imagined-community

Orphans in Kazakhstan

In every country, the meaning of adoption intersects with personal, national, and international experiences and interests. The paradox of adoption is that while it is forever grounded in loss, it is also about hope and unconditional commitment & love.

Because adoption means so many different things to different people, institutions, and nations, it is a very complex topic. I am just going to touch on a few issues in foster care, international, and domestic adoption. Even so, adoption is not a topic that I can handle in one night, which means that this single blog entry will continue to expand over the course of the month.

Part I. Teen Adoption - U.S. Foster Care. So let’s start with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, the Adoption Exchange Association, and the Collaboration to AdoptUsKids public service ad campaign to encourage people to adopt teens from Foster Care.

According to the Administration for Children and Families, approximately 300,000 children in the United States enter the foster care system each year. While about 60% of these children will return to their parents, the other 40% will remain in the system. Currently there are 518,000 children in the foster care system in the United States. Of these, 118,000 are ready for adoption. Each year, approximately 19,000 of these children “age out” of the system without ever having been placed with permanent, loving families.

The majority of children in foster care tend to be minorities, with older African American boys waiting the longest for adoption. Approximately 49% of waiting children are ages 9 or older. In general, older children and teens have longer stays in foster care, placing them at higher risk for drug use, poor school performance, or jail time.

The new television, radio, print and Internet PSAs are designed to help prospective parents realize that “You don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent. There are thousands of teens in foster care who would love to put up with you.” Created pro bono by ad agency kirshenbaum bond & partners, these light-hearted PSAs take a look at some of the everyday situations that parents and teens encounter and reinforce the notion that these ordinary moments are what really count. The ads show that teens don’t need perfection, but they do need parents.

The new PSAs are an extension of the previously successful campaign, launched in 2004, which focused on the adoption of children ages 8 and older. In the first 18 months following the launch, calls to the AdoptUsKids toll-free number increased by 236%. Additionally, more than 6,000 children whose pictures and biographies appear on the AdoptUsKids website have been placed. — Ad Council

Now, I just want to be clear that I COMPLETELY support adopting teens, but with people being encouraged via a massive public ad campaign to do something as big and as important as adopting, I worry that people will adopt when they are feelin’ the goodness, but they aren’t prepared (and not in a good way unprepared) and the new parent(s) do even more damage to kids who have had a rough enough time through no fault of their own. 25% of adolescent adoptions fail. Ugh for teens. So if you are considering adopting a teen, please do it with your eyes wide open. Here are some articles to get you started:

1. Time, June 2006. When Foster Teens Find a Home.
   More families are adopting older kids. But taking in an adolescent can create a new set of challenges for the parents and the child.
2. CityLimits.org, June 2004. TEEN ADOPTION’S HARD SELL. How do you stop ex-foster kids from ending up in trouble? The latest remedy: Recruit new parents for them. If only it were so easy.
3. USA Today, June 2006. Adopt us, foster teenagers urge in ad campaign.
4. NYS Citizens’ Coalition for Children, Inc., May, 2006. Unconditional Commitment: The Only Love that Matters to Teens.
5. Foster And Adoptive Care Coalition. Teen Adoption: A Parent’s Perspective.
6. Foster Care Youth United. Recent issues of Represent, a magazine written by and for youth in foster care.
7. Ten Top Reasons to Adopt a Teenager.

And if you haven’t seen the Ad Council’s PSAs you should check them out — they are very funny: Hamster, The Phone, Consoling, Couch, The Gift, Band Practice, The Lion.

Part II, International Adoption. Although I also support international adoption, I think it is important for United Statians, and prospective adoptive parent(s) from other Northern Countries, to try to understand why people get so upset when someone like, let’s say — Madonna — goes to Malawi and brings back an infant. Some of the objections have to do with national identity, both for the people living in a particular surrendering nation and for the departing child. What does it mean to be Malawian if you can’t support your children? Will the departing children be negatively affected later in life by their cross-cultural adoption? What does it mean to a country’s people when a few children get out, essentially rescued by foreigners, but the rest must suffer? And for formerly colonized peoples, how does the experience of international adoption resonate with colonialism? Most people agree that taken as a whole, adoption is by far the best thing for the individual child. But while United Statians are used to seeing through the lens of individualism, not all cultures place individual needs over community needs. I am not suggesting that we get stuck in adoption is either rescue or kidnap, but we do need to consider how surrendering countries experience international adoption. Below are some of the concerns of countries surrendering their children to foreigners (from a 1998 article by Peter Dodds, adopted from Germany) as summarized by Damien Ngabonziza, Programmes Officer at International Social Services in Geneva, Switzerland.

* African countries generally view intercountry adoption as a form of neocolonialism and do not, for the most part, sanction the adoption overseas of native children.

* Sending countries without strong child protection laws and welfare policies are among the most vulnerable to the black market sales and trafficking of children. There is a widespread view in Latin America, for example, that international adoption takes the most desirable adoptees in terms of age, health and racial heritage, and leaves hard to place children in their countries of origin.

* The adoption of a comparatively small number of children in a large population of desperately needy youngsters is too often seen as a panacea, and it ignores the well-being of the majority.

* Intercountry adoption does nothing to solve the problem of high birth rates nor poverty, two of the root causes of international adoption. There is little evidence that intercountry adoption significantly enhances development of child welfare services in developing nations.

* Intercountry adoption is fraught with difficulties arising from differing cultural values and relationships regarding access to one’s roots, contacts with birth families and ties to the country of origin.

More on this topic and the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption later this week…

(Sunday, November 12) The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption is a treaty drafted in 1993, at the Hague, in response to the problem of child trafficking and to speed up the safe movement of children across national borders and into families. In the U.S., President Clinton signed legislation to ratify the treaty in 2000. It is expected that the United States will implement the Hague Convention late next year. According to Elizabeth Bernstein of the Wall Street Journal:

The Hague Convention is widely regarded as an important step in making international adoption safer for the child, as well as the biological and adoptive parents. Countries that are party to the treaty have to follow specific procedures and guidelines, such as setting up a central authority to monitor international adoptions. They will also have to accredit agencies or individuals that arrange adoptions of children from Hague countries.
To date, 69 countries on six continents are parties to the convention. Despite signing the treaty in 1993, the U.S. has been slow to implement its rules, in large part because of debate among adoption advocates and politicians over everything from the costs of putting the new guidelines into place to whether gays and singles should be allowed to adopt. In 2000, Congress passed the Intercountry Adoption Act, which was meant to implement the new standards. Since then, the State Department — chosen to be the central authority on adoption for the U.S. — has issued drafts of the regulations and responded to more than 1,500 public comments…

Many experts believe that the Hague Convention will benefit adoptive parents by making foreign adoptions more predictable and transparent. Once the rules are implemented, U.S. adoption agencies or individuals, such as adoption lawyers, approved to work in a Hague country will go through an accrediting process, as well as the state licensing that is required now. In addition, the agency will have to carry a minimum of $1 million in liability insurance, and in many cases will be held responsible for staff working in other countries.

“This will make it more difficult for shady operators to work in adoption both in countries of origin and in the U.S.,” says Thomas Atwood, president of the National Council for Adoption, or NCFA, a nonprofit research, education and advocacy organization based in Alexandria, Va.

One important Hague rule specifies that agencies will have to disclose the full cost of an adoption upfront. Currently, foreign officials sometimes demand fees before handing over a child. “There have been costs that weren’t recorded,” says Fred Greenman, legal adviser to the American Adoption Congress. “People were instructed to take $5,000 to $10,000 in cash.”

Another benefit for prospective parents: They should have access to more information about the child they are adopting. Under Hague regulations, agencies will have to try harder to get credible health information on the child — and to supply it to the adoptive parents. They will also be required to try to gather more information on the biological parents and share it with the adoptive parents, subject to local privacy laws. As part of the anti-trafficking protections, they will also have to ensure appropriate documentation is available before the child is adopted.

Some people are concerned that international adoptions will become more expensive than they already are (figures vary wildly, but most estimates are around $20,000 to $50,000, depending on the country). Still, it seems to me that the Hague will *help* reduce child trafficking and provide more information about birth parents for adoptive children and families. Read what other bloggers are saying about the Hague Convention: A Dad’s Journey Through International Adoption, Sunflowers and Ladybugs, FamiLee Life, grerp: the PERSONAL side of AAR Rachel, Our Journey to Amelia.

Later this week..cross-cultural adoption.