Choosing Adoption as an Eco-Friendly Family Planning Decision: A Personal Perspective
by Marni Fogelson-Teel, 11/08/11
Writing about choosing adoption as an eco-friendly decision is a touchy topic. I’ve thought about how to start this post for months: while I anxiously awaited to see the first picture of our daughter; while I lay in bed, jet-lagged but unable to sleep as the dogs and goats barked and bleeted at each other in the streets of Addis Ababa; and during the tortuously long weeks we waited for the U.S. Embassy to approve our daughter’s visa to enter into the United States. There were, of course, many reasons why we chose to adopt: the desire to be a multi-racial family, to give a home and a family to one of the 5 million children in Ethiopia who needed one, even an unexplained feeling since I was very young that adoption would be a part of my life. But truthfully, the environmental reason behind choosing adoption was a predominant one.
Your daughter is beautiful. My husband and I are just getting ready for the adoption journey. My whole life I knew I would adopt, and when I met my husband he was totally open to the idea as well. Like you guys, we said we would try for one and adopt one. We were lucky enough to have our biological son, and we hope we are lucky enough to bring home our next son or daughter. Ours we will be a domestic adoption due to finances, but nationality was not an issue for us anyhow.
No. Wrong. Adoption, especially international adoption (IA) is NOT eco-friendly. Why, if you are concerned about the environment would you adopt one of the 120,000 US children in American foster care who COULD be adopted?
Taking children from environments in which they would live out their lives with a very minimal foot print to an industrialized consumer-driven part of the world where they will use polluting transportation means (trains, planes & cars)… is the antithesis of eco-friendly.
Nor is it humanitarian. Taking children one at a time does nothing to ameliorate the poverty of their family, their village or nation. The tens of thousands of dollars spent on each adoption could be better spent digging wells to provide water, building schools, or buying medications that save lives. Additionally when people spend an av. of $40k per child, they are diminishing the possibilities of national within such countries to compete and be able to adopt their own, and keep children in their natural culture and language.
Additionally IA is far too often corrupt. Children in Asia, So & Ventral America, and Africa are kidnapped and stolen to meet a demand. 90% of children in orphanages worldwide are not orphans but have at least one living parent and/or extended family planning to reunite their family as was the case with the two children Madonna adopted. Many such people have no concept of permanent adoption of their children.
People all over the world are exploited for their ignorance, asked to sign papers they cannot read; told their children are going to the US Europe of an education.
In nations that have ceased IA because of corruption, the number of allegedly “abandoned” babies dropped to almost zero. When adoptions were resumed, the number of said “abandoned” babies rose back up again to meet the demand!
READ:
Orphaned or Stolen: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/schuster-institute-for-investigative-journalism/orphaned-or-stolen-the-us_b_825451.html
Duped by Indian adoption agency, US family cautions couples. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/Duped-by-Indian-adoption-agency-US-family-cautions-couples/articleshow/5964751.cms
Read Julia Rollings story at: http://bittersweet-story.blogspot.com/
Read also: The Lie We Love by E.J.Graff http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/12/11/the-lie-we-love
The works of David Smolin on child trafficking: works.bepress.com/david_smolin/1/
Re China, read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/nyregion/chinas-adoption-scandal-sends-chills-through-families-in-united-states.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/adoption-stories/200909/la-times-chinese-babies-stolen-foreign-adoption
http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/5824/
http://ouradopt.com/adoption-blog/jan-2009/juliafuller/was-baby-you-adopted-china-stolen-or-purchased
Re Ethiopia: http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/2010/05/must-see-video-news-report-about-child.html
http://www.ethicanet.org/ethiopia-to-cut-foreign-adoptions-by-up-to-90-percent
Thank you for your comments. As always, dialogue is best. To respond to some of your comments:
Our decision not to adopt through the foster system was a complicated and personal one. I don’t feel it’s necessary to justify my reasoning to you, but I will say this: everyone has a certain level of comfort and capability regarding their parenting. I do not personally feel that I could adequately parent an older child who had been moved from home to home. We also had to keep in mind the needs of our own son, who would not do well with a child (or children) being placed in our home and then moved out after a length of time. While fostering a child is a wonderful option that we hope to explore when our children are older, it was also not the right time for us logistically-we moved halfway through the adoption process, so we did not feel comfortable starting the fostering process and then moving to another state. I also did not feel prepared to parent a child and then have them possibly taken away; it is my understanding and the experience of several friends that it can be extremely difficult to adopt a child within the foster system.
Regarding whether it is eco-friendly, you are right. Had my daughter remained in the orphanage system, she would not have used many resources and would have had a minimal footprint. She would likely never have gone to school or ridden any form of transportation, public or private. She also would likely have died before she reached adolescence, which is what happens to many of these orphans in Ethiopia. The adoption program in Ethiopia is relatively new and definitely did not create the millions of orphans that currently exist in Ethiopia. Although our daughter will be raised in an industrialized nation, we will always strive to teach her our environmental ideals and encourage her to have a small footprint.
Regarding the humanitarian issue: the aim of our adoption was to expand our family and to give our daughter a wonderful life. Maybe we didn’t change the poverty of her village or her nation, but we changed her life and will give her a better one. I don’t feel that it is my personal responsibility to save a country or even a village, though our family has been involved and will continue to be involved with humanitarian efforts in several places in the world. To say that we did “nothing” is to completely discount the value of her life.
Regarding the costs of adoption: I don’t think it is any of your business how I spend my money. Would you tell someone who was spending $40,000 on IVF or other reproductive services that their money would be better spend digging wells or building schools? And regarding people adopting children within their own country, the rules, regulations, and costs are NOT the same as they are for international adoptions. Many of us who have adopted (I would say the majority of us) have a deeper, more vested interest (financial and emotional) in these countries. We have traveled there, met the people, etc: we are much more likely to build those schools and dig those wells that you wrote of, because we saw and experienced it with our own eyes. I think few of us have the “grab a child and bring them back to an industrialized nation and then corrupt them with our Western ideals” perspective that you seem to believe are so pervasive. Personally, I am committed to preserving her language and culture as much as possible: one of the reasons we moved to our specific neighborhood was because of the large Ethiopian population here. We are also committed to spending time in her country throughout her life.
I would love for each country to be able to provide for their own children, and I applaud the efforts that are made regarding family planning as well as family support. But it simply is not possible in ever case. In the cases of several Ethiopian children who were adopted that I personally know, a mother tried to give her child up for adoption, was given funds to make it more financially viable to keep her family together, and eventually still chose to give up her child for adoption. The staggering number of people living in poverty in Ethiopia makes it impossible for them to care for their children. And let me also say that children with special needs are often completely shunned (if not outright killed) in many foreign countries.
Corruption is a problem in international adoption, but I don’t think that shutting down adoptions completely is the answer. We have to be honest with the fact that some of these children are simply not wanted by their birth parents (or extended relatives) or that their birth parents are unable to take care of them. In the United States, when someone gives up their child for adoption, it may because they were too young, too unprepared, or simply do not want to be a parent. We cannot pretend that these same reasons don’t exist in other countries.
I agree that it is completely unethical to have illiterate people sign papers and to exploit people for their ignorance, and many adoptive parents are working hard to make the process as ethical as possible right now. But I can assure you from personal experience that for some of these birth mothers, this is what they want for their children. I have seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. Not everyone is being hoodwinked-some know exactly what they are doing and have chosen to give their child up for an adoption because it is a chance for them to have a better life.
Finally, regarding the nations that have ceased IA because of corruption and have had their orphan problem disappear, I would be interested in knowing the specific countries you are referring to. I am aware of several countries in Eastern Europe that ceased IA and now have A) a huge population of institutionalized kids who are not given proper attention, nutrition, or social interaction and B)a growing problem of orphans who become “of age” and have no supports or families.
I strongly believe that IA can be made more ethical, more transparent, and also that we should help find ways to keep families together, regardless of the country in which they reside. Here’s to hoping that, despite feeling differently about international adoption, our passions will both lead us on a path to advocating for the children who so desperately need it.