past week, I've been trying to muster the energy to address the lastest stories about Ethiopia's adoption program. Investigative reporter and adoption critic E.J. Graff published an opinion piece in The American Prospect on May 3 that disturbed those who believe that Ethiopia still has many kids who could legitimately benefit from international adoption. Titled without subtlety as  Don't Adopt From Ethiopia, the piece discusses a recent case study in adoption published by The Wall Street Journal, Inside Ethiopia's Adoption Boom, in which journalist Miriam Jordan interviewed both the biological and adoptive families of a 7-year-old girl, Melesech Roth.

Where to start? How about with Graff's op-ed conclusion:

 

When absurdly large amounts of money are exchanged between a wealthy country and a devastatingly poor country, here's what happens: unscrupulous middlemen scour the countryside and defraud poor families out of their children.

 

Yes, this can and does happen. Melesech's father told The Wall Street Journal that a middleman persuaded him to send his daughter abroad for adoption, and it's clear he didn't fully understand exactly what that would mean. This type of criticism is leveled at international adoption all the time, and while the Journal article shows that this concern is real, there's an unrealistic assertion that goes along with this line of thinking, which maintains that cutting off a country's foreign adoption money will somehow curb the exploitation of poor families and their children. End international adoption and you end exploitation, so the thinking goes. If only it were that simple.

Sadly, the root of the problem in developing nations isn't international adoption, it's poverty. Children and bought and sold and trafficked for all kinds of nefarious purposes. According to a 2011 report by the UN Refugee Agency:

 

Ethiopia is a source country for men, women, and children who are subjected to conditions of forced labor and sex trafficking. Girls from Ethiopia's rural areas are forced into domestic servitude and, less frequently, commercial sexual exploitation within the country, while boys are subjected to forced labor in traditional weaving, herding, guarding, and street vending. In 2010, the Southern Nations/Nationalities Peoples Region (SNNPR) Tourism and Culture Bureau reported that brokers, tour operators, and hotel owners are increasingly facilitating child prostitution as tourism expands in the region. Small numbers of Ethiopian girls are forced into domestic servitude, agricultural labor, and prostitution outside of Ethiopia, primarily in Djibouti and Sudan, while Ethiopian boys are subjected to forced labor in Djibouti as shop assistants, errand boys, domestic workers, thieves, and street beggars...

The Government of Ethiopia does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. The government made substantial progress over the past year in addressing human trafficking crimes through law enforcement efforts, which included the country's first convictions for both transnational sex trafficking and internal labor trafficking.

 

Poor families are too often misled with promises of education or honest employment for their children, and inadvertently send them into harm's way. Others may sell their children out of desperation. This is in no way a defense of dishonest adoption practices or an argument in favor of adoption as a lesser evil. It is, however,  a call for big-picture thinking. We need to address the roots of poverty so that we make it easier for biological families to stay together. If Melesech's father had been given the support he needed, it's unlikely he would have placed her for adoption. It's also possible that, leaving the adoption option aside but lacking community support, Melesech and her family  might have been exploited by a different sort of middleman.

 

So what about Graff's advice to prospective adoptive parents to avoid Ethiopia? She writes:

 

Here's the rule of thumb: If you can get a healthy infant or toddler within a year, don't adopt from that country. Adopt, instead, from American foster care, or from countries that send abroad very few children, and when they do, the children who are available are older, or disabled, or come in sibling groups, or otherwise have had trouble finding new local homes. Or if you're adopting for humanitarian reasons, donate that money an organization that helps children stay with their families, or brings clean water and mosquito nets and medicines to their villages. 

For all her talent as a journalist and her experience as the parent of domestically adopted child, Graff is misguided and ill-informed . Let's count the ways:

1. If you can get a healthy infant or toddler within a year, don't adopt from that country.  Adopt, instead... from countries that send abroad very few children, and when they do, the children who are available are older, or disabled, or come in sibling groups, or otherwise have had trouble finding new local homes.  

 It hasn't been possible to adopt a healthy infant or toddler from Ethiopia in less than a year since about 2007. Currently, Children's Home Society and Family Services, the agency highlighted in the Wall Street Journal article, is only accepting applications for boys 36 months or age and up, and for children of either sex over the age of 60 months. Wide Horizons for Children will only entertain applications for children over the age of 48 months or sibling groups in which one child is school aged. Gladney and Dove, two other big agencies with previously well established programs, are no longer taking applications for Ethiopia at all.

Only six or seven years ago, Ethiopia was the new, fast-moving adoption program, which helped draw prospective parents in droves. The Ethiopian government quickly allowed dozens and dozens of international agencies to set up shop; I believe this rapid expansion made effective oversight impossible. Now we are seeing the course correction, with the government de-licensing questionable organizations or agencies curtailing their own programs voluntarily. When Ethiopia was moving at its fastest, the it was a small program sending relatively few children abroad. Graff designates a program that sends fewer children abroad as more ethical, but Ethiopia's history shows us that it's not that simple.

I agree with Graff that if  a program or agency claims to have lots of infants available for fast adoption, prospective parents need to ask questions -- but that's not what's happening in Ethiopia now. The need is for families who can provide for older children and sibling groups, but Graff doesn't seem to recognize that in these respects, Ethiopia today meets her advisory criteria.

2. Adopt, instead, from American foster care.

Graff is right -- we have children in need  in our own system, and I would hope that families would consider this option. Still, I cringe when I hear Graff and others promoting fost-adopt as more ethical than international; you don't have to do much digging to find a devastated parent here in the US who feels that our system ripped away his or her beloved child in favor of adoption. Many of the children in the system are not legally free for placement.

3. If you're adopting for humanitarian reasons, donate that money an organization that helps children stay with their families, or brings clean water and mosquito nets and medicines to their villages.

A few years ago, a couple I know decided against international adoption for just this reason; they felt they could help more children by donating the money they'd spend in adoption fees. Fast forward to now: this couple has never pulled together $15,000 to bring clean drinking water to an African village, but they have birthed several biological kids who are benefiting from their family's financial and emotional resources.I don't think they're unusual.

The people I know who are heavily engaged in humanitarian work overseas are either missionaries/religious folks, families with internationally adopted kids who are engaged in projects for their child's birthland, or diaspora members who want to give back to their countries of origin. The reality is that connection to a place creates  a commitment to its people. And if E.J. Graff doesn't believe in adopting for humanitarian reasons, what reasons are right?  If infertility is the only justification, then why must the infertile be the only humanitarians among us, adopting, as Graff says, children who are "older, or disabled, or come in sibling groups, or otherwise have had trouble finding new local homes?"

Can you follow what I'm saying? Graff's argument is so tangled and contradictory it's hard to untangle it enough to critique! As someone who personally adopted siblings and older kids for humanitarian reasons, I honestly can't figure out what Graff believes is the right and ethical path. Maybe that's because adoption is far too complicated for simple rules of thumb. Every situation is specific; prospective parents need to think through the specifics presented before them and weigh the moral and ethical implications in each situation.

So, to get the the point, is it fair for Graff to say that Ethiopia at this time is an adoption option to avoid? Is Ethiopia really worse than other places?

In December 2011, Kathryn Joyce reported in The Atlantic that the picture in Ethiopia had improved. Even UNICEF, considered by some to be notoriously anti-adoption in its practices, noted that Ethiopia has cleaned up its program:

The adoption landscape is changing rapidly in Ethiopia. Amid mounting evidence of fraud and ethical problems, the Ethiopian government announced in March that it was putting the brakes on its international adoption program, slowing by 60 to 90 percent the rate at which it processes paperwork for children being internationally adopted. It also revoked the license of one adoption agency accused of creating fraudulent documents for adoptees. In July, the government began implementing a plan to close one third of the nation's orphanages, shuttering those it found were functioning more as transitional homes for the adoption industry rather than providing care for children in need; to date, 23 in the SNNPR region have been shut down. People with knowledge of the industry told me that agencies were firing staff in response to the slowdown and a number of agencies were expected to face closure without the revenue stream of steady Ethiopian adoptions. A UNICEF analysis of Ethiopian court data, however, indicates that the slowdown didn't last long and that this fall, the number of adoptions being processed has bounced back to normal levels.

Still, UNICEF's Doug Webb said that the environment in which these abuses took place has changed dramatically in the past year. "There are people in government who are very concerned about this, but we've turned a big corner here. The situation is over where alleged abuses were ignored, swept under the carpet; where nobody was listening and there was too much money involved."

"In many ways," Webb said, "that story is done. The climate has changed so much. Now it's discussed more openly. The government at the highest levels is speaking out against abuses in the system."

 

Parenting: Race, Adoption, Prejudice and Loss -- Help!

 

Photo of Emily Yoffe from Slate

 

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is the Dear Prudence column at Slate, written by Emily Yoffe. I'm continually amazed at how many people write in seeking advice on adoption-related issues. Yoffe also holds weekly live chats with readers, and this week, a mother asked for help in responding to an attack from someone who doesn't approve of adoption:

 

Q. Absolutely Insane Adoption Confrontation: Anne and I have daughters enrolled in the same dance classes. We both often stay at the lessons and chat with other moms. But I've always gotten the impression that Anne doesn't like me. She never returns my greetings and often turns away from the conversation when I'm talking. Last week we were both walking to our cars, so I asked, "Anne, have I done something to offend you? I hope not, because I'd really enjoy getting to know you better." Anne turned to me and said, "I'm sorry, but I am against adoption. I believe buying children is ethically deplorable." She got in her car and drove off. I should now explain that I am white and my husband is black, so our daughter has darker skin than me. Since she's never met my husband, Anne assumed I adopted my daughter from Africa: I found her assumption to be DEEPLY offensive, because although my daughter is not adopted, I am. I'm pretty grossed out by Anne's judgment, but I don't know how to respond, or if I should even bother engaging such a narrow-minded person.

A random participant in the live chat suggested that the questioner tell Anne that her daughter is actually biracial.  Prudence disagreed, calling Anne a "worm" who should be avoided. You can read her complete response here.

 

Later on in the same live chat, a different reader posed a heartbreaking adoption question:

Q. Sharing Bad News: I have just returned from a trip to China to adopt a 9-month-old baby girl. Because we had a failed domestic adoption three years ago (birth parents changed their mind) we chose not to tell anyone except a few until we had her in our arms. We couldn't wait to tell our friends and co-workers. But when we arrived there, we were told our baby was hospitalized with what doctors initially thought was a trivial illness. Then she passed away four days later in the intensive care unit after we barely got to hug her. What kills me is that except for us and a few close family members, nobody even knows of our daughter's existence. I would like to tell everybody that we had a daughter, even for a few days, and that she was loved and cherished. Since we've never been in this situation before I am not quite sure how to spread the news. Should I write an email? Tell everyone in person? How should I do this and what can I say? Would it be appropriate to share a photo?

 

Prudence helpfully provided suggested wording for an email to friends. She also directed the reader to Share, an organization for pregnancy and infant loss support. While I'm sure the nice people at Share would try to help, there are no resources specific to adoption loss listed on their site. Though these situations are relatively rare, I have heard of several families who've suffered the death of a child just days after adoption. Unfortunately, it may be hard for some friends and family to grasp that the death of a newly adopted child is a significant loss, in the same way that some people tend to minimize loss through miscarriage. If any readers out there know of specific resources to support grieving adoptive families, please leave a comment below so we can help others in need find help.

 

 

After a Three-year Fight, an Indiana Family Finally Brings Home Their Son from Vietnam

I've been MIA from my blog lately, I admit it, partly due to outside commitments and partly out of despair concerning much of the news in the adoption world, but this sad story with a happy ending has prompted me to get back to it.

Yesterday Washington Times columnist Andrea Poe highlighted the story of the LeRoy family of Indianappolis at her blog, The Red Thread:An Adoptive Family Forum. Nick and Lori LeRoy accepted the referral of a baby boy from Vietnam in July 2008. Their son Nate finally came home three years later, in December 2011.

Poe writes:

In 2009 Vietnam announced that it was uncertain which, if any children, who had been matched with American families would be permitted to leave the country.  The Vietnam government cited its interest in cleaning up its intercountry adoption as the reason for its slowdown –and ultimate cessation—of intercountry adoptions.

Together with other families with children languishing in the Bac Lieu orphanage, the LeRoys began to make visits to Nate and the other children, bringing books, toys, clean clothing and fresh food.  The orphanage, which was a former prison camp, was terribly underfunded with minimal staff and limited educational and medical supplies.

As difficult as it was on parents making the round-the-world trek to visit their children, who were often ill and undernourished, they were dealt an even more serious blow in January 2011 when Vietnam announced that parents could not longer visit their children.

The LeRoys, together with several other families, hired an attorney, Kelly Ensslin, who not only helped negotiate the tricky waters of international adoption, but who also assisted them in working with the U.S. government.  For two years, the U.S. Department of State declined to intervene on behalf of the American parents and their children.

The LeRoys credit the actions of Indiana Senator Dick Lugar, who brought attention to the plight of these American families.  Ultimately, Lugar held up the approval of the United States Ambassador to Vietnam as a way to protest to the way families were being treated in the adoption process and asked the U.S. State Department to get involved.

Bowing to the pressure, the Vietnamese government allowed families to resume visiting with their referred children in late 2011, though they were cautioned that investigations into the orphan status of the children would be ongoing. Then suddenly, the LeRoys got unexpected good news during that reunion trip:  Nate would finally be allowed to come home.

Here's the part of the article that really grabbed my attention:

Despite all the complications and the lengthy wait in poor conditions, Nate is doing remarkably well.  Although his teeth had rotted out while in the orphanage, which has necessitated extensive dental work, totaling more than $6,000 now, he's otherwise adjusting well. He is learning English, goes to pre-school and has already made friends.

Some adoption critics will no doubt blast the LeRoys for their dogged fight, for the use of American political pressure on Vietnam, for the sense of American entitlement they will read in this story. And they will ignore this detail: the child's teeth rotted out while the politics dragged on.

We all have a responsibility to support ethical adoption practices. We need to demand that countries police their own systems, including our own country. Most of all, we must insist on a child-centered approach to ethics that doesn't allow investigations to drag on indefinitely while the children quite literally rot.

 

Parenting: Teaching Children to Protect Themselves

 

photo from Huffington Post

 

Today I've got an essay over at Huffington Post Parents about the tragic death of Trayvon Martin. How do we teach our children to protect themselves in a racist world -- especially if we've never been the targets of racism ourselves? You can read it here:

My Son Could Be Trayvon Martin

Parenting: Talking with Kids About Racial Profiling

I've got a new post today over at Be Bold or Go Home, my blog about transracial parenting for Adoptive Families Circle, called Because They Need to Know. It's a response to the recent "babysitting while white" incident in Austin, Texas, where grandfather Scott Henson, who is white, was wrongfully detained by police as the supected kidnapper of his 5-year-old African American granddaughter, Ty, as they were walking home from an afternoon of roller skating at the local rec center:

 

I don't remember where we were -- maybe the grocery store -- when Gobez, my nine-year-old son, adopted from Ethiopia, started throwing punches at me, trying to stir up a pretend boxing match. He was in that wild rumpus kind of a mood that grips little boys from time to time, and wasn't listening to my warnings to stop. I felt myself edging toward panic. I'm 5'2" and about 128 pounds. Although only in fourth grade, my son is approaching 5'1" and carries 100 pounds of almost solid muscle. I felt scared, but not because I thought Gobez would hurt me; he wouldn't. I was afraid that someone in the store would not realize that we were mother and son. That someone would misinterpret what was happening between a black boy and a white woman and call the cops.

You can read the rest of the post here.

 

 

In India, Fertility Treatments Overshadow Adoption; Meanwhile, an American Mom Wages Four-Year Battle for Her Indian Son

 

India, the land of contradictions.

In the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Anuj Chopra looks at India's rising fertility industry in "The World's Baby Factory." While India has become a well-known destination for fertility tourism and surrogacy, fertility treatments are apparently becoming more and more popular and affordable domestically -- especially among the childless elderly. Treatments are also unregulated, though legislation is in the works. More and more Indian couples in their sixties are seeking fertility treatment and conceiving children, without necessarily understanding the medical risks. Chopra writes:

In India, where fertility treatment is significantly cheaper, regulation weaker, and childlessness is considered a curse, the recent high profile cases have highlighted how women -- even across small towns and villages where health facilities are scarce -- are taking extraordinary risks to conceive babies.

"Medically it is now possible to impregnate a 60-year-old. But medically, it is also possible to impregnate a pre-pubescent girl. Does that mean we should allow it?" says Imrana Qadeer, a retired professor from the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. "The misguided emphasis on genetics -- ‘It has to be my baby, my blood' -- has overshadowed safer and more progressive options such as adoption."

But Dr. Pushpa Bhargava, one of the chief architects of the Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, says deciding whether an upper age limit should be fixed is a "non-question."

"Procreation is a basic right, and we cannot deny it to anyone," he says, adding that the draft law includes a provision to "discourage" medically unfit women from seeking fertility treatment by requiring  clinics to provide professional counseling about its health implications, the low rate of success, the costs involved, and also advice on the possibility of adoption. Bhargava says a fertility counselor's role would be analogous to that of a marriage counselor. "The counselor will offer advice, but in the end, to do or not to do is entirely your decision."

But given the intense social pressure that surrounds childbirth in many parts of India, prospective mothers often don't see it as a choice. Infertility is rarely countenanced as just another random happenstance of birth. A victim of nature's caprice you may well be, but childlessness in many corners around India epitomizes a grave sexual defect, eliciting guilt and shame. "‘No baby? Is something wrong? Is it you or your husband?'" Kisabai Biranje describes it. "That's the general thinking. A married couple must reproduce to be venerable in society."

Although India has seen an increase in domestic adoptions of children in recent years, infant abandonment, especially of girls, is an enduring social problem. Human Rights Watch estimates that 18 million children live and work on the streets of India. Most have little if any contact with family. According to UNICEF, India was home to 25 million orphans in 2007, a figure that likely encompasses both institutionalized children and those on the streets, yet in 2010 Indian domestic and international adoptions combined totaled a mere 6,286.

I was struck by Dr. Bhargava's statement above that "procreation is a basic human right, and cannot be denied to anyone." Adoption, on the other hand, is a different story, especially in India. Just ask Rebecca Morlock.

 

 

Crushing News Out of Kyrgyzstan for Adoptive Families

Twenty-one members of Congress sent a letter on February 9 to the Prime Minister and President of Kyrgyzstan, where more than 60 adoptions by American families have been stalled for the past four years. At least two children have died in institutional care during the long wait; now it appears the Kyrg government has placed some of the children matched with US families in domestic adoption. Here is the bulk of the letter; the last line I've excerpted is the kicker:

Honduras Bars Two US Adoption Agencies

The US Embassy in Honduras has announced that the Central American Republic has withdrawn accreditation for Living Hope Adoption Agency and adoption powerhouse Gladney. No reasons are listed for the move. Families who are in the process of a Honduran adoption are asked to contact the Embassy directly to be sure their case in on track.