Whatever Things Are True: the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful in the World of International Adoption

Celebrity Adoptive Parents and the PR Machine

 

You've heard the criticisms. Perhaps some of you out there have even made them: Celebrities adopt children from China and Africa as trendy accessories. They adopt because American kids aren't good enough. Or skinny screen goddesses adopt to preserve their perfect, surgically-enhanced figures. In fact, adoption is a rank expression of narcissism. And us regular folks who adopt internationally? We're guilty of it all, plus pathetically trying to be like Angelina.

Although I don't buy into the slurs, I have to confess, my favorite celebrity parents are the ones who keep their children out of the spotlight. For example, did you know that actor Ewan McGregor has an adopted daughter from Mongolia? Probably not. Then again, as famous as young Obi-Wan Kenobi may be, he can fly under the radar more easily than a mega-star parent like Madonna. You can't always tell who's being hounded by the paparazzi vs. who's courting them vs. whose kid isn't in the magazine because mom is no longer a hot tabloid commodity, but when I suspect that a celebrity is using her adopted child as a publicity ploy, it makes me uncomfortable on multiple levels. I don't like to feel judgmental about someone when I'm in no position to know the truth of their situation. I also don't want to see a child exploited, and more often than not, celebrity parenting stories just rub me the wrong way (even when they're not about adoption.)

Which brings me to actress Katherine Heigl. While I'm not a huge fan of her work, I love that she's one of those rare stars who speaks without a filter and frequently sticks her foot in her mouth. She may lean obnoxious at times, but she's always candid and never canned. She and her husband, singer-songwriter Josh Kelley, adopted their daughter Naleigh from South Korea in 2009. Heigl has been outspoken about the adoption, sharing that her wish to adopt a child was driven by the fact that her older sister, Meg, was also adopted from South Korea. Given that personal, lifelong connection to adoption, I've never had the sense that Heigl was milking her parenthood for publicity -- until I heard she and Kelley had opted to make their daughter the star of his latest music video.

I was prepared to hate the video for "Naleigh Moon" -- until I watched it. The song is a sweet homage to fatherhood, and suffused with love. In this brave new world of social media, where the Facebook timeline begins at birth, every parent, adoptive or not, is now forced to make tough choices about way they represent their children in media. I personally choose not to put my adopted children's images publicly on line; I think I would have made the same choice for biological children if I'd had them. Others feel differently. Some parents share out of love, some for less noble reasons, and in this way, the stars really are like us  -- although only a Hollywood mom wears heels and a Mad Men-style sheath to take her kid to the park. Check out the video below.

 

 

 

Washington Post: Born Abroad, Adopted Teens FInd Homes in Multiple Lands

Washington Post writer Tara Bahrampour reports on internationally adopted teens returning to their homelands to trace their roots. For some this means meeting with biological family members, for others just gaining a sense of place. The piece has a substantial discussion of birth searches:

 

Some adoptees, like Deanna, want to go deeper.

“They’re looking for their identity. They’re looking for someone who looks like them, they’re looking for why were they given up,” said Anna James, founder of International Adoption Search, which locates birth families, mostly in Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. “The truth is better than not knowing anything.”

James’s researchers go to birth mothers with photographs of their biological child and a letter from the adoptive family. The birth mothers are usually happy to be contacted, James said. Many gave up their children because they were not married or could not afford to keep them.

“They’ve spent all these years wondering what happened to them,” James said. “It’s kind of a relief to them to know that the child has been adopted into a loving home with all these opportunities.”

It is not always easy for adoptive parents to watch their children investigate a different life. “I guess I’ve had some mixed feelings over the years,” said her mother, Karen, whose reserved manner contrasts with Deanna’s effusive displays. “It wasn’t something that you expected to have happen. In international adoption, you don’t expect that you’re ever going to have the birth family be part of your life.”

But Deanna wouldn’t let it drop. “From the time that she was 4 years old, she was wondering about her birth family,” her father, Roger, recalled. “She would ask, did she ever have any brothers and sisters in Kazakhstan, what were they like and would it be possible to meet any of them?”

When Karen heard about James’s agency, the family decided to try it. Eight hundred dollars and 14 months later, they received a letter from a researcher. He had found Deanna’s birth mother, Maryam Sevastianova. A mother of eight, she sold cigarettes and beer out of a metal stall in a remote coal-mining town called Solonichka.

The researcher’s letter recounted how he had approached her in her metal stall and showed her photos of Deanna. Maryam later said that her brain registered that she was looking at one of her children. But she couldn’t figure out which one. As she realized who the child was, she began to sob.

You can read the complete story here.

Two Years After the Earthquake, the State of Haiti's Children: Not Everyone Agrees

 

Last week marked the two year anniversary of the tragic earthquake in Haiti. You probably caught some of the "What is the state of Haiti today?" stories, but here's a few more articles and posts that focus on the siutation for children in that struggling country.

Photographer Ron Haviv created a photo essay of current conditions for CNN.com:

 

He notes:

"What hits me the hardest whenever I’m in Haiti is how the majority of people are struggling against great odds to better their life and the lives of their children."

Haviv, a co-founder of the renowned VII photo agency, began covering the turmoil in Haiti in 1990. His trip in December focused on the country’s vulnerable children, who often end up targeted by human trafficking networks.

Haiti had about 350,000 orphans before the earthquake and as many as 1 million afterward, according to government estimates. Many had parents who gave them up because they were unable to care for them.

 

Meanwhile, UNICEF is claiming "victories" for Haitain children:

UNICEF Representative in Haiti Francoise Gruloos-Ackermans has no doubt that the situation facing children is slowly improving.

 "There is evidence of little victories everywhere, although serious gaps and inadequacies in Haiti’s basic governance structures remain," she said.

And with continued efforts, these victories offer the promise of lasting, meaningful progress – even surpassing pre-earthquake conditions.

 

The World Bank is also promoting a positive spin, claiming that close to half a million children have received post-earthquake tuition wavers through its programs -- but when you read the fine print, the number is actually 210,000, which is under a quarter million. The World Bank  also cites having provided 75,000 meals to children in the past two years and rebuilt an unnamed number of schools, and celebrates that nearly half of the earthquake debris has been cleared. (But doesn't that also mean that more than half of the wreckage remains after two years?!)

Meanwhile, German news network DW-WORLD.DE asks:

It's been two years since Haiti was devastated by a massive earthquake in which over 200,000 people were killed. Germans donated some 230 million euros in the wake of the disaster - what has become of this money?

On the adoption front, NBC News Correspondent Ron Allen produced a follow up video report on two little girls, Naika and Tia, who were among the more than 1,000 children airlifted to the US soon after the quake to have their adoptions completed here. (They're doing great, as one would hope.)

Over at Rage Against the Minivan, blogger Kristen Howerton posted Haitian Orphans: Two Years Later, Still UNICEF'd, a response to a piece from CBS News that you can view on her site.

Kristen was in Haiti when the earthquake hit, and she's the mother of a Haitian child who came home as part of the emergency airlift. She writes:

I am so disheartened that children in Haiti continue to suffer, and even more disheartened that children continue to suffer based on well-intended policies taken too far at the expense of those they intend to protect. If UNICEF is going to police adoption, then they should also police the conditions that children are living in. They should be working on reunification, and if that doesn't work, on a swift permanency plan. They should be locating the papers needed to move kids into permanent families, instead of setting up kids to be lifetime orphans. And if their policies are clearly leading to child neglect, they should be ashamed.

Two years later. Not good enough.

 

Two Tales from the Trenches of Foster Care and Adoption

 

I wanted to end my blog year on an inspiring note, with that story of the Cambodian girl who found happiness in adoption, but as always, the difficult news keeps coming, like this article about problems in the Ethiopia program that was just published in The Atlantic. Breaking that one down is more than I can handle two days before Christmas, so I'm going to have to come back to it. For now,  let me direct your end-of-year attention to two excellent guest posts on the US foster care system over at Rage Against the Minivan.

Kristen Howerton created a guest post series for her blog intended to spark empathy and understanding called What I Want You to Know, where readers share their personal stories. This week, two adoption-related posts appeared, and although they were written by different authors, they should really be read side by side. The first, called Adoption Infertility, was posted by a young military wife named Heather. She and her husband have been trying to adopt a hard-to-place child from foster care for almost two years, only to be thwarted by a social worker who doesn't approve of military families. In Heather's words,

 

The problems started almost immediately. Our social worker very clearly expressed her dislike of military families. After a very long, emotionally draining 18 month process (that “ideally” should have taken 3-4 months,) we became foster parents for our local county department and began the process to be matched with an available child. After being matched with a sweet 6 year old little boy, our social worker decided that since we were “transient” due to our active duty military status, she was going to deny us the possibility to continue the process to adopt. We could leave the program or take placements on a short term or respite basis. We chose to take short term placements and had almost 6 months of very rewarding foster parenting before we had to leave the program. We leave for our next duty station in South America next month and the door on adopting has been shut for us for at least the next two years.

 

And the 6-year-old boy Heather and her husband hoped to adopt? He has still not been matched with a permanent family.

In A Letter to Santa from a Foster Child,  LT of the blog I Was a Foster Kid, tells St. Nick:

 

You never came when I lived with Mr. Ri–on. He used to dress up like you and make us give him presents… except those presents made me feel gross or hurt me; although they made him feel good. Back then I just wanted ONE thing too … a safe home with people that didn’t use me or my little body.

You never came with I lived with the Stocktons. You came for their biokids, but I was just “the foster kid.” I even spent that Christmas day locked in the basement, away from their holiday family gathering. Back then I just wanted ONE thing too … a family that wanted “the foster kid.”

You never came when I lived on the streets. Sometimes I saw you walking down the street going to parties or restaurants or sitting in shopping malls. But you never saw me. Back then I just wanted ONE thing too… a home with people that cared about me.

Although my writing here at Whatever Things Are True is focused on international adoption issues, those two posts disturbed me such that I had to mention them. Our foster care system is broken.  Our international adoption system is broken too. But there are too many kids  in need -- here, there and everywhere -- for us to give up on the fixing. I can't help but ponder how so much time from so many spectators goes into pitting international adoption against adoption from foster care. My Christmas wish is for more of us to care about ALL kids who need families, wherever they are, and to actually  DO something. Here's a couple of small things you can do right now, in less time than it takes to wrap a present:

• Donate $5 to the Children's Rights campaign, a national adovocacy group working to reform US foster care
• Donate $5 to help fund the adoption of a little boy with Down's Syndrome who is currently housed in an Eastern European orphanage

 

 

 

 

A Teenage Adoptee from Cambodia Tells Her Story

Over at Huffington Post, a teenage girl adopted from Cambodia at the age of eight has shared her story of love, loss and healing. Lea S.'s father abandoned her,  her mother and her siblings. Soon after, her baby brother grew sick, and Lea's mother placed the boy for international adoption. After her mother's death, Lea lived with relatives, until her brother's adoptive parents unexpectedly found her and asked if she wanted to be adopted too. She did. Lea writes:

 

The first time I saw my new parents was in a hotel lobby. I told the translator that they had long noses. I didn’t know I was being rude; I just wasn’t used to seeing Caucasian people. I was really nervous around them. I think they were nervous too. I didn’t smile until we went to the hotel room and my new mom showed me the clothes she had brought me. My face lit up fast! We didn’t talk much because I didn’t know how to speak English, but she made flash cards with pictures to help us communicate.

The day we left Cambodia I was filled with emotions. I was eager, worried, upset, and confused because I didn’t know where we were going and I had never been on a plane before. All I remember about my trip was that I threw up for most of the 21-hour flight. It was like the plane was a gigantic sickening machine. It felt as though the trip would never end.

When we landed in the United States I was so ­happy. After we waited in a bunch of lines, we walked out of the airport. The air was a lot colder than in Cambodia. In the distance, I saw a strange man waving at us. He looked excited and happy. I ­also saw a little boy next to him. I knew immediately it was my brother. I didn’t act excited to see him ­because I was still feeling so sick from the plane, but I was really thrilled.

My new grandpa drove us to my new home. In the car I looked out the window and saw strange yet beautiful houses. I kept peeking at my brother. He was now three years old and looked so clean and healthy compared to the last time I had seen him. At that moment I knew that I was going to be happy again.

And that is where I am now. The nightmares have ended because of two wonderful people who adopted my brother Shane and me. Adjusting to life in the United States wasn’t easy, but getting adopted is the most beautiful feeling. Even though we are not related by blood, I knew from that first day that my dad and mom cared about me very much. They filled up all the holes in my heart.

Lea's story was originally published in the magazine Teen Ink.

Actress Sandra Oh and T.H.I.N.K. Urge Support for North Korean Refugee Adoption Act of 2011

The organization Topple Hunger in North Korea  (THINK) has found a celebrity spokeswoman in actress Sandra Oh. THINK recently launched the website thinkchildren.org to drum up support for the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act of 2011. Oh recently recorded a PSA for the group which urges viewers to go here to generate letters to Congress in support of the Act.

 

 

 

T.H.I.N.K. is a program organized by the Korean American Coalition to inform the public about famine and humanitarian issues in North Korea, and to increase civic participation in the Korean American community.

You can read the full text of the bill here. It reads in part:

 

SEC. 2. SENSE OF CONGRESS.

It is the sense of Congress that--

(1) thousands of North Korean children do not have families and are threatened with starvation and disease if they remain in North Korea or as stateless refugees in surrounding countries;

(2) thousands of United States citizens would welcome the opportunity to adopt North Korean orphans living outside North Korea as de jure or de facto stateless refugees; and

(3) the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security should make every effort to facilitate the immediate care, family reunification, and, if necessary and appropriate, the adoption of any eligible North Korean children living outside North Korea as de jure or de facto stateless refugees.

If you're interested in this issue, you might also want to read my post from last year, about terminally ill businessman Sam Han, a Korean adoptee who has been campaigning for passage of the bill via his charity, The Han-Schneider International Children's Foundation.

 

Adoptive Parents vs. UNICEF: the Latest Round

 

Earlier this week, Washington Times columnist Andrea Poe fired another round at UNICEF at The Red Thread blog. In "Why I Won't Buy UNICEF Holiday cards," she says:

UNICEF has been very successful in marketing its cards to unsuspecting Americans, who do not know about its stance against the world’s orphans finding permanent families in the U.S.  In fact, UNICEF rakes in about $16.8 million from sales of cards and related products, according to a United Nations report for 2010. 

In recent years, UNICEF has taken a radical position against orphans, insisting that life in the country of birth is always preferable than life with an adoptive family in another country even when that means children are condemned to orphanages.  So much for those handholding holiday cards.  Good-bye, one-ness.  Hello, border patrol.

 

Reader comments on the post are predictably divided, with many pointing out that UNICEF's policy papers support international adoption as a viable option for some children. Other readers insist we need look at UNICEF's actions, not its words.

One commenter in particular grabbed my attention. "An Adoptive Parent" wrote:

Most people don't realize that International adoptions to the US are down 60% over the last 6 years from about 23,000 children to 9,000.  However there are more and more children orphaned every year.  By Unicef's own estimate of the number of orphans grew from 132 Million in 2005 to 153 Million in 2009. 

I did a quick fact check (or, what counts a "quick" check, given how hard it is to navigate UNICEF's site) and I verified the 2009 statistic offered by the commenter here. I couldn't locate the 2005 statistic for comparison, even though I spent more than 30 minutes scanning UNICEF's 2005 report on the state of the world's children, which I downloaded as a PDF from this page. Yet I was struck by the 2005 report's warning of an explosive orphan crisis due to AIDS -- and found NO mention of domestic or international adoption as a solution for any children.

 

 

Parenting: Gratitude and Adoption, an Uneasy Mix

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.

 

 

Foreign adoptions by Americans plunge again | ajc.com

Associated Press: Foreign adoptions by Americans plunge again  | ajc.com.

Time Magazine Editorial: Kids' Movies Have Too Many Orphans!

illustration from Time.com

 

 

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.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2011/11/04/childrens-movies-have-too-many-orphans/#ixzz1d3BuqRkl

    

    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?