Madonna is usually exhibit B when it comes to the alleged celebrity
adoption trend. (Can you guess exhibit A?) So much pop culture baggage is already attached to her public persona; when you factor in the baggage that goes with international adoption, she doesn't stand a chance.
Her Madgesty has been all over the news this week with her trip to Malawi to break ground on the Raising Malawi Girls Academy, a girls' boarding school modeled on Oprah Winfrey's South African school initiative. The star brought along her four children: 12-year-old daughter Lourdes, sons Rocco, 8, and David Banda, 4; and youngest daughter, Mercy James, 3. As the world knows, David and Mercy were adopted from Malawi, despite objections and unsuccessful court challenges from various activist groups. The south African nation does permit adoption by foreigners who live there, but in Madonna's case, residency requirements were waived.
According the the AP, Madonna and her children visited the Home of Hope orphanage where David once lived on Tuesday. The Sun reports that Madonna has recently arranged tutoring in the Chichewa language for David and Mercy, but this odd story claims that Home of Hope Director Lucy Chipeta said that David "remembers a few words" while "Mercy is a
real white girl" who can no longer speak her native language. (Most international adoptees lose their first language within four to six months if they don't have ongoing contact with a caregiver who is a native speaker of that language, so Mercy's loss is hardly unique.)
Over 500,000 Malawian children have lost at least one parent, placing them in the "social orphan" category. Both David and Mercy's first mothers are deceased, but both have fathers who are still living. Madonna has been criticized for adopting children who were not "true" orphans, though the children were living in institutions when she applied to adopt them. Critics believe she should have provided financial support to the fathers so that they could raise their children themselves. However, in Mercy's case, it appears that her father had no history of contact with her. According to US Magazine, Madonna will meet with the girl's father, James Kambewa, during this visit to "assure Mr. Kambewa that Mercy will not be delinked from her roots." Madonna and little David met with David's father, Yohanne Banda, on a previous visit.
I have a hard time working up any outrage about Madonna's choices, even though I can understand why others do. Would it have been better for her to adopt from a country with an established inter-country adoption program and to follow all of that country's regulations to the letter? Yes, I think so, but that doesn't mean she chose the path she did simply out of celebrity ego. Other Westerners have done the same when circumstances pointed them in that direction.
For example, journalist Neely Tucker and his wife adopted an infant girl from an orphanage in Zimbabwe while he was on assignment there. Their struggle to overcome the bureaucratic hurdles involved in a country that has no international adoption program whatsoever is chronicled in Neely's memoir, LOVE IN THE DRIEST SEASON. Tucker is white, so some would be tempted to attach labels like "neocolonialism" to the adoption, but in fact Tucker's wife Vita is African American. She was volunteering in the orphanage when an abandoned baby girl was brought in, weak and covered with hundreds of ant bites. The girl, Chipo, eventually became their adopted daughter. Were the Tuckers wrong to challenge Zimbabwe's laws and cultural norms? I suspect the folks who can't stand Madonna would say yes.
Madonna's image has always had a hard, brittle aspect, even back in her more corn-fed Boy Toy days; a lot people can't imagine her as caring or tender-hearted (especially if they've seen Truth or Dare). However, when I try to understand Madonna's unlikely path to adoptive motherhood, I always remember that she was once a little girl whose own mother died. She knows what it feels like to lose a parent, to be a motherless child, and I suspect that experience has driven most of her choices around adoption. Nobody but Madonna and her children can know the real story of their lives together, but I'm willing to cut her a little slack. She's maintaining David and Mercy's ties to Malawi. She is maintaining contact with their first families. She didn't change their names. She's promoting education and other development initiatives in Malawi. She's not letting preteen Lola party in NYC nightclubs like so many celebrity parents. She never badmouths her children's fathers in the press. I'll direct my outrage someplace else.
