This post began as a reply to a comment from Gershom on yesterday’s post.
I didn’t mean to accuse Gershom of ignoring the suffering of children, but to point out this as one of the reasons for my strong advocacy.
Of course families can be “adopted”, and if everyone who could supported just one other than their own the world would be a better place. Millions of dollars are spent daily by organizations and governments who have been charged with the duty to care for the people they cover, and some actually do spend a portion of that money helping, yet every year the orphan numbers increase.
Adoption “as we know it today” is a very big umbrella, and to oppose everything under that umbrella seems simplistic and short-sighted to me … rather like that “throwing the baby out with the bath water” thing, especially with so many “babies” in the “bath”.
Changes to the various systems, reform, providing other options in addition … all are necessary and some are happening, albeit too slowly in many opinions. It seems arrogant, however, to demand immediate changes by developing nations when the foster system in the US is a train wreck that is ignored year after year. It’s real people lost in the lurch when programs close, and although some might consider them collateral damage, rest assured those taking the hits don’t look at it so cavalierly.
I also must add that not all bio families should be preserved, that biology does not a good parent guarantee, and that many more children than do would benefit from adoptive families. And contrary to some thought, not everyone who conceives wants to parent, and those that don’t deserve options.
I know this will rub many the wrong way, but in my view a world with more adoption, not less, would be a better world than the one we have now. If every child beaten, abused or neglected, every child victim orphaned by war, by AIDS, by famine or abandoned by need or greed could be placed in a safe and loving family … in my mind, the closer we get to this idea, the closer we are as a species to showing our worth.
Given the huge numbers of children in the circumstances described, however, reaching any more than a tiny fraction isn’t possible. It’s that tiny fraction I hold out hope for and argue in favor of.
World peace, an end to global hunger and grinding poverty, wiping out corruption and discouraging cupidity are all noble goals, and I support any and all efforts toward accomplishing these and more. Once again, however, holding out hope that any of this happens on a grand scale in my time rather disputes the lessons of history and ignores too much of the base nature of humans.
So, while striving to create a world that is fair and bountiful and loving, more than 200 million children suffer, and if a few thousand of those can be adopted by families who adore them hope lives and a few more resources are freed for others.
Adoption is so often an apples/oranges discussion … while I’m picturing five-year-old Cambodian sex slaves someone else has in mind a 20-something American woman being coerced into relinquishing. My favoring more adoption so fewer children are sniffing glue to keep warm under Romanian streets is interpreted as an encouragement to grab babies from loving mothers in crisis.
Conversely, when someone demands family preservation, what comes to my mind are children ending up dead because a bio family was given one more chance too many. Insistence that reform means governments take control of adoptions has me thinking of deeply imbedded corruption that has and will continue to blithely sacrifice children in favor of political milage and blatant greed.
Calls to end the option of adoption for the children of the world rarely come from the uninvolved, and usually sound very much as if they issue from those with an axe to grind. When such calls come from adoptees, and especially strident calls that sometimes go as far as to claim anyone is better off dead than adopted … this is not an unknown claim, although certainly not universal, as Gershom shows … it can appear as an attempt to capture some sort of higher ground that others aren’t entitled to. When it’s birth mothers making demands to end adoption, sour grapes are the most likely flavor suspected. The contingent of adoptive parents rallying forces to end adoption seem to many to be wandering around in those hair shirts I wrote about not long ago.
Although everyone is assuredly entitled to their opinions, attempts to impose those opinions on everyone else should not come under any perceived mandate, and a ban on adoption is one fell swoop of an imposition.
Those of us advocating for adoption would never presume to insist that everyone adopt a child or hint than any family who has yet to do so is intrinsically evil or stupid or selfish. We will never insist that every orphaned, abandoned or neglected child in the world be adopted, and that the failure to make this happen is a criminal act of global proportions, and it is difficult for us to understand the vociferousness of those for whom the opposite is a strong enough urge to create the sort of venom that is so often injected into what should be reasonable discussions about the welfare of children.
Once more, the apples/oranges conflict comes into play, and a conversation that begins in one mind as a levelheaded approach to serious social issues translates to an attack on all that is sacred in the American family.
It seems that the key to many of the closed doors that separate the adoption community from itself should be the children. Sounds simple enough, but when one take has it that the corrupt practice that tainted their adoption experience is reason enough to halt all adoptions while others point their focus toward the huge numbers of children for whom adoption has been or could be wonderful, the conversation tends to break down. Add voices of those considering themselves permanently damaged and others longing more than anything for a child to love and the resulting cacophony puts the kibosh on any but the loudest and least equitable confabulation.
So, where does all this leave us?
Unfortunately, for as long as we are here we’re stuck with the world we have; a world in which war and poverty and hunger and cruelty are facts of life for many, rather than few, where my view gets preeminence on my blog just as Gershom’s does on hers, because we are humans and humans are a contentious species that more often than not self-focuses to the exclusion of anything not within personal apertures.
At least those of us popping in and out of discussions on adoption are coming to the table … even when it all ends in messy food fights, still something has been exchanged … although I am as convinced of my rightness as others are of theirs, as conflicting as those may be.
Since this is the first day of a new year, I find myself wondering how 2008 will unfold regarding adoption. I’ll admit to being less than starry-eyed with optimism … after all, the 6th anniversary of the suspension on Cambodian adoption passed just a bit over a week ago … but concern for the present and future of children in the world will continue to bring me to this table. Preserving the option of adoption is one of my passions, as putting an end to it is for others.
As long as we continue to spin … and I’m talking about the planet here, not attempts to control information … some people will disagree with other people; some will take those disagreements far enough strap explosives to their bodies and blow themselves and anyone unlucky enough to be within shrapnel range to smithereens, or drop bombs, or commit genocide.
When all that is taken into account, the name-calling and snideness on adoption blogs seems pretty tame, and when the irrevelant, the fringe, the just-plain-nasty, is ignored … on those occasions where real dialogue does take place … hints of consensus do present. If that will ever lead to triad-wide warm fuzzies, I doubt, but that isn’t really the goal, is it?
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 
I’m sorry, but anti-adoption activists totally turn me off from their arguments. I don’t feel like these folks are living in the real world. Especially since it hurts me to think about these children.
It’s one thing to be angry about folks who are not ready to adopt a child and do and as a result there’s a lot of pain. You can also get that in biological families, the sort of worms I’ve unearthed from my past thinking about the sort of parent I do not want to become.
But this is no reason to religate children who need a home and family NOW, who cannot wait for their third world governments to step up to the bat and reform their systems when the resources don’t exist to a life of horrible poverty that people, including I don’t want to think about because it’s too horrible.
I really cannot understand the anti-adoption attitude. I’m against coercion. I’m against adoption being something shameful and bad so that it hurts all involed in the triad, but I am not against children who need homes and families getting what they need to grow up to be strong happy people.
Kids aging out of orphanages come to mind, do they think about how this effects them? And what about kids in the foster system who never had a chance to be adopted by a family who cares for them?
Maybe I need a better explanation, but wading through the bile and vitriol I’ve read from anti-adoption folks really burns and hurts. Things are not that simple!
Why do so many people have such problems with your feet and wine? Are they really your feet and wine?
Scraps,
I’ve been wondering about that, myself. Someone actually posted a comment about my “fat ankles” somewhere … some caring, creative and classy folks in the adoption world, heh? … which led to an understanding about why people use their dogs for avatars.
Yes. My feet. My wine. My view. My views.
And my ankles are in reality spindly and toothpick-like, and getting more so as I age, so I’m rather pleased about the “fat” comment; it had me feeling voluptuous from the knees down.
Now this is how progress grows and Utopia is acheived, ladies and gentleman, …..nothing like fat ankles and wineglasses to change the world…
does anyone have a gag for sandra?
Amen.
And Happy New Year, Sandra!
Tisha,
Ha!
S,
Thanks, and even though your comment is listed after one from the irrelevant, the fringe, the just-plain-nasty we’re ignoring in hopes of starting the year out on a higher note, I do understand that you were ‘amening’ my ankles, which is very kind. 😉
By the way, the email address for this specific irrelevant, fringe nasty is alias@yahoo.com. Can’t you just hear the thought process that came up with that clever ploy?
Grrrrr, digital cable and internet is really wacking out in my part of the world, so forgive me if this posts a few times, i know comments here are moderated so please if it goes through twice, delete a repeat. This will be my fourth attempt at getting this in…
Totally agreed, that adoption is a big umbrella. Its not so black and white, there are so many different “systems” within the industry of adoption that its impossible to identify them ALL under the name adoption because … of the umbrella.
I will be the FIRST to advocate that foster children deserve first priority over infant adoptions in America. That I don’t believe in throwing any children out on the streets “to prove a point” Which yes, opens up another umbrella because not everybody is equipped with the experience and training and patience to grow and nurture someone like me, with attachment issues. The picture book white couple looking to fill the rooms of their nice big house, wanting a little baby that calls them mommy and daddy has no clue what they’re getting into when they look into adoption.
Because of that and more, I absolutely believe that adoptive parents are taken advantage of in adoption JUST as much as mothers who have surrendered their children. Just as mothers have been coerced and aren’t informed of the “big picture” of adoption in this day, neither are adoptive parents, or prospective adoptive parents, its the same industry. The same manipulation, the same agenda, they’re playing both sides, its clear as day to me.
Agreed as well that not every family is set out to be a family. Children should never remain with abusers. never. I do believe that families and mothers should be given the means necessary to parent, that poverty should never separate families ( australias adoption system comes to mind ) but that doesn’t mean every mother was meant to be a mother, i totally get that. So yes, I understand that even given the opportunity, and all means necessary not every family would stay together. Because sometimes, there have been generations of abuse and dysfunction, and some people, some families become so broken from it, i don’t know if its possible that they can be healed. This is why I am a HUGE advocate of Attachment Parenting, which is another post.
now, let me please make it very very clear, that because I don’t support the adoption industry, it does NOT mean that I don’t think children who have no family, no care, shouldn’t be given that. I am a child rights activist. And after reading your blog sandra, I don’t think we disagree on as much as I thought when I originally started reading it a few months ago. Behind your snirky witty replies there is someone who has compassion for children, and I see that. I get that. We have the common ground of caring and wanting whats best for children. I think most of us in the adoption community have that common ground or at least I’d like to “hope” we do.
I don’t oppose EVERYTHING under the umbrella, giving a child a home who needs one, when all other avenues have been exhausted I am in favor of. And I think that “any” person who CARES about children wouldn’t argue against providing a home for a child who really needs one.
Back onto Australias govt. run and regulated adoption industry. While I don’t LIVE in Australia now, and when I did I didn’t even touch into my adoption world, I have read about it from a few people and places and it “sounds” like a much better run system than Americas. Statistically speaking comparing figures of adoptions, w/ population, their infant surrendering rate is far less than the states. With as much as you know about adoption, I’m sure you’ve looked into it, and that IS a govt. run system, that DOES do better than ours. I don’t know how possible it would be to turn ours into a direction like theirs but…. It does give me hope.
I don’t care what its called, but I am here to advocate the ethical treatment of children from start to finish. Give the children a home who REALLY need one, but treat them ethically. Use honest terms, don’t change their names, don’t profit off of them, if they have family who can care for them with a little assistance, give them the assistance, etc. etc. I think you get my point.
I definitely don’t think that this should be something that happens TOMORROW. As much as I would like the madness to end, if it “ended” tomorrow, I think that more madness would result because it needs organization, accountability, structure behind the reform. ( which, I do work twords and do have in my future, I’m not just sitting at home all day typing out ideas and doing nothing with legislation in the real offline world. )
Synesthesia/Iorek/Shondolyn : Its clear from what you wrote, that you have no idea what I believe. Don’t lump me into a “category” when you don’t know me or what I believe. It wouldn’t be fair for me to “lump” you into a “pro-adoption” category because I believe you have adopted, when pro-adoption could mean just as much of a wide range of beliefs as anti-adoption. There is an umbrella of understanding that falls into both of those labels as well.
“I am not against children who need homes and families getting what they need to grow up to be strong happy people”
neither am I. I WAS in the foster care system, and have friends who were too, I also have friends who prayed every single day to be taken by social services because her grandfather raped her endlessly until she ran away and became a prostitute. I know what “real” families can do to their blood. I thought I was such a great friend to one of my only adoptee friends as a child because I kept her secret of how her brother, the biological child of her adopters molested her for our entire childhood. Yeah, good friend I was for keeping her little “secret”. I have seen the bad of both sides, the kept children and the adopted, I know that the answer isn’t something as simple as just “ending it all now” because when my mother and I were separated, it hurt. I get it. I’m not here to say “end it all now, because I hurt inside” I’m here to say lets put our heads together and think of a way to make this work, because children deserve that, and they’re not getting it. I don’t care if you’re an adoptee, if you’ve adopted, if you’re looking into adoption, if you surrendered, were forced to surrender if you’re purple, pink or orange, if you’re willing to wholeheartedly address ALL of the corruption in adoption and help find a way to make it work, make the entire umbrella work, I will listen. So please, don’t dismiss me like that.
Gershom,
I commiserate totally with you on your Internet frustrations, but still have to envy your digital cable. That sounds like a little bit of heaven from here in the land of the fruit bat-driven connection.
Once again, I’m afraid, your comment has prompted a response that has grown out of the box, so gets it’s own post.
Oh my! Yes, Sandra, I was applauding your well-written blog of the day. You know I have always appreciated your writing.
I appreciate that you didn’t not accuse the fabulous Gershom of not caring about children, she is from my point of view a very loving, passionate person, who cares a great deal about all people, much nicer than say, myself. Who (me) by the way is not anti-adoption. Awkward sentence structure, hope you could follow that.
Accusing people who are against the current practices of adoption, or who label themselves as anti-adoption is such a staw-man, I am glad you can see beyond that, it really gets in the way of honesty.
I do have a question about the linking of Cambodian sex-slave children and adoption, I am asking this quite honestly and from a place of total naivete about Cambodian adoption.
I am just obviously missing a component of how they are linked together. My guesses, are children who were used in the sex-trade, were they later adopted by westerners? If that is the case I find that very interesting as so many in domestic adoption shy away from the harmed child who exists right now in foster care, as I am sure you are aware there are older children in the U.S. awaiting permanent placement. Are westerners more likely to adopt foreign children who have been in abusive situations than domestics, if so why would that be?
If this is not the case, and sex-peddlers are “adopting” children from their native country’s orphanages to pimp out, why is this being allowed to happen?
Where are these exploited children coming from? Clearly a person who is willing to sell a child into the sex-trade would be against foreigners taking their “product”
When adoption was open in Cambodia, were there less children being enslaved?
I honestly don’t know the answers to these questions, that is why I am asking.
Is there a direct cause and effect?
Further, while like most normal human adults, I am against the exploitation of children, the assumption that adoption per se negates exploitation is not an absolute. It would be nice to believe that adoptees all receive loving and stable homes, many do, but the facts clearly negate that it is a guarantee.
Joy,
Sorry, but your comment had been lost in the shuffle and I’m just reading it now. I know I must have seen it to post it, but I don’t recall doing that.
Whatever …
The linking of Cambodian sex slaves and adoption …
Since the suspension of adoption of Cambodian children is now headed into its seventh year, and since children age out of the adoption system at eight there, the image of children who may have found families over these years, but didn’t and now have to make a living in whatever way they can, haunts me. The sex trade in Cambodia is rife with children, and other opportunities for gainful employment by the very young are limited, and mostly close to being as vile and dangerous.
The reality that is Cambodia tells me that many of the kids left in the lurch by the suspension … kids who would have been adopted … have had to find other means to live, or not.
This is part of the truth that drives me, and as passionate as others may be over their truth, this is also valid.
This is part of the truth that continues to drive me as well. The reality, as my stomach turns, is that children as young as 4-6 years old (maybe younger, who knows?) are being enslaved in the sex trade, especially so in Cambodia. Young girls are sold for their virginity, some as young as 8 years old, I believe, as mentioned on “Children for Sale”, which was recently aired on MSNBC (follow up to the program aired about a year ago I think). If you have the physical and mental fortitude to watch it, you will see for yourself. I recently found a website http://www.redlightchildren.org. Visit it. I cannot understand how this can go on…but it is the harsh and vile reality. What is going to happen to these little girls..and boys? What happens to them when they are all used up? Can you imagine this being your child? Things are not perfect in many parts of the world, but in Cambodia you are pretty much guaranteed that if you are born poor you will die poor. By poor I don’t mean you make trips to the local food pantry…poor there is surviving day to day. Some entire families live in and ON the garbage dumps searching for anything they can possibly eat or sell at a market. You can not fathom it unless you have visited. Clean water is a luxury. Some sort of health care even more so. The technical term for how my daughter came into my life is called “adoption”, but to me it encompasses so much more than that. My life has been forever changed and forever intertwined with her and from where she came from. Half of my heart is in Cambodia and will remain there forever. A country with such a rich history of culture, that not so long ago was stripped not only of their culture, but of their people. Who will fight for those children with no one to fight for them? How can we not do anything about this? And no, I am not suggesting adoption is the solution, there is alot more to it than that. This is not about adoption…it is about the welfare of the children…which is what IT should be about.
Another link…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4038249/
Although extreme poverty and the lack of law enforcement are mainly to blame for child sex trafficking in Cambodia, I think the Cambodian people’s casual attitudes toward sexual predation also contribute to the problem. Cambodians generally look up to foreigners, especially Westerners, as wealthy and benevolent. It’s unfortunate that some foreigners are in the country to take advantage of children.