Why Madonna's Adoption Critics Are Wrong
Here is why they're wrong.
1. There are one million orphans in Malawi, a desperately poor country with a population of 12 million. There simply aren't enough Malawi citizens on sound economic footing to adopt these kids. It's not like Madonna cut the line--there is no line. Does anyone think this kid will be better off in a Malawi orphanage, even if Madonna is a craven publicity hound?
2. "Human rights" activists have shut down international adoptions in many countries, including Romania, because they say foreigners were "buying" babies. Is there corruption in these overseas adoptions? No doubt , as most of these developing nations have corrupt governments, where cash "tips" to the local official are not uncommon. And that's why it is so important that countries implement the Hague Treaty, the international treaty meant to make the process more transparent.
But shutting down international adoptions won't help these kids because the vast majority of people who adopt internationally are like me--people who just wanted to parent a child who needs a home.
3. As for the question, why doesn't Madonna just give money to the Malawi kid's father to raise him? That's the same question my bio daughter asked me when I told her my husband and I were thinking of adopting a baby from an orphanage in Kazakhstan. My daughter was 5 at the time.
What I told her was: we are giving money to support orphanages, but that the birth parents already decided they couldn't raise this baby (now our daughter) and gave her to the orphanage upon birth. This Malawi boy's father didn't leave the kid there temporarily. He decided he couldn't parent. If he had more money, would he be able to be the kind of parent he needed to be? That's a big question. So many people who give up their kids for adoption do so because they are living in the margins--physical and mental illnesses, drug addictions, crime, etc.
Also : That question assumes that kids are always better off with their bio parents, and it is a deep insult to parents of the one million adopted kids living in the US today.
Stumble It!
posted by pam at 11:24 AM
3 Comments:
We are adopting a little girl from Russia (hopefully next month). It hit me part way through the process that perhaps if we had given the birth mother the money we are spending on the adoption she could have/ would have kept her daughter. This was a disturbing revelation to me and still bothers me to think about.
I found your blog through this site:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2006/09/kids_may_be_rig.html
which I had linked to from my article:
http://threesons.clubmom.com/three_sons/2006/10/is_homework_bad.html
I am curious- what did your daughter's 5th grade teacher say about the homework thing?
It is disturbing to think about...whichis why I was uncomfortable with the idea of open adoption in the US. I did not want to be in the position of having to persuade a pregnant teen to give her baby up for adoption to me. If anything, I felt, shouldn't I be helping her to figure out how she could keep her baby? International adoption felt to me to be less ethically problematic because the kids in orphanages had already been relinquished to the state; their birthparents had already decided that they could not raise these babies and the babies need homes. That is something to remember.
Re 5th grade teacher: I approached the issue in a roundabout way and my daughter's homework load seems to be more manageable as of late. However...I still think the whole idea of homework needs to be rethought...And if i were more of a crusader/activist (vs writer), I would probably try to organize parents to create system-wide change.
Good points! It is sad the number of orphans in the world. I am glad we can help at least one.
I totally agree with the homework thing!
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