In college I advocated for women’s right to choose if and when to become mothers. Now I am finding, a couple decades later, that much international adoption policy focuses on taking away a birth mother’s right to choose adoption.
For example, when Cambodia closed international adoptions, international adoption critics pointed to the subsequent decrease in babies abandoned at orphanages as a triumph. But taking choice away from birth moms is not something we should be celebrating. If we abolished adoption domestically, there would certainly be less abandoned babies because no one wants to doom their child to life in a state institution. But forcing a mom to raise a child when she would instead choose adoption if she could is not good for anyone.
European critics have snidely alleged that Americans would never adopt out our own babies to foreigners. But we do. Why? The data doesn’t say, but my guess is that the U.S. is probably the only country left where you can adopt (and then quickly take home) a newborn from abroad. You can adopt a newborn here because birth moms are empowered to choose the adoptive parents. They get to set certain rules and expectations regarding the adoption and the degree of openness and involvement. And they can do that here because of a thriving private adoption industry with very few regulations. There has been some criticism of this system, and it is possible that some regulation is needed. But what this system has accomplished that is incredibly important, is that it has empowered birth moms to make important decisions to further the best interests of their babies and themselves.
Opponents of international adoption like to imply that third world birth moms with adequate food and shelter would never voluntarily give up their children, and therefore we should focus all of our attention on poverty reduction programs. There are a couple big problems with this argument.
First, holding kids hostage to a futuristic social agenda is unconscionable. There are millions of unparented children who need homes RIGHT NOW. It is unacceptable to tell these children who could be adopted by families, “Your life may be destroyed, but we have a plan to efficiently allocate resources so that future generations won’t have so many problems.” And that’s assuming that this great socialist plan actually works. Unfortunately, very little in world history indicates that it would. Countless millions in foreign aid are distributed every year, and we still have hungry families, homeless people, and a great number of other social injustices in all the richest countries. So clearly, there is not enough to go around. This is not to say that we shouldn’t continue to try, but we certainly shouldn’t put a child’s right to be raised in a family on hold while we try to come up with a plan to end worldwide suffering.
Second, it is fundamentally racist to presume that women in third world countries would behave differently from women in first world countries, given the same set of circumstances and opportunities. I don’t see opponents arguing against the reality that birth moms in first world countries put their children up for adoption. Therefore, what they are really arguing is that women in third world countries are fundamentally “different.” This viewpoint reminds me of the “Noble Savage” myth, in which “native” people are idealized to the point of fetishism.
The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption specifically requires that placement options within birth countries must be exhausted before international adoption can be considered. But apparently birth moms around the world don’t share that value. What they do value is choosing families for their children. When international adoption policy doesn’t align with what birth moms want, policy makers should take note.
Photocredit: http://beautyandbedlam.com/thank-you-for-your-choice/
So it’s a dirt-poor mother’s “free choice” to sell her baby to the highest bidder then? And bying such babies rather than helping the mother is perfectly ethical?
Tarik – what is ACT? Provide a link. And as for the orphan number, some of these kids do live with a single parent, but there are many others who have 2 living parents, but who need to be adopted.
Birth parents should be free to decide to not raise their children, just as they are in the developed countries. Poverty is but one factor our of many for deciding to give your baby up for adoption. Others include youth, substance abuse, mental illess, dysfunctional families. Same reasons we have in developed countries. But more so, because poverty aggravates many of these factors and birth control is often not available at all. http://childrendeservefamilies.com/what-does-choice-mean-for-birth-moms/
I am consistently amazed by adoption opponents’ lack of compassion and willful denial of hard facts. But I realize that for many, it comes out of a place of hurt: being abandoned by one’s family and then being placed with an abusive family or a horribly mismatched family. It is too much bad luck. And the way that some of these adoptees cope with this is to construct a narrative in which they convince themselves that they were not willingly given up for adoption, and it was their big, bad adoptive parents that messed everything up.
Katie, it’s not “too much bad luck” that created our circumstances, it’s “a thriving private adoption industry with very few regulations”.
How many natural parents in “third world countries” would still choose adoption if they had the financial resources to feed and clothe their children without worry? The more dire their financial straits, the less “choice” they have, and greasing the wheels of the adoption machine makes it even worse. Suddenly one side of their “choice” (giving up their child) becomes much easier, and the other “choice” is still nearly impossible (raising their child with sufficient resources).
Instead of directing our financial resources to exorbitant agency fees, marketing and publicity plans for prospective adoptive parents, and tax credits for adoptive parents, for the purpose of removing children from their biological families, what if we used them to establish meaningful support systems and resources for parents who do not have financial advantages?
Of course, that’s not an acceptable option because for all too many, “helping” the struggling mother is only a worthy goal if you get something in return to satisfy your own needs….like her child. Solving the actual problems that cause families to be separated is just too cumbersome and time consuming, so we’ll take their children now and tell ourselves that rather than satisfying our own needs, the adoption was our contribution to “helping” these people. There are most certainly circumstances where adoption is a necessary, loving choice….but it is not NEARLY at the rate that adoptive parents would like it to be in order to facilitate the fast and easy adoptions they want (just take a look at any online forum for prospective adoptive parents, where people give out advice on which countries will let them take the children the soonest, cheapest, with the least amount of regulation….appalling).
And congratulations on your completely offensive portrayal of adoptees who fail to see adoption as all rainbows & unicorns. Clearly we are so psychologically weak that we are unable to realize and accept the facts of our conception and relinquishments without blaming our saintly adoptive parents, right? It couldn’t possibly be that there is an ACTUAL PROBLEM with the institution, it has to be the bitter, abnormal, “ungrateful” adoptee.
You are so misguided. The reason Feminism hasn’t supported family preservation is because they want our babies. Mothers that relinquish almost always don’t have a choice in the matter. There is no way to keep their child. Have you had a child and been coerced into surrendering your rights? Didn’t think so. Do some reading, please.
Mothers do not choose adoption from a place of power. They choose it in desperation, fear, and being made to feel “not good enough”. Rare is the mother who truly has no desire to raise her child!
As the adoptive parent of 4 now-young adults, I’ve learned a lot about adoption over the years. I’ve known, talked with, listened to, cried with, embraced many birth/first mothers, here and in Ethiopia. “Choice” is an extremely complicated word in international adoption especially. Way too many adoptions from Ethiopia and similar places are not based in the luxury of “choice,” but are the result of desperation and abject poverty. To me, a litmus test is: would the birth mother keep her child if she had the financial resources to do so? And indeed, how much might that amount of financial resources be, especially compared to what we spend here in the US for a nice meal out, or lawyers’ fees, or our cell phone bill?
My children, and many other adoptees, had happy childhoods and love their adoptive parents deeply. And they speak out against adoption as it currently practiced. I honor that. And I join them. Current adoption practice needs very serious overhauling. (CHIFF is not the right vehicle, by the way, to my mind.)
Adult adoptees’ voices have been very marginalized over the years. That needs to stop. Those who disagree with adoption are too quickly dismissed as angry and ungrateful, or taunted as having “big, bad adoptive parents.” Birth/parents actual voices are rarely included in discussions of adoption policy and practice–more often it is we adoptive parents who hold the microphone firmly. That also has to stop. Everyone deserves a place at the table. Adoption is only right when practiced with integrity and transparency, and that is simply not happening now.
*applause*
Thank you! This is spot on. Just because one speaks out against adoption doesn’t mean they’re bitter or had horrible adoptive parents. It just means they see the industry as it is. An industry in desperate need of reform.
Dear light of day stories – whoever you are … as a dispossessed parent (translate: ‘birth parent’ – however, we hate that industry term) … i say this – do you actually exist? 35 years i have waited to hear or read something like this from an adoptive parent. Very simple maths shows that American adoptive parents spend 2.3 BILLION dollars every year, to purchase, house, feed, clothe and educate the estimated 10,000 children each year that are ripped from their families in poverty stricken countries and transported to the USA. That is at a very conservative estimate of $10,000 a year per child to raise and $30,000 expenses to purchase. Every 20 years (the time it takes to raise a child to adulthood) America spends around $A27,000,000,000 (that’s $27 BILLION) removing children from perfectly good mothers & families who just happen to be living in war-torn or famine-stricken countries, so that adoptive parents in the USA can pretend that they are their parents. Often those in the original family have no concept of what ‘adoption’ is – it is so foreign to them they don’t even have a word in their language for it. And this article talks about choice???
The only people in this who have ‘choice’ are those who make a choice about how to spend their 27 billion. Now the question that must not be asked … What could be done for those same poverty-stricken, war-torn, famine-enduring families, if those American dollars were harnessed into direct aid to the families who are currently being targeted for child removal? Could 2.3 billion dollars a year ‘rescue’ more than 10,000 children a year that are currently being removed, with all the contingent heartache?
And that’s just America. Australia spends around $620,000,000 over a 20 year period to ‘rescue’ about 2,000 children through adoption-removal.
If adoptive parents around the world stopped “wanting” children and started “serving” children, with their western mega-bucks, the real problem would be close to solved. As it is, selecting one child here, one child there and transporting them to the west, exacerbates the problem – it rescues one at high price, leaving thousands to suffer.
Adoption is a disgusting, immoral waste of resources which properly managed could solve the problem of child poverty.
Speaking as the adult product of intercountry adoption from a country where choice was absolutely not an option – Ireland – and as a mother of loss in a forced, coerced Catholic adoption here in the US in 1978, I can say with absolute certainty that you have twisted the word “choice” willfully. You claim you are amazed by “adoption opponents’ lack of compassion and willful denial of hard facts,” yet provide no hard data of your own to support your assertion. CHIFF is definitely not the answer – fast-tracking, legalizing and providing incentives for what is essentially human trafficking is unacceptable and not in the best interests of children. It is simply making it easier to find children for people who desperately want them, rather than finding homes for children who desperately need them. If it were about the latter, no one would need to turn abroad to adopt, and we wouldn’t have more than 600,000 children in US care. I really grow rather sick and tired of those suffering from “white saviour” syndrome continually hijacking and re-writing our narrative. You don’t have that right. The hard facts are OUR hard facts, and I’d wager many of us have spent more years than you have examining and researching that data from every angle. Oh and for the record, the vast majority of us are not “adoption opponents”: we simply oppose adoption as a “solution” to infertility, and as a corrupt, unethical practice (largely the case today), rather than what it should be about. There’s a difference.
If the main reason that women, both here and in other countries, are choosing adoption instead of parenting is due to poverty, then that is the problem we need to address. In fact, it is unconscionable to simply accept that poverty and remove a human being from their country of origin, their genealogical history, and their family without first attempting to address the reason for doing so. By simply removing the person and putting them in a better financial situation, we do nothing to address the issues and doom the children and their families coming afterward to the same fate.
In the United States, only between 13,000 and 15,000 babies are given up for adoption annually. That isn’t a whole lot. Not surprisingly, most women do want to raise their own children. In Australia, their entire domestic adoption system has been completely overhauled. They have effectively abolished the most corrupt practices that are still alive and well in the United States. Australia’s domestic adoption rates have declined drastically because of this. This is not a bad thing. Women in other countries, 3rd world or otherwise, do want to raise their own children, not give them to strangers.
Now, as for the reason the US adopts out some of our children overseas, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that most of those children are not white. Yes, most people want their child to look similar to them and most people seeking to adopt in the US are white.
Your blog is about advocating for international adoption. You have demonstrated in this post that you are not educated about domestic infant adoption in the US. You refer to pre-birth matching as empowering for mothers, but the truth is that pre-birth matching opens mothers up to powerful coercive forces. You wrote that mothers can choose the level of openness in their adoptions, which is untrue. In the majority of US states, open adoptions are not legally enforceable and even in those that do have enforceable policies, the adopters need only to demonstrate that closing an adoption is in the best interest of the child.
You wrote, “When international adoption policy doesn’t align with what birth moms want, policy makers should take note.” While I am concerned with what mothers want for their children, perhaps we should be more concerned with what adult adoptees want. After all, these children we seek to adopt and remove from their countries and families will eventually become adults. A good place to start in reading other adult adoptees’ opinions on the matter is Land of Gazillion Adoptees. They are the voices I am most concerned with.
First, a pregnant woman considering adoption as an option for her child is NOT a birthmother. She’s an expectant mother. Please at least get the terminology correct.
Second, the women who become birthmoms in domestic infant adoption do not hold the power in any way shape or form. She chooses one of usually three options for parents for her child. Then has to hope those people are being honest when they tell her how open they are willing to be. Then she must pray every single day that she doesn’t offend the AP’s somehow so that they slam the door of communication in her face.
Third, as to your statement that “third world birthmoms” would or wouldn’t choose adoption. It has been shown time and time and time again that these women have their children stolen from them, or place them due to financial reasons. So yes providing financial help would basically eliminate the need for them to place. Same with women here in our own country. If financial consideration was never a factor in adoption (not a factor for the expectant mom or the hopeful adoptive parents) then the rate of adoptions would plummet drastically.
Sometimes adoption is what’s right. But more stories that I hear are of it being wrong or for the wrong reasons means something MUST be done to preserve families NOW.
The term “birthmom” is insulting, to begin with. Your whole post is a nauseating rationalization of rich people buying the children of poor people.
Wow. This really delivers an insight into the minds of those behind CHIFF.
Great comments above. I will just add that it an cost in the neighborhood of $60,000 or more to adopt a single child internationally. That amount of money could draw dozens of families out of poverty and provide much needed support services for substance abuse and mental illness. If given a MEANINGFUL choice between having the resources to parent or having to give up their baby, what do you think most of these parents will choose?
I’ll give you this, though, if there was ever any doubt that CHIFF was nothing more than a vehicle for the agenda of the evangelical adoption industry to keep the pipeline flowing, CHIFF supporters are doing a good job to lay those doubts to rest.
Seriously, what a tone-deaf, selfish, dangerous world view, justifying spending millions of dollars every year removing children from their families and home countries because their parents are too poor and/or sick to care for them. You’re better off sticking with the Orphan Crisis(tm) hysteria.
In addition to the great points others have made, there is the fact that the majority of “orphans”, particularly in African countries, actually have families who love them very much and visit them often, but simply can’t afford to raise them. And it has been made very clear in recent years, to anyone who bothers to pay attention, that when their children are adopted, these families have no understanding what that really means. Whether by omission or deliberate deception, these families don’t understand that adoption completely severs their connection with their children and there is a good chance they will never see them again. How, exactly, is that a “choice”?
Adoption as practiced in Western countries, is a bizzare and utterly illogical institution, completely out of the experience and understanding of most of the world. Only in a society where people feel unreasonably entitled would the belief that children are better severed from their families and taken by complete strangers who “want a child” flourish. Fake birth certificates/ownership papers and familial severing, rather protecting families and helping parents keep their children, are signs of a society that has gone desperately wrong somewhere.
The adoption system needs a massive overhaul and CHIFF is the opposite of fixing things
Hi Shea – please see my post a few lines above yours. The figures i give of 27 billion American dollars spent on international adoption, are VERY conservative. The real figure is probably double that, but I am being generous to those who spend on buying babies. Just giving you a little more ammunition.
I just hate it when women exploit women. To call this drivel moral relativism doesn’t begin to describe how odious and self serving it is.
Violence against women by women on behalf of women = adoption.
That’s why feminism doesn’t want to address it as an issue.
Perhaps you need to take a look at Rickie Solinger’s writing……you’re encouraging the exploitation of women. Not cool, not cool at all……whisking away children they may love dearly and want to parent. Talk about arrogance. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/rickie-solinger/beggars-and-choosers-2/
There is nothing more entertainingly absurd than watching white privileged women (and men) claiming to speak for Women of Color both here and abroad.But, after all, you’re already claiming to speak for bastards and birthers–that is, adoptees and their first parents.
And then to move “socialism” on to the discourse! Oh dear!
US adoption practice is an amalgamation of the worst aspects of capitalism and socialism, I can think of nothing more “socialistic” and “capitalistic” than marauding one’s way into a have-not country, extracting that country’s children” and then redistributing them to elite worthies of have countries in exchange for a lot of money and profit.. No doubt Trotsky and JP Morgan are clapping their hands in hell watching this play out.
International adoption is part of the larger globalist picture. Sorta the US outsourcing childbirth and citizenship. You make ‘em. We take ‘em. It’s the classic war between capital and labor. On this time the product is children, not Nikes or Pink hoodies.
Others have asked the question when is choice not a choice? Well, when it comes to adoption historically, it’s not. The term “choice” is a consumerist term for which we have liberal (not liberation) feminists to thank. “Choice” a marketing term created by an ad agency shortly after Roe to “soften” the abortion message. (There was a big difference between feminists and pro-abortion activists, which is another story) That consumerist term has come back to gut abortion rights and bite a lot of other people now.,
To argue “choice” in adoption is an insult to the many women who have had no choice domestically and internationally, Whether the issue is “you’re not bringing that little bastard home” or religious intolerance or debilitating poverty created by at-home and cross country Western neo-colonial policies and resource sucking, it comes down to no choice. Hint: Haiti once the gem of the New World is now the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere not because of an inability to create wealth but because of the tremendous ” reparations demanded by France–not paid off until the 1920s or 1930s–for the Revolution nearly 150 years earlier. Whether you like it or not, US families in international adoption are, in many cases, built on the miserable backs of the poor in other countries.
The money spent on international adoption, as Shea points out, could be used to keep large number of families in tact. It could be used to start up female-operate micro-businesses. It could be used to support in-place and new orphanages and foster-care systems that keep families together and in their culture.
With CHIFF, we again see those affected by adoption: adoptees, first parents, and the poor marginalized, whlle elites in Washington and in megachurches “speak” for us. Well, you and they don’t speak for us.
Reading your “About Katie Jay” page, it’s pretty clear you’re coming from the desperate point of view of someone who thinks she’s entitled to another woman’s child. Which is sort of a fundamental problem with many white American potential adopters. And this vantage point makes what your saying even that much more offensive. Big applause to all of the other commenters who took you to task. You clearly don’t get race or exploitation, and your entire post strikes me as anti-woman, anti-child, and anti-anything-nearing-ethical-adoption.
I live in australia where adoption is totally government regulated. The number of domestic adoptions for the whole country each year would not number 100. Why? because our social welfare system enable single parents who wish to parent to raise their child on an adequate income. Secondly all mothers who wish to relinquish are counselled on all their options regarding income, child care, housing etc. The extended family is also involved and if extended family are willing and able to raise the child then adoption is off the table. A relinquishing mother is presented with three profiles of approved prospective adoptive families and she can select one or ask for more profiles.. Both sets of parents only meet when the child is placed. The child is placed with foster parents at birth after the consents are signed and the mother has a month to change her mind. She can visit her baby as often as she wishes and can choose to take the baby home at any time. She receives no payment whatsoever from the adoptive parents so there is no financial coercion and no contact with the adoptive parents until the child is placed. The American system of domestic adoption is so exploitative of the vulnerable expectent mother as private agencies are operating for profit, even non profits need to place children to pay their expenses.
Photolistings of children available for adoption is a gross invasion of the child’s privacy and reduces them to a commodity. This is not permitted in Australia. Even international adoptive parents do not see a photo of their matched child until they have signed their acceptance.
I cannot believe that third world women want to place their children for adoption unless they are desperate and want their children to survive. If Americans really care about these children they would donate the adoption fees to the family so they could keep that child in their birth family and culture instead of feeling entitled to have that child experience all the losses adoption entails.
I have adopted internationally. My child was not an infant and had been in an impoverished rural orphanage for two years. We have attempted to locater her birth parents with no success. There are genuine orphans in the world who need families preferably in their own country first. I personally could not adopt a child who had known living parents or extended family who could raise that child with some financial help. I firmly belive in ethical adoptions with the best interests of the child paramount,. Adoption is not about saving a child from poverty or adopting them to convert them to Christianity.it is about finding a family for a child who genuinely needs one.
As a pyromaniac firefighter brandishing gasoline, you are very dangerous.
It might behoove you to know that the argument you make was also made by anti-abolitionists, namely, that releasing slaves into the general population was doing them a disservice; that they were “better off” on the plantation. That you might side on the wrong side of justice and morality for the sins of the society you live in is quite telling, and quite disturbing.
This of course brings us to the next point which is that you are egregiously mistaken in assuming that adoption historically is about family creation. Adoption stems historically speaking from indentured servitude, punishment of the poor, destruction of the Indigenous, the population needs of new colonies and thus colonialism, along with the racism/classism/and misogyny that goes with such ignoble ways of viewing fellow human beings.
That you might create an Orwellian inversion and describe this as “choice” for mothers targeted to lose their children is a disgusting and filthy lie. But you know this, so the only point in arguing this is for you to acknowledge all of the above and still, and still, put forth these arguments which are, in and of themselves, the very antithesis of what you claim they are. Adoption is a crime. Those who advocate for it are criminals.
From this point, the burden of proof is on you to prove that in the 100+ years that adoption has existed it has done anything to change any of the problems that you pretend to decry. Such tears from such crocodiles as yourself are really a waste of time for those of us activating for a better future for all to argue over. A 10% cut in the standard of living of prospective adopters would go much farther to save more children than adoption ever could. Why is this not an option?
The unheard families and communities of disinherited children are standing up to reclaim those children; adoptees are returning, rematriating to attempt to undo the damage those such as yourself wreak on this planet; mothers are coming out of their silence to denounce such coercive drivel. I dare you to truly advocate and activate on behalf of those you share the planet with. I dare you.
Others have made the points better than I am capable of doing, in my anger, at this moment. Your post is self-justifying, privileged drivel. I am a product of an interracial, international adoptive family, and there are lots of problems with the standard arguments reflexively made by all sorts of people, with all sorts of opinions on it. You, however, have managed to make nearly all of the stereotypical ones.
As a person who has lived in Cambodia for years, including during the period when adoptions were banned, and who continues to watch children sold, I’m particularly aggrieved by you callous and ignorant misuse of the Cambodian situation.
Gross.
Why are only poor women taking advantage of the great reproductive choice that relinquishing your child provides? Why don’t well off women chose to relinquish their infants?
Does anyone have a current email for Rickie Solinger? This blog post jolted me back to her book, Beggars and Choosers” in which she stated that the rhetoric of “choice” became a way to stop talking about rights, in this case the rights of all women to raise their own children free from hunger, war, in their own culture, etc. Adoption has a long history of robbing women of their agency: the Baby Scoop Era, the Magdalen laundries in Ireland, the contemporary practice of incredibly short or non-existant revocation periods and bait-and-switch unenforcible “open” adoption agreements. The idea that it’s racist to point out that the economic inequities in international adoption embody the theft of women’s agency is typical adoption industry double-speak. It’s not race, it’s class, there is a class of Choosers, and there is a class of Beggars. Choosers get the children of the Beggars.
Hopefully you are learning a lot from all theses posts. I notice you call yourself an ‘adoption reformer.’ Unfortunately, that is another bit of terminology that you are using incorrectly. You may be a smart woman, but you’ve stepped into an arena in which you are woefully uneducated.
Hopefully, you’ll go back to the drawing board. You have much to learn from the folks who have been ‘living this’ and working in ‘adoption reform’ for more years than you’ve been alive.
So it’s like the great elitist Katie Jay is giving women permission and the “right” to “choose” to cut off their right arm. Katie, wouldn’t you agree that cutting off an arm would hurt? Sure, women have a “right” to cut off their arm, but is it the right thing to do?” I hope you stay out of the countries you profess to care for. They really don’t need or want you. Why don’t you help resolve the already existing adoption trafficking problems instead of fervently making more?
Donate to organizations that help resolve and reconnect already separated families, like Against Child Trafficking.
This commentary is wrong on so many levels I’m lost on where to start. You obviously intend to argue on behalf of feminism to push your agenda. You don’t speak for me. There are milkions of women, fathers, children, misguided adoptive parents and the extended families of both that are aware of your fantasies. Maybe we are seeing this now because our cause is gaining serious traction? Thanks for the comfot, we needed that. Push on troops!