Rethinking International Adoption
Cases like this should have us doing just that — Russia furious over adopted boy sent back from US. Of course, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev is right to call this "a monstrous deed on the part of his adoptive parents, to take the kid and virtually throw him out with the airplane in the opposite direction and to say, 'I'm sorry I could not cope with it, take everything back' is not only immoral but also against the law."
While I cannot sympathize with what the family did, I can with what they may have went through to have prompted them to send the boy back "alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems." Let's face it, we Americans tend to the far right (positionally, not necessarily politically) of the Nature vs. Nurture debate, and think anything can be solved with the right set of "parenting skills." We ignore genetic and other biological unknowns, which only increase the farther from home children are imported, to our own peril.
Before having kids of my own, I thought that adoption might be something I was interested in. After having my own, I realized that blood ties were anything but imaginary, and realized I could never love an adopted child as my own. On top of that there's the idea that adoptive kids' biological parents are in most cases still running around, and that I would be usurping their responsibilities even as they are shirking them. (Yes, I realize these thoughts make me a monster.)
That said, I could see taking in an orphaned kid from my parish whose family I knew, even if only vaguely. Adoption, it seems, should be kept as local as possible, and it should never be an easy option for either biological or adoptive parents.
While I cannot sympathize with what the family did, I can with what they may have went through to have prompted them to send the boy back "alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems." Let's face it, we Americans tend to the far right (positionally, not necessarily politically) of the Nature vs. Nurture debate, and think anything can be solved with the right set of "parenting skills." We ignore genetic and other biological unknowns, which only increase the farther from home children are imported, to our own peril.
Before having kids of my own, I thought that adoption might be something I was interested in. After having my own, I realized that blood ties were anything but imaginary, and realized I could never love an adopted child as my own. On top of that there's the idea that adoptive kids' biological parents are in most cases still running around, and that I would be usurping their responsibilities even as they are shirking them. (Yes, I realize these thoughts make me a monster.)
That said, I could see taking in an orphaned kid from my parish whose family I knew, even if only vaguely. Adoption, it seems, should be kept as local as possible, and it should never be an easy option for either biological or adoptive parents.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Family, Holy Mother Russia, Science
28 Comments:
Adoption is a tricky thing. I think that adopting a child is a vocation, something that one should do only if one feels called by the Lord to do it.
Agreed. And the closer to home, the better.
There's a fine line between international adoption and international child trafficking. It's been called "child laundering" here in Korea, long one of the leading exporters.
"adopting a child is a vocation, something that one should do only if one feels called by the Lord to do it."
Vocation is far to selfish a term for it.
Let me rephrase that. The vocation to parenthood belongs to the natural parents of the child.
Others may be forced into it through necessity, such as a family taking in a niece whose parents are killed, but that doesn't cause it to be a vocation to raise that niece.
Adoption as it occurs today is a selfish act of the adopting 'parents' who if they actually cared about the child would give money to the mother to raise her child, because that is where the child belongs.
And as for the children already in orphanages, to the devil with them! [/sarcasm off]
LTG qui distinguit bene docet
Have you ever done this in your entire life? There seems to be no idea that you do not carry to an absurd teleological extreme, no axiom that you do not universally apply without apodictic certitude on your part. Please, Please, Please, read Aristotle's Politics (In the art of politics, we must always prefer the imperfect possible to the perfect impossible") instead of ChesterBelloc, as I suspect both of the latter gentlemen would also counsel.
BTW Josh,
Just so you know I agree with the thesis of your entry in principle, but am loath to pass judgment on the intents or motivations of others.
Procopius,
It's a subject rather close to home, among other examples: My mother was raised by her aunt because she was born out of wedlock. My oldest sibling was given away because my parents had him prior to their marriage, I met him for the first time only a few years ago. And a gal who is very close to me gave away her first child because no one would help her.
And so I know the subject rather well from the natural parent side. What those parents need is support to raise their children. There are always exceptions, but the rule is parents losing children they dearly love, and children suffering because they're not raised by they natural parents.
Watch a girl sob over and over again for years on end about her lost child, and it tends to give insight into what happens to those girls who give up their babies.
btw, I know perfectly well how extreme my positions appear, but so what? As opposed to complaining about it, why don't you in a sentence or two, give a counter proposal?
+JMJ+
I used to share the same strongly politically correct views that have made international adoption such a booming business. A child is a child; a home is a home: why should biological details matter?
Well, they do matter. As a friend once told me: If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know who you are.
Even children who are adopted locally grow up wanting to know more about their biological parents. Thousands of Asian children raised in America have returned to China, Vietnam, etc., hoping to find their real parents or just to connect with a culture which should never have become alien to them in the first place.
I agree with both Procopius that it is a waste of time to "pass judgment on the intents or motivations of others" and with "love the girls" that "[a]doption as it occurs today is a selfish act." Let's face it, what used to be called "invincible ignorance" is the norm today. Adoptive parents have been robbed of the means to question their own intents.
Enbrethiliel's remarks remind me that we can perhaps all agree that the painting in the following story was not really blasphemous, but rather a documentation of our cultural blasphemy -- Artist Paints Angelina Jolie as Virgin Mary at Wal-Mart.
Western Confucian writes : "Let's face it, what used to be called "invincible ignorance" is the norm today. Adoptive parents have been robbed of the means to question their own intents."
Of course, the act of selfishness is not necessarily that of the adoptive parents, but also be of the culture which has informed the adoptive parents to act unthinkingly.
The new system is another way that the well off prey upon the poor. And the system insulates them from the nature of their acts. Sometimes that insulation if fully informing, sometimes it simply kills a conscious that wants to not be bothered. Some people will go to hell for conspicuous consumption, other will escape because they have been made blind not of their own choosing.
I agree fully that this is nothing less than "another way that the well off prey upon the poor," all in the name of altruism, humanitarianism, and Brangelinaism.
"Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik, asked to comment about "Blessed Art Thou" on a Post blog, was unimpressed. "Once you've deciphered it, there's not much chance of giving it a second look," Gopnik wrote."
Deciphering? Is that what art has become, where the best puzzle is a large white surface with a black dot because it takes the most time to put all the pieces together?
I suspect this comment may have been about the Flannery O'Connor post. I read her voraciously as a convert about seven years ago, and found there was little deciphering needed for anyone familiar with the basic tenets of Catholicism, or Western Civilization. (I admit, such are few and far between these days.)
Let me confess that I have been praying for Flannery O'Connors's intercessions. Suffice it to say that at the time of my daughter's birth, I was reading an O'Connor story whose protagonist shared a name with my daughter and, I would 18 months later discover, a disability similar both to my daughter's and the authoress's.)
Looking back at the thread, I suspect this was not a comment about the Flannery O'Connor post. You second thought, you and Gopnik are right; not worth a second look. That is what art has become.
Your conclusion that adoption - when necessary - stay as close to home as possible echoes the suggestions of the UNCRC and UNICEF which believe that international adoption should be a last resort after ll efforts to keep families intact have been exhausted and all efforts at finding a safe placement within the extended family, community and nation have all failed.
The U.S., as well as all other nations need to direct their resour3ces toward helping families in crisis within their own borders first and foremost. Instead we ignore the 129,000 children (of half a million total) in foster care who could be adopted, and support international adoption with tax benefits!
Your assessment, however, that parents who lose children to adoption are "shirking" their responsibilities is judgmental and incorrect in 99% of cases of adoption worldwide.
Babies are a commodity in demand and to fill that demands mothers - especially poor, single and those unable to read - are exploited, pressured, coerced, lied to, and deceived or are victims of out right kidnapping.
I suggest you read "The Girls Who Went Away" by Fessler and "The Lies We Love" by E.J. Graff before making cruel and unfounded judgments.
Mirah Riben author, "The Stork Market: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry"
+JMJ+
I think even Angelina Jolie has realised the greater implications of the kind of family she is engineering, though her idea of damage control might leave much to be desired.
After she gave birth to her own child, she realised that Shiloh would be able to see her own parents everyday and know where she had come from, but that none of her other children had been able to do that since she took them in. So she decided to adopt a boy from Vietnam, for the usual altruistic reasons, but also so that her oldest boy from Cambodia would have someone to look at who looked like him. Since she also has a little girl from Ethiopia, I presume she will be adopting another child from Africa one day.
And notice that the couple named their twins after Brad's grandfather and Angelina's mother, while all their other children are stuck with "rootless" hipster names. There's definitely a learning curve at work here, and since Angelina came from such an extreme position in the beginning, it's a very interesting curve to trace.
On another note, I think all this "Brangelinaism" is very interesting. It's not limited to children. Remember when Brad announced that he and Angelina wouldn't get married until homosexual marriage was legalised all over the United States? Well, they've split up since then, so that's not much of a moral stand.
+JMJ+
Sigh! I should have done some fact checking before I posted. It turns out that Brad and Angelina are still together. Or something.
Then again, of course they are! The fabric of the postmodern world would unravel if they ever really split up!
Like the angry Asian transracial adoptees now grown, I've long wondered if stripping away little Artyom Savelyev's culture, even his name, from him was really charity or an exercise in feeding spoilt American adults' egos.
"I realized I could never love an adopted child as my own."
What a monstrous statement and a pitiful lack of Christian love and compassion! Ask my parents if they could love me as their own. They are the only parents I've ever known. And they weren't selfish for wanting me. They had a lot of love to give and couldn't have children. If you can't give a child unconditional love, you have NO BUSINESS adopting. Period.
(Yes, I am adopted.)
Brother Boris
There are some things that will always be inferior goods. Adoption is one of those. Orphanages are another.
With int'l adoption, I think we are very much dealing with the least of goods. About the only question remaining in my mind is if int'l adoption is positively evil. Cases like this make it difficult to find contrary-wise.
A horrible situation for the kid and for the would be mother. Yeah, it sucks for a child to loose his or her roots, but it is worse to grow up unloved, unwanted and without the support and family that adoption can afford.
I am the adoptive father of two Chinese born girls. Yeah, we took them out of an orphanage that was clean and where they could have been raised speaking their native Cantonese tongue. They landed in a home where they are grafted onto an Anglo/Irish/Italian/Lebanese/Southern/Midwestern/Californian Anglican/Melkite/Roman Catholic family. They were baptized in a bilingual English/Korean service. And they are loved!
If you think caring for little kids is some hipster bourgeois bit of consumerism -- well, the most charitable thing I can say is that you are flip. Propriety prevents my use of another four letter word beginning with f.
Yeah, they are also being raised to love their homeland and its people and culture. We also pray together every night for a long list of family members, including "a young woman in China."
BTW, ever think of all the New Testament references to adoption? It may not rank up there for most folks with natural procreation-- I'm not putting that down!-- but caring for the widow and orphan and taking them into one's family are good and Godly things to do.
All that said, I hope that there will be a renewed push in the Church to care for kids, within family of origin, in institutions and in adoptive families.
Fr. Bill in LA
It should be noted that this post questioned international adoption, not adoptive parents or even less adoptees. It's well known that one reason international adoption is popular because it's impossible for birth parents to try to get their kids back.
A while ago, Mark Shea posted a prayer request from a couple who had made a contract with an expectant single mother who was rethinking giving her baby up. Mr. Shea and his commenters all issued pleas to the Almighty that this unwed mother give over her child to these good Catholics. What's wrong with that picture?
As to my "monstrous statement and... pitiful lack of Christian love and compassion," I don't keep a blog to parade my piety. There are plenty of Catholic blogs that do that. I made a realization, was honest about, and suspect more people feel the same way but are afraid to admit it, as it goes against some cherished cultural notions.
No, the Church does not require me to love other people's children as much as I love my own. That I am unable to do so is why I said I would not consider adoption.
Even natural parents do not always love all their children equally. But they have a duty to be just to all their children equally. And if a natural parent is less than able, it's rather silly to expect those that are unnatural to be able to unfailingly accomplish it.
Step parent's are condemned through literature for being unjust, not be being unloving.
Frankly, far from being monstrous (that which unnatural), it strikes me a natural that a parent would love his own flesh and blood more. As Embrethiliel pointed out, who was named after flesh and blood?
Even the term grafting signifies, that the adopted persons are not of the root, but taken in as a stranger.
If loving strangers was so easy, then why do parents pay a premium to take newborns?
Children belong with their natural parents, it's as simple as that. Who is this "a young woman in China" Fr. Bill refers to? The mother? who was forced to put her children in an orphanage and is now an ocean away from her children?
Western Confucian writes : "A while ago, Mark Shea posted a prayer request . . . What's wrong with that picture?"
No kidding. It's the same bad art which equally gripes me with the pushing of adoption by the Right to Life movement as if giving up the baby by the mother was some wonderful good occurring. Sure, it's better than killing the baby, but that doesn't make it a good per se.
+JMJ+
LTG has said: It strikes me a natural that a parent would love his own flesh and blood more.
As much as it mortifies me to be the resident Brangelina expert here, Angelina once stirred up some controversy (well, more controversy than usual) when she said that she loved her adopted children more because they were "survivors," while her biological child (the only one who had been born at the time) had just had everything handed to her.
I bring this up because it's another case of a parent not loving her children equally (even though she presumably does love them all very much); it just happens to be the reverse of what one would expect in such a situation. Angelina may be weird and have "progressive" ideas (or whatever they're called these days), but she's not a monster of a mother for feeling that way.
Enbrethiliel writes : "Angelina may be weird and have "progressive" ideas (or whatever they're called these days), but she's not a monster"
Far from it. I didn't even know who Angelina Jolie was until this thread, but after doing a google search of "Angelina Jolie" and seeing those images, remarkable, she can do anything she wants.
Btw, to love the stranger more than one's own is classic American liberalism, see quotas and most of the liberal agenda. As Robert Frost noted : "A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel." A quote Thomas Fleming likes to use when ripping libs for loving strangers more than their own flesh and blood.
LTG, the Mark Shea thread was even worse than I hinted at. In the comboxes, they were piling up on the poor birth mother who wanted to keep her child and lamenting the fact that many young women act the same way.
Western Confucian writes : "they were piling up on the poor birth mother who wanted to keep her child"
And these same people turn around and think of themselves as the embodiment of the Faith. Who is more dangerous in the war against the family, )one of the tendrils of the culture of death)? Those who openly attack the family, or those who foolishly do the same while thinking of themselves as champions of the family?
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