Has Adoption Become “Child Trafficking?”
According to a BBC report, a group of ‘charity workers’ located in Chad were arrested on the tarmark of the airport with an airplane full of about 103 children. The group denies they planned to sell the children for adoption, instead claiming they were sending them to ‘host families’ at a nice price of 2,400 euros (US$3,450) each. The group also claimed the children were from Darfur, Sudan and they were rescuing them from their ‘war torn lives’. It turns out many of the children were from Chad and not without families.
Apparently Guatemala is not the only place that children are seen as commodities.
Since the Vietnam War and Operation Babylift children have been ripped from their mothers arms so that the media can use adoption as the do-gooders mission and even that is wrong in all aspects of life. But since adoption has become the “mod” thing to do (note: Angelina, Madonna) it is also becoming the thing we do for orphans. Instead of “feeding the starving kids in Ethiopia” like we did in the 80’s we are now adopting them into our own homes and “saving” them because its “cool” (of course I am being flippant but some part of me and even the media sees it this way, as more and more celebrities are jumping on that bandwagon).
But, are internationally adopted children all orphans?
According to the New York Times, many children in the international systems often have living family members, as do both of mine. The issue with having living family members and being eligible for adoption is that birth parents can be unable or unwilling to take care of the children, thus making the children look like orphans in the system. And, obviously, children like these have living parents and should never have been taken from them.
But is it right to take children from their natural country, even as adoptive parents?
I believe that adopting children for the sake of “saving” them is wrong. What parent would really truly love their child if the only reason for adopting them was to “save” them from the “hardships” of growing up in countries like Chad or Ethiopia? Does it actually mean that this child will be better off living in suburbia drinking Diet Coke and eating Cheetos?
But when it comes down to a child’s best interests is it about the country in which they live or is about having parents that love them and a family that comforts them? Now, I know all too well that love does not make an adoption work because my son’s problems were real. We have struggled from the day we met him to build a family but I would bet my life that he would chose family over an institution life any day.
Was taking him from Russia in his best interest? Personally, I think yes. Do we try to take the Russia out of him? Never.
Tags: , adopt, Adoption, adoptive-parents, Angelina Jolie, Attachment, BBC report, birth project, chad, child trafficking, darfur sudan, Ethiopia, family, france, Guatemala, institution, madonna, New-York-Times, operation babylift, orphanage, vietnam warRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Attachment, Celebrity Adoptions, Countries and Domestic, Ethiopia, Guatemala, News, Reflection, Russia, vietnam
3 opinions for Has Adoption Become “Child Trafficking?”
Kathy
Feb 18, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Please don’t perpetuate stereotypes. There isn’t one case of a child being ripped from their mother’s arms during Operation Babylift. At worst, some families put children in orphanages with the expectation to get them back some time in the future, and these children were adopted, legally, approved by the Vietnamese government at the time. Orphanages and how they work in Vietnam and the Vietnamese cuture’s concept of “orphans” was different than the Western perception. Nothing is perfect and Operation Babylift wasn’t perfect. But to use that stereotype to bolster your argument (which I don’t have an issue with) is unfair to the people who worked for years if not decades with children in Vietnam to protect them and keep them safe and who prompted the airlift, not the U.S. government.
Marcie
Feb 18, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Fair enough. The research I found did not mention those things (of course it wouldn’t if it was one sided, right?). And, that is why I appreciate comments like yours and readers like you. I try my hardest to find the most accurate research out there and I spend hours (sometimes days) on posts like these.
Russian parents also place children in orphanages until they can care for them, BTW.
Please keep reading. I like your insight.
Micahel Marek
Sep 25, 2008 at 8:38 am
I appreciate the concern we have for the trafficking of children via international adoptions.However somehow we have not realized that unethical baby for profit adoptions occur domestically as well. The same realistic arguements used above should apply domestically however they don’t when a single father attempts to fight the private adoption system.I have personal experience as an adoptee myself and as that father fighting for my daughter Savannah.Private adoption needs an oversight commitee.They need someone as an ethical barometer.
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