Letters to the Editor
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Medium spicy, please
We'll have two Kingfishers, the fried okra, and the Indian baby?
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I agree with Laurel962,
but, maybe trendy isn't the right word. Of course people don't adopt kids because it's cool, they do go international because it's accepted and known. I recently spoke to an infertility/adoption support group about foster care adoption. It was like talking to a wall. I left a page of referrals for them and the leader of the group thanked me because they had not known about any of these local foster care adoption agencies. Those families all wanted international.
Many families don't even consider foster care adoption, not realizing that there are many kids legally free and not all of them are older. I have adopted three kids out of foster care and I do what I can to at least try to inform those considering adoption to think about local adoption. Most times, isn't even on the radar or quickly dismissed as too risky. I just share my story about adopting three wonderful kids (and they were all young when placed with us...3, 10 months and 20 months).
I can also understand the panic of turning down a potential referral. As part of the adoption process, I would get profiles of waiting children emailed to me. My husband and I declined to be considered for a 2 1/2 year old girl. We also declined to be considered for two boys, 5 year and 5 months. The reasons for doing so were complicated, but it just didn't feel right.
On the other hand, when reading the article, I wanted Jessica to fight for that child. My oldest son, now 9, was three when he joined the family and a mess. We did not know if the delays were pervasive or not, we just held our breath and dove in. Now I look at him, he's strong, athletic, talkative. It's amazing. Adopting him was the hardest, scariest thing I've ever done. I was freaking out through the whole transition process with him. I was filled with remorse...what if I do and get into something that I can't handle and what if I don't and have to walk away from something I have worked so hard to have?
Our newest addition, our daughter, was very abused as an infant. She has physical and speech delays that we are working on with a team of therapists. Totally not scary now.
Any child that comes into your life from tough beginnings will most likely have some issues. It's part of adoption that you have to clean up messes. It is just how it is. To adopt out of foster care, you have to go through training classes that teach you a lot about the kinds of kids in care and their needs. They prepare you. I don't think this family was prepared for the reality of adoption.
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Laurel
Although I have not adopted a child, I've also had some experience with international adoption and have certainly encountered the ignorance that you refer to. The frequent "china doll" references posted on international adoption forums are really offensive and scary. I know there is a ton of ignorance out there. However, it seems that you may be letting your personal experience, which is by it's very nature small compared to the large amount of people who are involved in international adoption, color your impression of all international adoption. To hold a large group of people responsible for the bad behavior of the people you mentioned you have talked to seems a bit unfair. I've met adoptive parents who are quite sensitive to the complexities of the international adoptees experience. I'd hate for anyone to judge them based on the bad behavior of others.
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Say, what?
I wasn’t going to comment because I thought the field was pretty well covered, and then I read Sally the Werewolf’s ‘I'd just like to request that folks with a baby on the way STOP SAYING: "We don't care if it's a boy or a girl, as long as it's healthy”’
What? Should we now wish our offspring to as f***ed up as possible to show our parenting street cred and avoid offending people such as yourself?
Allow me to speak as a parent and as one of those screwed up kids out there. I have a congenital birth defect and a nice packet of learning disabilities. I was poked, prodded, explored and medicated until I was large enough for surgery. I’ve lived a life of careful avoidance of medical problems and treatments when the methods of avoidance failed. As an adult I’ve had more tests, more surgery, more recovery, and more lifelong effects. I’ve gone to special classes, alternative therapists and so forth. There isn't any way for me to actually convey what my childhood and adult life have been like
I could’ve lived without the pain and the fear I felt for myself and I saw in my parent’s eyes. I wish I could like Doctors, but I never will. I wish my boyfriends hadn’t thought I’d been sexually abused because of my tendency to have panic attacks when physically intimate. (I had a friend who’d had open-heart surgery, and he had a similar response to touch.) I wish I hadn’t had to take all of those meds. I wish my body worked right. I wish I were normal.
Sure, I have cool stories to tell, and being a sick kid/adult gives me a perspective on life many lack, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, and I honestly don’t think I could’ve handled it if one of my kids had problems anything like mine, because I know. I know that no matter how sweet and stoic they might behave, I would be hurting them.
So Sally, I don’t care if children are boys or girls, I just want them to be healthy.
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@Nulla, Reading One Article in a Third-Rate Newspaper Doesn't Qualify You as Knowledgeable
I've been to Guatemala 3 times, adopted a child from Guatemala, speak fluent Spanish and read Prensa Libre and other Guatemalan papers daily, and subscribe and read many listservs related to Guatemalan and international adoption daily. And you read one "Home" section article in a podunk newspaper.
I read that article, http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/847760.html and am wondering exactly where it says, as you paraphrased in such a cavalier and bigoted way, that "rich white people are going to have to bribe more bureaucrats moving forward to snatch up all those brown babies."
Because the article I saw said that Guatemalan babies who were supposed to be with their adoptive parents by now, are still stuck in the process, due to bureaucratic problems.
And the article said that some 3,000 Guatemalan children who are in the adoption process may never complete that process. What will happen to them? Institutionalization for their entire childhood is likely.
And the article said that yes, there are some problems and some reforms are needed to eliminate some of the corruption. No one has disputed that. But is there any social service system in any country, the US included, that doesn't have problems and need reforms? How about our broken foster care system in the US? The lack of health care for millions of children? Shall we nationalize all of these programs and let the government take over because they don't always work the way they should as currently managed? That is the argument of the Guatemalan government, which has a pretty deplorable track record of caring for its poorest citizens.
And how about what the article doesn't say?
It doesn't say that shifting the adoption process from lawyers/foster families to government officials/government-run institutions doesn't help the children. The Guatemalan government is corrupt and scandal-ridden, and far less concerned -- some would say unconcerned entirely -- with the welfare of these children, as compared to the lawyers and foster families who have been providing their care.
And the article doesn't say that children will now spend two years or more in poorly-funded, poorly-staffed institutions where they will get sub-par food and medical services, and God knows what sort of emotional care.
I'm not a rich white person, and my son is not "brown baby." But it's overt racism and ugly insinuations like yours -- coming from Guatemalans, Unicef, and Americans -- that will ultimately relegate these precious children of Guatemala to a future languishing in institutions.