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

Troubled by Adoption Tragedies, Part 1

 

I've been struggling for days, tying to figure out how to talk about the death of 13-year-old Hanna Williams.

This beautiful little girl and her younger brother came to the United States from Ethiopia in 2008 as the newly adopted children of Carri and Larry Williams. Now the Washington state couple, who also  have six biological children, have been charged with Hanna's death in a case of murder by abuse. Their surviving children have been removed from the home. News Channel 8 of Portland posted the probably cause affadavit online; I read it after dinner one night last week and then couldn't sleep.

Hanna died of starvation and hypothermia after being forced outside on a cold spring night, but she suffered at the hands of the Williams for years. She slept in a dark closet. She wasn't permitted to use the family's indoor bathrooms, but was forced to use an outhouse. She was beaten daily. Her hair was cut off. She was starved.

Carri Williams apparently told neighbors and friends that she didn't like Hanna, and couldn't stand to look at her "grumpy face," but claimed she loved the girl because it was her duty as a Christian. Friends suggested Williams consider finding a new home for Hanna and her brother, but she rejected the idea, claiming no one else would want such "awful" children.

The Williams apparently culled many of their "discipline techniques" from the controversial book To Train Up a Child, which some Amazon reviewers describe as a "manual of child abuse." The book's authors, evangelists Michael and Debi Pearl,  run an enterprise known as No Greater Joy Ministries. Hanna's death is not the first to be linked to their methods.

Hanna's murder is inherently sad and disgusting, but I think my despair is deepened by issues of concern around adoption that I can't really articulate. Most of the adoptive parents I know are thoughtful, caring and committed individuals who nurture their children beautifully. I feel lucky to know them. But every now and then I see or hear something in real life that makes me cringe -- like the divorcing couple who agree that neither of them wants their adopted child. The internationally adopted siblings who land in foster care after their new dad molests them. The email I receive from a friend asking if I can help find a new home for a couple of Ethiopian sisters whose adoption isn't working out. Hanna Williams' death falls at the extreme end of a troubling continuum of adoption tragedies that are weighing on my heart.

In my next post, I'll discuss what changes need to happen in the adoption world to better protect children like Hanna -- and what each of us needs to do.

Parenting: Talking with Kids about Homelessness and Race

 

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.

Updated: A Virtual Look Inside a Christian Conference on Orphan Care and Adoption

This post has been updated from its original version.

Last month's critical  article in The Nation on the evangelical Christian orphan care/adoption movement provoked a lot of hand-wringing in the blogosphere, both among concerned skeptics and observers who fear the movement truly is a dangerous crusade, as well as among Christians within the movement who felt the article misrepresented the spirit and intent of their efforts.

International Law Professor Sara Dillon found The Nation piece to be profoundly disappointing. On her blog All the Social Orphans, she writes:

 

In “The Evangelical Adoption Crusade” Joyce seeks to associate international adoption with a radical Christian right plot to steal the children of the developing world from their rightful homes……Her piece is so profoundly flawed, so dismissive of the facts, that it is hard to know where to begin...

While seemingly “progressive”, Joyce attempts to taint international adoption as a whole by linking it with a scary subculture of orphan-obsessed evangelicals. She provides no investigative data on the actual lives of children living out of family care around the world; she completely misreads the UNICEF perspective on international adoption; she uses a couple of anecdotes about particular people in the Christian orphan advocacy movement to stereotype and demean the motives of a vast array of social orphan advocates.

Amen!

Since the words "Christian" and "adoption" make a lot of people apoplectic when they appear in the same sentence, let me tell you where I stand: I am a Christian. However, I attend an Episcopal Church that is emphatically not evangelical and not  part of the broad orphan care movement. (There's a reason they call Episcopalians "The Frozen Chosen.")  I am deeply passionate about international child welfare issues, and I'm sure that stems in part from my faith, but at the same time, I'm as nervous about adoption for conversion or salvation's sake as your average atheist.

I've been investigating and evaluating the Christian orphan care phenomenon for the past year, and here's the bottom line for me: the Christian orphan care movement is the only place where a critical mass of ordinary citizens are engaged in addressing international child welfare issues and the global orphan crisis, and the rest of us need to pay attention. Also, there are a lot of thoughtful, intelligent people involved. Rather than assuming we know what this movement is about, anybody who cares about child welfare needs to approach with an open mind and seek common ground with these folks in our concern for the world's destitute children.

Today and tomorrow, the Christian Alliance for Orphans is holding its seventh annual Summit in Louisville, Kentucky. I've been dying to attend one of these events to see firsthand what really goes on, but logistics haven't worked out for me so far (and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the prospect of attending in person freaks me out a little bit, especially given the threat of exposure to Christian rock music, which is so not my thing.) However, thanks to the miracle of the internet, anybody who's curious about these conferences can easily get a virtual look. Here are some links where you can get learn more about the Summit happening now:

• Dan Cruver, a leading pastor in the movement and founder of the Together for Adoption conference, is liveblogging from Summit here.
• Go here to find out what kinds of topics are being discussed.
• Read a blogpost from Kristen Howerton of Rage Against the Minivan, who is leading a panel discussion about how busy moms can advocate for orphans.
  
• You can also check out the bios of the conference presenters. One notable speaker who seems to be popular on the orphan care circuit is Dr. Karyn Purvis, whose guidebook for adoptive parents called The Connected Child is widely read and recommended by secular professionals as well.

 

Infertile Muslim Parents Face Tough Choices, Including the Possibility of International Adoption

Religion News Service recently published an interesting story about the challenges facing infertile Muslim couples. Annie Snider writes that,

As scientific advances create more choices for couples trying to build families, Muslims face religious teachings that rule out many options available to other couples...

In 1980, just two years after the birth of Louise Brown, the world's first test-tube baby, a Sunni sheikh issued Islam's first fatwa, or religious edict, on in vitro fertilization. Assisted reproduction (artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization) was allowed, it said, but only with the husband and wife's own materials. That meant donor sperm, donor eggs and surrogacy were out.

Over the past 30 years, the ruling has been consistently upheld across Sunni Islam. A 1999 fatwa by a top Shiite cleric effectively permitted donor technologies, but Yale University medical anthropologist Marcia Inhorn said the bias against technological intervention runs strong among many Muslims.

Child adoption under Islam is widely misunderstood as impermissible, even though the prophet Muhammad was himself an orphan who was adopted by an uncle. According to Snider, Islam doesn't permit the adoption of children who have a living parent, but a permanent foster care arrangement, often set up among relatives, is possible.

The article doesn't discuss whether or not adoption of non-biologically related children is increasing in the Muslim community as a result of rising infertility rates, but it's interesting to note that Muslim children frequently do become available for international adoption in countries like India, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan, (generally without requirements that the child be raised Muslim). Several US agencies have recently begun touting a new international program in Morocco, though the Moroccan government requires parents to either be practicing Muslims or to sign a conversion document before a court notary while in country.