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I read the entire article. It appears to me to be an article to provide cover to the DOS and the UN NGOS for their opposition to adoption. Especially, their stance that Americans should not be adopting healthy children (infants) internationally.
Well since you have only read about 10 pages, then it isn't surprising that you have the opinion you do in the second paragraph. Read the WHOLE thing. If you do, you will actually see that he is acknowledging that there are no easy answers. He personally is not saying to end adoption at all but rather restructure how we think about third world countries in order to improve international adoption, in fact improve adoption in general. He is talking about all Western countries, although America in general does need to improve the way they do adoption. There is a reason why America (and some of the other western countries) have particular problems and it is because the adoption process is not child-centred but parent centred.
As for calling him a "cloistered academic", here is his resume:
Far from being a cloistered academic, he seems very experienced in the world and one suspects that he was offered his Professorship because of his vast knowledge and experience of his field.
His degrees are from Brown, Harvard and Oxford - not to be sneezed at.
OK, so he's a lawyer as well as an academic. But it's obvious that he's not writing for a lay audience, because I (an Ivy League-educated layperson) found the article to be almost incomprehensible.
And from what I was able to understand, the underlying tone (at least of the pages I was able to get through) fairly reeked of anti-Americanism. If he changed his tune after the tenth page, I regret that I was unable to wade through the pretentious jargon to get that far and see it for myself.
I read the entire article. It appears to me to be an article to provide cover to the DOS and the UN NGOS for their opposition to adoption. Especially, their stance that Americans should not be adopting healthy children (infants) internationally.
And, almost all country have shut down the "healthy" infants programs. Those children now languish in orphanages, often with poor care, receive substandard education, are often kicked to the curb at kicking out age, and have no futures because their countries often won't accept orphans. In many countries, the orphanage workers are in with the sex trafficking rings and help them in picking up the girls who come straight out of the orphanages. It's a disgusting business.
I read the entire article. It appears to me to be an article to provide cover to the DOS and the UN NGOS for their opposition to adoption. Especially, their stance that Americans should not be adopting healthy children (infants) internationally.
The OP is also an outspoken member of the "anti adoption community". I don't have time to read this stuff...seriously.
Agreed.....looks like someone just needed a Doctoral Thesis subject
Our girls (home 15 and 7 years) have adjusted very well and are proud of their dual heritages. Their rooms contain many Russian keepsakes....although we drew the line at buying a "Kiss Me, I'm Russian" T-shirt our oldest Katerina wanted
I bought my wife a 1781 25 Kopek coin to wear as a necklace for our anniversary and both girls wondered how life must have been in 18th Century imperial Russia.....although Svetlana kept wanting to know why they didn't have internet tablets
And let the PhD work as a volunteer in a Russian orphanage in Siberia (Where or oldest is from) for a couple of weeks and see how that tune changes.
Where did you buy the coin? I would like to consider one for my daughter for her college graduation. She's a bit messed up right now, but she will graduate college
The OP is also an outspoken member of the "anti adoption community". I don't have time to read this stuff...seriously.
The OP (me) is not anti-adoption at all. I am interested in quality adoption practices. If you actually READ the article, you would see that the author is not against adoption at all, he is about changing the mindset so that adoption can be improved.
OK, so he's a lawyer as well as an academic. But it's obvious that he's not writing for a lay audience, because I (an Ivy League-educated layperson) found the article to be almost incomprehensible.
And from what I was able to understand, the underlying tone (at least of the pages I was able to get through) fairly reeked of anti-Americanism. If he changed his tune after the tenth page, I regret that I was unable to wade through the pretentious jargon to get that far and see it for myself.
Yes. I agree. I did not graduate from Ivy League colleges, but I was accepted to Barnard (the women's division of Columbia) and Vassar - (but I preferred a school with a more equal balance of men and women) and I graduated from two universities that are highly competitive. Bus man, I share your observation. The piece is almost incomprehensible loaded with pretentious jargon, and thus,poorly written.
People write to communicate not obfuscate - or show off their lexicon of "big words". This guy is not only "not writing for a lay audience, he is writing with an agenda to discredit a time honored method of family building that has existed since ancient times. Anyone here go to Sunday School? Remember the account of Moses in the basket? People will always adopt and always have adopted.
It seems that there is an angry minority out there who, for some reason, wants to end adoption as we know it. As an action to add CHILDREN to a family without children - or to add children to a family that wants more children. Adoption is not the union of a child, a new family, and new parents.
Not a child, a new family and dysfunctional, drug addicted violent criminals who have lost their right to parent. And believe me- in this country, one has to try very, very hard to lose their children.
US social services has an agenda too - to keep "families together". That does sound nice, doesn't it? Keeping families together. What a great idea - except -
Not all of the children available from US Foster Care came from families. Does your definition of a family include a 14 year old who was raped by mom's latest boyfriend? Mine does not.
Is a family formed when a drug addled 17 year old has sex with a dealer in exchange for drugs?
Not in my book.
Do you call it a family when an 18 year old has too much to drink after the prom and becomes pregnant? Then, somehow she gets to pick the future parents (or baby sitters) of her child. These parents are forced into the degradation being selected by the teenager - and some of their criteria and demands are outrageous.
Am I willing to break bread with a woman or man who once broke the legs of my child? No. I am not.
So, we turn to International Adoption. We don't want contact with the parents. We DO NOT want tobe "selected" or to advertise our selves to an errant teen.
We just want to be parents.
So, we adopt internationally,in search of keeping a discrete family unit.
We adopt children from non western countries, because adoption is not yet accepted there. And may never be. There are cultural taboos that consider adoption a sort of abomination. Or at the very least, a 5th rate way to build a family.
Our daughter was adopted from Korea. Today in Korea, adoption is still looked upon with suspicion. If a Korean couple has the misfortune to be unable to have a child, many go through the ridiculous charade of wearing a pregnancy prosthesis to make them appear pregnant. It gets larger as the moths go on. Until the requisite nine months - when mother and father retreat to a distant village to have a baby - adopt one - and pass him or her off as "their own".
In Eastern Europe, the situation is not any better. Children who are from Ditsky Doms are NOT part of their society or culture - they are scorned by it. They are thought of as of inferior stock, lower class, children of whores - you name it.
Ukraine is still open for international adoption, as are several other Eastern European countries.
I know the most about Ukraine, having volunteered as a host parent, and had Ukrainian kids living in our home. These children were not infants. They were school aged kids. They were all motivated to be adopted - by Americans. They have friends from the children's home who have been adopted. They write to them and learn what it like to be part of a loving, generous, family. They learn that life is good here! Adoption is not taboo and children are not scorned because of their past.
They also hear stories of other children who "graduated" from the Ditsky Doms. Those with no where to go. No family.No home. They live in fear that one day, that will be them. And unless they are adopted, it most surely will.
When they graduate they are social pariahs. Outcasts. They turn to drugs and drink to ease the pain of isolation. They live in sewers, under manholes. The girls resort to prostitution. The boys to criminal behavior.
Foster care in Ukraine is a joke. They are taken in by people with no intention to adopt. They are in need of a farm hand, a maid or a caretaker. They are not treated as part of the family - but as indentured servants. Not unlike the children who were swept off the streets of NYC at the turn of the century and sent west, where they were exhibited, much the way slaves were 50 years before.
Some good people adopted them. Others became maids, farmhands - and worse.Many were severely abused and some were raped and sexually molested.
This is foster care in Eastern Europe.
So, Susankate, what do you want for the homeless children of Asia and Eastern Europe? A life on the streets? The joys of being an indentured servant? Living a false life, as many children in Korea do?
Susankate - these are cultures that pre-existed the US or New Zealand. And you think what? That we can CHANGE THEM?
Simply put, there are parents who want children and children who desperately want parents. Adoption, serves a purpose, and a societal need.
Why continue posting these negative diatribes? What is the purpose? Do you want to hurt parents who adopted their children? Children who are happily adopted? Or increase the amount of glue huffing street kids and prostitutes on the streets of Kiev?
I am confounded when it comes to what outcome you are seeking by posting such dross on an adoption forum. I know you are a smart women. You can be funny, at times. But living your life with the focus of destroying adoption - because you did not have an ideal experience, is a selfish thing to do.
The OP (me) is not anti-adoption at all. I am interested in quality adoption practices. If you actually READ the article, you would see that the author is not against adoption at all, he is about changing the mindset so that adoption can be improved.
Until the countries they were born in start caring one iota for these children, I'm all for international adoption being way more available than it is now. If they start to care (doubtful), then we can talk about changing it.
The special needs adoption community has found out about two very recent deaths of orphans in other countries that could have so easily been prevented had the children had access to halfway decent medical care. (Many many more have died in this time period as well, but those two are the two we know about.)
Sheena12, I yearn for the day when I can rep you again! Your thoughts about not wanting to deal with birth families (the latter word of which should be put in quotation marks, in cases like the ones you described) exactly mirror my own, and were expressed with a clarity that serves as a bright shining counterpoint to the indecipherable obfuscation of the report linked in the original post. And your words to Susankate were gracious, but appropriately pointed as well. I too would like to know exactly what it is that she wants to see happen with the adoption "industry." Yes, of course, we all want what's best for the children. But curtailing or cutting off what is in many cases their only hope for a normal, stable family life does not strike me as being in their best interests.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sheena12
Our daughter was adopted from Korea. Today in Korea, adoption is still looked upon with suspicion. If a Korean couple has the misfortune to be unable to have a child, many go through the ridiculous charade of wearing a pregnancy prosthesis to make them appear pregnant. It gets larger as the moths go on. Until the requisite nine months - when mother and father retreat to a distant village to have a baby - adopt one - and pass him or her off as "their own".
One completely unexpected thing that I've experienced as the parent of two children adopted from Korea is how often I've been praised by Korean people for adopting kids from their country. A good number of such folks, after expressing their appreciation, have told me about the bleak prospects for the orphans who are left behind. They are glad that Americans are willing to come in and adopt them, when so many of their own countrymen are not. A few have even admitted to me that they themselves would not be able to overcome their cultural baggage and adopt someone; for the sake of "their" kids, they are glad that no such cultural roadblock stopped me and others like me from doing it.
Admittedly, the people who have said these things to me were standing on American soil when they said it; so it's possible that the mere fact that these folks were willing to come to America and make long-term homes here would imply that they would be more favorably disposed to Americans than might the average man on the street back in Korea. I have no way of knowing whether their appreciation for Americans adopting their orphans is shared by their fellow Koreans back home or not.
In any case, it is of course true that I didn't adopt just to get accolades from other people. But I must admit that it's a nice counterweight to the negative talk of "imperialist" Americans swooping up defenseless Third World children and stealing them away from their birth cultures that seems to be the stock in trade of people like the one who wrote that article in the original post.
[quote=sheena12;44028647]
People write to communicate not obfuscate - or show off their lexicon of "big
words". This guy is not only "not writing for a lay audience, he is writing
with an agenda to discredit a time honored method of family building that
has existed since ancient times. Anyone here go to Sunday School? Remember
the account of Moses in the basket? People will always adopt and always have
adopted.
I don't see the author as " discredit a time honored method of family building that has existed since ancient times". Yes adoption in various forms has been around for a long time. However, the Western version of adoption has only been around for the last century or so. Even so, I don't see him trying to abolish adoption per se. In fact, he quite clearly says "
[SIZE=3][SIZE=3]
Quote:
[SIZE=3][SIZE=3]My [/SIZE]
Quote:
[SIZE=3]intention is not to land on either side of this binary, contentious debate. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Instead, my goal is to remind all of those interested in the welfare of children [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]that binary debates are under-inclusive of all of the interests that should come [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]to bear on any given situation. My goal is to remind those interested in [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]protecting the rights of both birth[SIZE=3][SIZE=3] and adoptive families that the most difficult [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]problems that we face can never be solved with simple solutions, but rather [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]merit solutions as nuanced as the problems themselves. This reality is why [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]Alessandro Conticini, the head of child protection at UNICEF Ethiopia, is one of [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]a number of people who work in the field of intercountry adoption who are [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]advocates of intercountry adoption, but believe that it must be "part of a [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]larger strategy"that focuses on keeping children within their countries of [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]origin and within the context of their families and communities." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3][/SIZE][/SIZE]
[/SIZE]
[/SIZE]
That doesn't sound to me like someone who is planning on abolishing adoption.
Btw Interesting that you use Moses as an example given your feelings re birthparents. You do realise that Jochabed was his nursemaid when he was young. And that the Pharoah's daughter joined the tribe of Israel. None of that takes away from fact that yes she was Moses mother and he was her son.
It seems that there is an angry minority out there who, for some reason,
wants to end adoption as we know it.
There may well be but I am not one of them. Adoption has already changed from your ideal, you do realise that?
As an action to add CHILDREN to a family without children - or to add children to a family that wants more children. Adoption is not the union of a child, a new family, and new parents.
No-one is saying it is but there are many adoptive families who welcome their children's bfamilies into their life. You do realise that it is possible to welcome people into one's life without it meaning they have to move in, don't you? People on here seem to have a very all or nothing attitude towards bparents.
Not a child, a new family and dysfunctional, drug addicted violent criminals who have lost their right to parent. And believe me- in this country, one has to try very, very hard to lose their children.
US social services has an agenda too - to keep "families together". That does sound nice, doesn't it? Keeping families together. What a great idea - except -
You do realise that not every birthparent is a drug addicted violent criminal? When it comes to domestic infant adoption, many bparents are perfectly normal people.
Do you call it a family when an 18 year old has too much to drink after the prom and becomes pregnant? Then, somehow she gets to pick the future parents (or baby sitters) of her child. These parents are forced into the degradation being selected by the teenager - and some of their criteria and demands are outrageous.
Um, why shouldn't she get to pick the future parents. She obviously wants to choose parents who she feel with be a good fit for her child. In a situation where demand far outstrips supply, then I can imagine that some prospective adoptive parents aren't happy that they might have to wait. As for outrageous criteria and demands, that tends to happen more when less ethical lawyers want to make sure that an adoption happens - interestingly, those same lawyers are often hypocritical - I know of cases where they've encouraged the HAPs to "give in" to demands that they (the lawyers themselves) have orchestrated and then tell the HAPs that once they adopt, they don't need to go through with any of it. No APs are forced to go ahead with "giving into demands" once an adoption has happened - there is always the "loophole" of "it is in the best interest of the child" not to do such and such.
Am I willing to break bread with a woman or man who once broke the legs of my child? No. I am not.
You always somehow seem to mix up foster care and domestic infant adoption. And in cases of severe abuse, one doesn't have to have a fully open adoption.
One thing I kept trying to remind people of on another thread is that "semi-open" adoptions are the most common type of adoption. In many cases, they are "closed" adoptions with contact only through agencies but with exchange of appropriate info, pictures etc.
So, we turn to International Adoption. We don't want contact with the parents. We DO NOT want tobe "selected" or to advertise our selves to an errant teen.
You keep going on about teens. Yes some teens do choose adoption. However, the average age of today's birthparents is in their 20s.
Our daughter was adopted from Korea. Today in Korea, adoption is still looked upon with suspicion. If a Korean couple has the misfortune to be unable to have a child, many go through the ridiculous charade of wearing a pregnancy prosthesis to make them appear pregnant. It gets larger as the moths go on. Until the requisite nine months - when mother and father retreat to a distant village to have a baby - adopt one - and pass him or her off as "their own".
I agree that the domestic adoption situation in Korea is not ideal. However, that is not the only option. There are those who are hoping to change the situation for the expectant mothers so that they are able to raise their own child. Yes, I do understand the prejudice against them and I know that it is not always possible.
In Eastern Europe, the situation is not any better. Children who are from Ditsky Doms are NOT part of their society or culture - they are scorned by it. They are thought of as of inferior stock, lower class, children of whores - you name it.
Ukraine is still open for international adoption, as are several other Eastern European countries.
I know the most about Ukraine, having volunteered as a host parent, and had Ukrainian kids living in our home. These children were not infants. They were school aged kids. They were all motivated to be adopted - by Americans. They have friends from the children's home who have been adopted. They write to them and learn what it like to be part of a loving, generous, family. They learn that life is good here! Adoption is not taboo and children are not scorned because of their past.
They also hear stories of other children who "graduated" from the Ditsky Doms. Those with no where to go. No family.No home. They live in fear that one day, that will be them. And unless they are adopted, it most surely will.
When they graduate they are social pariahs. Outcasts. They turn to drugs and drink to ease the pain of isolation. They live in sewers, under manholes. The girls resort to prostitution. The boys to criminal behavior.
Foster care in Ukraine is a joke. They are taken in by people with no intention to adopt. They are in need of a farm hand, a maid or a caretaker. They are not treated as part of the family - but as indentured servants. Not unlike the children who were swept off the streets of NYC at the turn of the century and sent west, where they were exhibited, much the way slaves were 50 years before.
Some good people adopted them. Others became maids, farmhands - and worse.Many were severely abused and some were raped and sexually molested.
This is foster care in Eastern Europe.
You seem to be missing the point that I and others are saying that there is a process to be followed. The author of this paper himself has not said "never say no" to international adoption. If you actually read it, you would see that. What people are trying to say is that adoption should be part of a wider picture when it comes to deciding the future of children in those countries.
So, Susankate, what do you want for the homeless children of Asia and Eastern Europe? A life on the streets? The joys of being an indentured servant? Living a false life, as many children in Korea do?
Susankate - these are cultures that pre-existed the US or New Zealand. And you think what? That we can CHANGE THEM?
Who said anything about changing cultures. It is about working with the humans in those cultures. People said about Uganda that Ugandans didn't adopt. Thankfully one person didn't listen. Romania is working with a UK charity to close all orphanages by 2020, they are more than halfway there.
Simply put, there are parents who want children and children who desperately want parents. Adoption, serves a purpose, and a societal need.
Adoption has its place and no-one is saying it doesn't. One problem with talking about adoption is that it takes many different forms - one reason there has been issues in adoption in Africa and also in some Polynesian societies is that the form of adoption in those countries is very different to Western adoption. Also, people like the author on here are talking about adoption as part of a bigger picture.
Why continue posting these negative diatribes? What is the purpose? Do you want to hurt parents who adopted their children? Children who are happily adopted? Or increase the amount of glue huffing street kids and prostitutes on the streets of Kiev?
I don't believe that the attached document was a negative diatribe. Perhaps if you had read right to the end, you would see that he was not attacking adoption at all.
I am confounded when it comes to what outcome you are seeking by posting such dross on an adoption forum. I know you are a smart women. You can be funny, at times. But living your life with the focus of destroying adoption - because you did not have an ideal experience, is a selfish thing to do.
You are better than that. I am sure of that.
And Sheena, I thought you had moved past trying to make out that if someone does not agree with your view of adoption then it must be due to a "bad experience". You know perfectly well that my adoptive experience was fine. I just believe things to be far more complex that you seem to see them as being.
I understand your view - you have a black and white, all or nothing view of adoption. I've moved on from that. Seeing my bfamily as real people rather than the caricatures that you see bfamily as being has helped shaped my post-reunion views. It HAS not affected the love for my mum and dad.
In the end though, my view is that one's relationship with one's parents or children should stand on their own merits. A secure family unit should not feel threatened by the presence of bparents in one's life. My mum doesn't feel threatened by me knowing my bfamily because our relationship with each other is a secure one that is strong on its own merits.
I am also on other forums where there are wonderful APs who are also secure in their own family units and who don't feel threatened by the presence of bfamily in their life - in fact, they welcome them. Their children welcome them too.
If you are wondering why you and I often don't agree, it has nothing to do with my "adoptive experience". I often don't agree with you for the same reason that other people might not agree with you, i.e, because I don't agree with the content of what you are saying. To single out my adopted status and blame my disagreeing with you on "having a bad experience" rather than just having a different point of view is something that I am sure that you don't do to anyone else on any other subforum on here who disagrees with you, do you? I hope not.
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