All the Social Orphans Suffolk University Law Professor Sara Dillon on International Children's Rights and Social Orphan Policy
Center for Adoption Policy Center for Adoption Policy provides research, analysis, advice and education to practitioners and the public about current legislation and practices governing ethical domestic and intercountry adoption in the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute Educates federal policy makers about the need for adoption reform, and coordinates efforts of policy makers and public groups to improve the lives of children.
Harvard Law School Child Advocacy Program The Child Advocacy Program (CAP) at Harvard Law School is committed to advancing children's interests through facilitating productive interaction between academia and the world of policy and practice, and through training generations of students to contribute in their future careers to law reform and social change.
I have a new post up over at Adoptive Families Circle (AFC), called Raising Children with Thankful Hearts. It's a reflection on the notion of gratitude and adoption.
Here at Whatever Things Are True, I wanted to include this clip titled "The Expected Sense of Gratitude" from the movie Adopted: The New American Family, in which Dr. Amanda Baden describes how expectations of gratitude burden adoptees. My AFC post draws a critical distinction between gratitude and indebtedness.
No child should ever feel indebted to their parents.
TV Critic Jeff Alexander has an opinion piece in Time this week that will have many adoptive parents nodding their heads knowingly. In "Children's Movies Have Too Many Orphans," he writes:
This year, I’ve had to have The Adoption Talk with [my seven-year-old adopted son] Max after almost every film I’ve taken him to see, because they all had lead characters who were taken from their parents at an early age. Rapunzel in Tangled, Po in Kung Fu Panda 2 and Blu in Rio all grew up far away from their biological progenitors. The origin of Rango‘s title character is shrouded in mystery, but his love interest Beans is a card-carrying member of the Dead Dad Club. I’m glad Max is too young for Thor, in which one character’s belated discovery of his own adoption contributes to inter-dimensional catastrophe. By the time we came out of Puss in Boots last weekend, I didn’t even feel like discussing Puss’s fraught relationship with his human adoptive mother. And that’s not even mentioning last year’s Megamind (with the title character’s Superman-like escape from a planetary catastrophe that kills his parents) and Despicable Me (which we avoided entirely based on word-of-mouth from fellow adoptive parents).
For plenty of kids, stories about young people with dead, absent or galactically evil parents are a novelty, a look into a different life. For other kids, they can be a raw nerve. Most raw nerves are treated with some sensitivity, but not this one. And that’s why I’m going to think twice before going to see the upcoming and much-anticipated Hugo, about an 11-year old orphan in Paris who explores his father’s dark past. Even if it is directed by Martin Scorsese.
My own kids were disturbed by elements in Kung Fu Panda and Rio this year, though Tangled was no big deal. Parents, do you get tired of having to debrief the adoption themes in practically every movie your kids see? If you're an adopted person, how do you feel when an orphan storyline pops up unexpectedly?
Recently the movie, also starring Chris Rock, Chace Crawford and Anna Kendrick, took over Charlie Brown airport for some scenes.
Our on-set spy got us a few photos of the airport (officially called Fulton County Airport at Brown Field) on the day the filming took place there.
The scenes filmed there are set in Ethiopia. (Casting calls also have sought Ethiopian extras.) In one photo you’ll notice the airplane that is parked outside the airport says Trans Ethiopia.
Also, you’ll notice that the Ethiopian flag is flying outside the front of the airport (we’re assuming the camera angle will crop out the Fulton County Airport sign).
The movie, compared to “Love, Actually” for its ensemble format, follows a number of different couples who are becoming parents for the first time. (Someone’s adopting a baby from Ethiopia, it sounds like!)
The real question may be, What to Expect When Hollywood Covers International Adoption Onscreen? My guess is, not much.
Have you heard about the new documentary "Dark Girls" yet? The film, directed by Bill Duke and D. Chansinn Berry, is set to premier at Nashville's International Black Film Festival in October. "Dark Girls" asks a question that verges on the taboo: "Is life different for women who are darker than most?"
As the adoptive mother of a "dark girl" from Ethiopia, that grabbed my attention. Based on the trailer, it's clear that the answer is a heartbreaking yes. The clip reveals the color-ism that persists within the Black community; it's unclear if the film will also describe dark-skinned women experiencing negative reactions from whites and other non-African groups with respect to their color. In the trailer, one woman sadly mentions that whites often tell her she has beautiful skin, but that she feels rejected by her "own people."
This post first appeared at Mama Manifesto, where I write about general parenting issues, but sometimes adoption works its way into the mix, so I wanted to share it here as well.
Our family took a Memorial Weekend getaway to San Francisco. Though we intended our mini-vacation to be pure fun, it also ended up being a learning experience -- mostly for me. As we made our way around the city, we encountered the homeless on nearly every block, which left my ten-year-old daughter Didi frightened, my nine-year-old son Gobez speechless, and my youngest girl, Lemlem, age eight, full of questions that I didn't quite know how to answer.
It's not that my children have been sheltered. On the contrary, they probably know more about the issue of homelessness than many suburban kids. The Episcopal church we attend runs a Tuesday soup kitchen and provides ongoing support for the homeless in our community of 30,000. The kids have helped me make apple pies, brownies, banana bread and more for the clients. We know most of the folks in the program, and when I spot a new homeless person around town, I don't hesitate to approach and invite him or her to come by for Tuesday lunch.
Though I consider myself to be a caring person, our San Francisco weekend pointed out my limitations and contradictions. As soon as we stepped into Union Square, I automatically shifted into "city mode," focusing only on keeping the kids close and avoiding potential risks. I didn't even realize that I'd ceased to be present to the dignity and suffering of the human beings around me until Lemlem started shooting out questions:
Mom, what happened to her legs?
Mom, is that guy okay?
Mom, why didn't you give him any money?
In every case, I realized with shock that I'd failed to even see the person she was talking about.
Then, after just 20 minutes in the city, Lemlem asked the most painful question of all:
Mom, how come almost all the homeless people here are black?
I gasped, because, you see, Lemlem, my beautiful Ethiopian-born daughter, is black herself. The subtext was clear: Why do all the people in pain look like me? It's a question that I, as her adoptive white mother, can't shy away from if I want to help her grow into a strong, confident and caring black woman. Unfortunately, it's also a question that can't be appropriately addressed during a mad dash to the subway.
"That's something we'll spend some time talking about later," I promised.
Lemlem accepted my stall. She kept herself busy by keeping a running tally of the number of homeless we encountered, broken down by race and gender. She even made up a code, so that she could discreetly point out every person in need. "Mom, there's another BHM," she'd say, referring to a Black Homeless Male. "Look, there's a WHW."
She found my reluctance to give anything to the street people harder to accept. We were preparing to leave the hotel at one point when Lemlem proudly pulled open her coat pocket to reveal a half-eaten bag of Trader Joe's Kettle Corn. "I didn't eat all of this," she said, "so that I could share some with the homeless people we meet."
Stunned, I struggled to explain the need to balance compassion with caution in terms an eight-year-old could understand. For her own safety, I couldn't allow Lemlem to inadvertently approach a mentally ill person with a sweet offering that might be violently refused, and yet I felt uncomfortable squashing her impulse to freely give of the "bounty" she possessed. Isn't that spirit of giving the essence of compassion?
"We'll find an organization that helps the homeless in San Francisco and make a donation," I promised again.
Thankfully, finding the right organization turned out to be easy. Our weekend itinerary included attending Sunday morning services at Glide Memorial, the vibrant San Francisco church famous for its joyful gospel choir and decades of service to the city's most marginalized. Glide's program for the homeless figured into the storyline of The Pursuit of Happyness, the 2006 Will Smith film based on Chris Gardner's best-selling memoir about his struggle with homelessness. This clip from the movie, filmed at Glide, includes San Francisco's homeless as extras and features the church's incredible choir:
I'd planned to take my kids to Glide so that we could experience the powerful music and spiritual energy of a diverse urban church. We got all that and more. Knowing that Lemlem had absorbed so many difficult images of homeless African Americans, I felt especially glad that all three children could see African Americans, Asians and whites leading the Glide service together, speaking with passion about addressing issues of social justice, and inspiring the congregation with song and poetry.
Lemlem especially loved Glide, as I knew she would. The service wasn't even over before she asked me when we could come back. We've already made our donation, and our family has agreed that we'll drive into the city more often and definitely include Glide in our plans. Going back to San Francisco, and back to the church that serves it with such heart, will ensure that our family keeps this important conversation alive.
After a traumatic failed adoption from India several years ago, my husband and I eventually applied to adopt from Bulgaria. At the time we started the process, Bulgaria had just revamped its international program; we believed that this would ensure an ethical, transparent process. We were also drawn to this Eastern European country because many of the children in need of adoption were of Roma (Gypsy) ancestry. Linguists and historians believe the Romani people migrated to Europe from India about 1,000 years ago; many words in their language match words in Sanskrit, Hindi and other Indian languages. (Clearly, India was still tugging at our hearts.) After waiting for a referral from Bulgaria for over a year we opted to move on, but even today, I still take a special interest in the plight of vulnerable children and families there.
Yesterday the BBC broke the news of a trafficking scheme involving Roma women, who were being smuggled into Greece to deliver babies for illegal adoption. Police arrested a Bulgarian couple for organizing the racket in which Greek attorneys and judges are also said to be complicit.
Bulgaria's trafficking problems are longstanding; the reforms that seemed so promising at the time we applied to adopt there have proved ineffective at curbing trafficking for adoption within Europe. A 2005 BBC report described the way these illegal rackets function:
It works like this: the heavily pregnant women are
taken either by force or free will on tourist visas across the border
to Greece, or sometimes to Italy.
The "pimps", or organisers, are usually local and known to the women, who give birth in hospital.
With the collusion of the doctor, pimp, lawyer and new family, the baby is claimed by the new "father" and registered as his.
The whole transaction costs about £18,000 and can take less than a week.
The women get about £2,000 for a girl and £10,000 for a boy.
Though the Romani people constitute the third largest ethnic group in Bulgaria, they suffer intense discrimination; politicians have been known to intentionally stoke this prejudice and incite violence against them for their own gain. This ugly discrimination means that a disproportionate number of Romani children end up in Bulgaria's state-run orphanages.
Two years ago, documentary filmmaker Kate Blewett took her cameras inside a Bulgarian orphanage for the disabled. The resulting film, Bulgaria's Abandoned Children, sparked an international outcry that echoed the dramatic response to Blewett's best known work, The Dying Rooms, the award-winning expose about China's abysmally neglectful institutions for children. Ultimately, the Bulgarian government was shamed into improving its treatment of disabled and mentally challenged children. The BBC has a follow up story here on some of the Bulgarian children seen in Blewett's film. The transformation in the children is amazing now that they are receiving actual care instead of state-sanctioned neglect and abuse.
Bulgaria maintains the appearance of international adoption program, but according to the Bulgarian NGO Vesta, in 2008 just 402 children were placed with foreign families. Vesta, which works to promote adoption and overall child welfare, makes a lot of information available on its website, much of it unintentionally discouraging. For example, it's unclear how many children live in Bulgarian orphanages, but it's clear that thousands of kids who should be designated as adoptable are not on the eligibility rolls and thus have no chance of ever having a family.
Looking at the total picture for children in Bulgaria, I feel incredibly frustrated and sad, for the problems in this struggling nation reflect the problems in so many countries:
a government unable/unwilling to address persistent trafficking problems
a government unable/unwilling to address the societal factors that undermine the stability of families
a government unable/unwilling to develop and promote a vigorous domestic adoption program for children in need
a government unable/unwilling to maintain an appropriate inter-country adoption program
People like Kate Blewett and groups like Vesta are thankfully making a difference -- but what can the rest of us do?
Thanks to Sara Dillon and her blog for pointing me toward the Kate Blewett story.
