This blog is in response to a September 18 article in the New York Times, by John Leland, on the trafficking of babies in China.
Over the 22 years that I have been an adoption medicine specialist, there have been many historic moments where the legitimacy of the adoption of children from abroad has been questioned and revealed on TV and in print media. Countries have closed at these moments, leaving children stranded in orphanages, parents without their children and accusations of trafficking. Inter-country adoptions have gone from 23,000 in 2005 to about 11,000 in 2010 with fewer and fewer choices available to families looking to adopt from abroad.
A September 18 NY Times article by John Leland sensitively highlights recent trafficking of babies in China. The article includes interviews with American parents of adopted children from China, focusing on how it feels for a parent to think that their child might have been bought and sold. The complex issues about how to speak to one's child about such matters in the future are excruciating, but not impossible to handle. That said, most parents who adopt from abroad rarely know the real facts of that desperate moment when their child was abandoned or relinquished. We have hopefully learned not to glorify birth parents and to respect what we do know and what we don't know in an honest and loving way when we speak with our children. Those conversations change and become more sophisticated as children grow and develop.
Trafficking is rare in international adoption. It is not because of trafficking that international adoption has gone south. I don't dismiss the importance of trafficking and I hope that the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption in cooperation with each country will continue to work hard to prevent the violation of the rights of birth mothers and to protect the rights of children. That will never happen however, unless there is a financial and educational investment in the sending country's social welfare infrastructure.
Children are typically abandoned in a public place in China so that they can be found and protected, while in other countries like Ethiopia, they are relinquished to a local orphanage. It is safe to say that the cause for the desperate decision to not parent one's own child in countries all over the world, including the US, is poverty and the resultant isolation and depression that darkens the birth mother's thoughts. There is no hope and no one to talk to and no one to help sort out the possible solutions to the dilemma of shame, no education, no work skills, no dignity, and abject and extreme poverty.
I ask myself a bigger and more philosophical question about the millions of orphans when I read articles like this. There is a Global Orphan Crisis. When I started out helping parents manage the health issues of children adopted from abroad, I knew very little about the social conditions that dominated the communities of developing countries. For over two decades I have traveled abroad on medical missions and learned about the despair and hopelessness in countries all over the world where there are no social workers or community workers to openly engage in discussions with women who are pregnant and poor. Economic strengthening is limited and women have little access to education and medical care. Why did we create such a marvelous bureaucracy to improve international adoption practices and not pour some of that money into the welfare of mothers in these countries? It seems immoral to me to accredit US adoption agencies and to not empower women from sending countries to make international adoption a well-thought out choice for a birth mother no matter what her economic status. We do this for all domestic adoptions in the US. If we educated women abroad and showed some respect for their process, we might find that some women would still opt for their children to be adopted...even changing some attitudes about domestic adoption in very poor nations.
I review pre-adoption referrals daily in my adoption practice. More and more of the social histories that I read, are about a dead mother or a dead father and 7 children perhaps ranging in age from 15 yrs old to 6 months of age. The one remaining parent may have AIDS and begins to relinquish the youngest children one by one to a local orphanage. The parent signs papers that state that they cannot afford to care for their child. The stories are pitiful and after years of reading them, I am heartbroken. It is these stories that have likely made adoptive parents reading them, realize that there is a moral moment in adoption from abroad. Any decent person who reads a referral that tells the story above, likely lies quietly in the dark of night while waiting for that baby, thinking about the unfairness in life. This is why adoption has gone the way of "boom and bust" resulting in lower numbers and fewer countries. Governments and the global community are not blind to the conflicting issues that arise from poverty, community disintegration, and increasing numbers of children without parental care, whether true orphans or not. It is not about trafficking.
To help orphans have a better life in their own countries, I created a foundation, Worldwide Orphans, 14 years ago. We started in institutions to enrich the lives of orphans and then we grew and realized that orphans were in the community. In our work with HIV-infected orphans and vulnerable children and their families we help to strengthen the local communities to prevent abandonment and relinquishment and also to re-unify families affected by HIV/AIDS.
It would be wonderful if we could address the Global Orphan Crisis now. There are millions of children who are born without pre-natal care, malnourished, low birth weight, and living in extreme poverty; they cannot all be adopted.
Let's set priorities and reach more children in their communities, provide social services for women, lessen abandonment, lessen relinquishment and trafficking will naturally be less of a threat. Let's strengthen the adoption opportunities so there is complete transparency and finally, let's also be community builders. Let's not be afraid to face all the issues honestly and let's not perpetuate the theory that trafficking is the cause of the demise and demonization of international adoption. Nothing is ever that simple.
Follow Dr. Jane Aronson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wworphans
"Why did we create such a marvelous bureaucracy to improve international adoption practices and not pour some of that money into the welfare of mothers in these countries?" The answer is clear to me: So you, Ms. Aronson, can continue to adopt.
It occurred to me during my several years stay in Korea that my abandonment, during post-war reconstruction, would not have occurred had the promise of rich foreigners adopting not been held out in front of my parents' (and all Korea's) eyes. I was left on the streets in the bitterest month of winter primarily because they KNEW there were international adoption agents scouring the country for available children. What few people look at, especially those that want children, is that International adoption is the CATALYST for abandonment and relinquishment. THE VERY EXISTENCE OF THIS FOREIGN INTERVENTION is what lures people into separating from their progeny, and often it is the only option provided them. The presence of International adoption also creates a climate which promises (and delivers) profits to be made, and promotes trafficking and corruption.
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What this blog post really is, is a huge rationalization to preserve the option to adopt at all costs. Self-congratulatory people with savior complexes such as Ms. Aronson do so these days by co-opting the works of purely (as in working to improve the lives of others WITHOUT tangible benefit to themselves, as in acquiring a child or casting a good reflection upon oneself) humanitarian organizations and adoption reform activists, who have long been (long before the adopters or adoption agencies) been working to alleviate and eliminate the root causes of catastrophic economic and societal family pressures which result in the creation of paper orphans through abandonment or relinquishment.
It dismays me to no end to hear this wolf in the hen house feign empathy for the grieving and less fortunate who have lost their children while concurrently dismissing that trafficking of children could possibly indicate she participates and promotes in a very flawed system. I guess in her mind, those pesky "ethical moments" are ones that can be easily dismissed and explained away in a sophisticated manner...
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Lebanon is home to 7,000 NGOs like Worldwide Orphans; that's one NGO for every 500 residents in the country. They are useless. Ask any resident anywhere in the Third World who most perpetuates the exploitation and colonialization of the Global South. This is humanitarian imperialism, and it is most ignored by those who have the luxury and privilege to ponder how the rest of the planet should bend to the whims of Empire.
This Empire creates the conditions under which so-called orphans are determined to be "in need". This article is thus the dubious wisdom of a pyromaniac firefighter. Given that the United States now has a child poverty rate of twenty percent, the Great Lie of such "beneficence" is revealed to be the marketing ploy that masks the pillaging of the planet.
That the author is financially attached to such a system casts serious doubts on its veracity. For those of us who have returned to our countries of birth, with no such strings of corruption and not much more to lose, this kind of editorial does more damage to the work we are actually doing on the ground than anything I can imagine.
Spence-Chapin Adoption Agency has a thriving relationship with the China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA). In addition to following the regulations laid out in the Hague, we’ve always known them to follow best practice and to act ethically.
Unfortunately, we know that within every system there is potential for corruption. We have seen the Chinese Officials work swiftly in response to these situations and believe they must be seen within the context of the hundreds of thousands of adoptions that have taken place over the years.
We will make every effort to communicate anything we know or learn to our constituency, yet recognize that we do not have all of the answers. We have received numerous calls in response to John Leland’s NYT’s article and understand that it has raised concerns for families. The Spence-Chapin Adoption Resource Center is available for consults and counseling regarding how to talk to children about this and all related issues.
How many children are languishing in foster care in the United States? How many age out of the system with their rights continually violated? And you're propping up this corrupt system?
I love this statement too: "We have hopefully learned not to glorify birth parents..." Birth parents have NEVER been glorified. Birth parents are just brood mares and sires for upper-middle-class and rich people who put off having kids for their careers and now expect everyone else to fix their problem. If some adopters are now saying nice things about birth parents, it's because we shamed you into doing it. Before we started getting loud about OUR losses, being nice to us was too much to ask, 90 percent of the time. We've gotten down to 80 now. Progress, I suppose.
If anyone here really wants to help children overseas, sign up for a child-sponsoring charity. The legitimate ones solve the very problems that lead to children being in orphanages in the first place. Because, as a matter of fact, quite a few of these kids in developing countries' orphanages are NOT orphans. What they are are very poor children with desperate parents who need help. Try actually helping them rather than profiting from their pain. Thanks in advance.
I am so sorry for your loss, you sound like such an intelligent and informed person on this subject. I, on the other hand, am completely an outsider and am trying to understand this situation more fully. When I see children going through abandonment and loneliness, I ache to take them into my arms and love them. I hear what you are saying about everything not being as simple as it seems. I couldn't afford to adopt in the first place, but it's something I've always thought I would want to do if I could. And I see this as pretty much a good thing to do in the world, to ease human suffering. I hear about the child support charities, but I have always wondered about them, fearing the same assertions you made about orphanages. Re: do the children benefit from the money sent, or does it line the pockets of the "caretakers." How do you know? It makes people like me, who don't know the ins and outs, reluctant to participate, even when we yearn to help. If you could provide any advice for checking out institutions, I would appreciate it.
However, the true problem with children in foster care has to do with people who shouldn't have had children to begin with. I've been a foster parent and have seen firsthand the anguish parents have put their children through. The children blame themselves for things they don't even understand. It is heartbreaking. The birth parents often hang on to their "rights" until the child isn't a "cute" baby and then abandon them to the system. What is left is a child with some serious needs that not many could actually handle.
Having a child is a selfish thing - for birth parents and adoptive parents alike. People have or want children to feed a need within themselves. Sadly, some people who give birth can't or won't parent. Being a parent is putting someone's needs above your own, not just passing down DNA. It is teaching the next generation to thrive in the world to carry on, not just entertain you for the moment. Giving birth to or adopting children for any other reason is irresponsible.
You hit on the central problem, though you didn't notice it, when you said this:
"The article includes interviews with American parents of adopted children from China, focusing on how it feels for a parent to think that their child might have been bought and sold. The complex issues about how to speak to one's child about such matters in the future are excruciating, but not impossible to handle. That said, most parents who adopt from abroad rarely know the real facts of that desperate moment when their child was abandoned or relinquished."
Exactly. YOU DON'T KNOW. And every time you buy a child unquestioningly (and that's exactly what you're doing, even if the adoption agency tells you you're "paying for services rendered"), you give someone someplace an incentive to steal another child.
YOU DON'T KNOW that child's circumstances. YOU DON'T KNOW where that child came from. YOU DON'T KNOW their community. YOU DON'T KNOW that that kindly orphanage manager isn't just a baby broker who kidnaps small children off the street. YOU HAVE NO WAY OF CHECKING. No matter what certifying agency you use. No matter what guarantees you obtain from the government of "your" child's home country.
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Each and every person must ask themselves if they want to be part of the problem or part of the solution. It was one thing in the past for parents to say we didn't know. Now we all know. The questions and answers to your peers and your children will be much tougher.
And let us not think, as Dr. Aronson suggests, that things are done the right way here at home. Millions are spent marketing to expectant mothers in crisis who are not given impartial counseling - emotional or legal, or in many cases sufficient time after the birth of their child to make an informed choice. They are too often deceived with promises of open adoption that are unenforceable promises that fail to come to fruition. Here, as abroad, adoption is big business that exploits crisis with coercion and deceit, often far too quickly destroying in-family options such as the rights of fathers who are capable and willing to care for their own offspring.
Mirah Riben
The $40,000 on average being paid per child, leaving their siblings and family in poverty, could instead be spent to dig a well, build a school, or buy life-saving medicine. That is a humanitarian effort. Not meeting one's own need at the expense of the poor.
Such fees act to fund baby brokers and traffickers and also make it harder for those within these nations to adopt their own as they cannot compete. There would be no trafficking if there were no demand. So-called "abandonments" all but disappear when countries close their international adoption programs and resume when adoptions begin again.
Mirah Riben
Bravo to Dr. Aronson who is definitely on the right track and doing extremely meaningful work.
But she has not gone quite far enough in changing her her basic concept of adoption. The basic problem with adoption is that it has been turned upside down. What once was a social construct to help find homes for children in need has reversed itself into a market- and demand-driven mega million dollar industry filling orders for a commodity called 'a chid'.
Dr Aronson shows an acceptance of this mind set when she cites a decrease in the number of tragedies at the root of all adoption loss and separation and sees this not as a sign of more help be given to families in need as she suggests, but as a problem for "parents looking to adopt."
Adoption should not be about options for those seeking to adopt! The tragic lives of families in crisis are not about creating options for the affluent who seek to exploit others' misery to fill their need.
We need to stop mythologizing and romanticizing adoption and see it for what it is: the haves taking from the have nots in what I have called Reverse Robinhoodism.
Mirah Riben, author, THE STORK MARKET: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry
I have worked in anti-trafficking for 6 years, and I can assure you trafficking for adoption exists and is not as "rare" as you suggest. I agree that the media does not usually paint a completely accurate picture of the various complexities, and yes, on its own trafficking on it's own is not the "demise" of international adoption. However, there are many international adoptions based on false paperwork, and many cases where adoption workers make big bucks on manipulating and lying to birth families. This fits well into the trafficking paradigm of the sale of humans through force, fraud or coercion.
I myself am an adoptive mother, and am a fan of adoption in ethical circumstances. At the same time I think we need to take an honest look at components of our own privileged position in the West and ask questions about why we are so intent on "saving" orphans in our own homes, and on our own terms - as opposed to supporting sustainable change in struggling countries so families can stay together.
Brian H. Stuy
Research-China.Org
It seems your answer is to close adoptions and punish the children that are true orphans.
What is your suggestion on how to fix this problem?
Mary Mooney
When called to help children in the developing world or our young neighbor down the street, we must always ask ourselves: “How can we respond in ways that best support children’s immediate needs while protecting their rights in the long-term?”
We can do this by supporting local activists who, though under-recognized and under-resourced, are the true heroes and the true experts about what's needed to help children in the developing world.
I’ve now worked with over 300 grassroots organizations in southern and east Africa in my career. Most were linked to churches, schools, or clinics, assisting children by extending services into areas that are not sufficiently reached by government or international agencies. A UNICEF-sponsored mapping exercise identified over 1,800 of these groups in Malawi alone (NOVOC, 2005).
Firelight Foundation’s publication (found at: http://www.firelightfoundation.org/publication-02.php) offers a guide to Western-based groups and individuals seeking to contribute resources of time or money to support vulnerable children in Africa.