Adoption as the problem?

Ok, here I go again, wading into the current fray over international adoption...

I just read an interesting blog post over here. I don't agree with a lot of what the blogger writes, but I do agree with some of it.

One quote is "The adoption industry clings to their dogma — that they are “saving” children — tighter than ever, as if their lives depended on it." It is unclear who "their" is in the sentence, but I'm going to assume they mean the people in the adoption industry. In a sense, their lives do depend on continued adoption. As the blogger rightly states, adoption is an industry. I wish it weren't so, but it is. As a result, if all adoption stops, then the adoption industry dies. Is this a good thing?

It depends.

It depends on WHY the adoptions stop. If they stop because children are no longer in need of loving families that have the resources to raise their children, then GREAT. If adoptions stop because some person or entity decides that adoption is a bad thing, then that is WRONG!


Another argument the blogger makes is that the mere presence of orphanages encourages adoption. I'm not so sure I buy this. The blogger makes the statement that prior to the Korean war and the implementation of orphanges, that "accidental children and unwanted children were kept within the extended family and true orphans were taken in by monasteries as monks in training. So, they didn’t throw away their children and prior to adoption most children were taken care of internally by society."

The part of this statement I have a problem with is the last part "prior to adoption". What the blogger SHOULD have said is "prior to INTERNATIONAL adoption". The blogger doesn't seem to have a problem and in fact appears to want to return to domestic adoption. So, adoption, per se, isn't the problem in the eyes of the blogger, but INTERNATIONAL adoption. The blogger goes on to say "The adoption agencies’ method of helping Korea was not to provide aid to families, but to take children to families abroad who had more means and proper Christian ideals. "

In hindsight, I think many people will agree that this is not the ideal situation. However, at the end of the Korean war, our understanding about adoption, international adoption, interracial adoption, and transcultural adoptions were not what they are today. I think it would be better to look at the knowledge base at that time and judge the adoption agencies actions from that perspective. That is not to say that we should NOW ignore all of the information that we have learned. We should use what we know today to help Korea and other countries to meet their own needs. Many para-church organizations today are doing just that. However, international adoption still exists.

Unfortunately, I believe the blogger would like to believe that he/she was born into an idealistic world. The blogger states "No parents (my parents) would leave a child alone on the street, in the middle of the harsh Korean winter, if they hadn’t known Holt was there collecting children to send to magic lands where the streets were lined with gold." I find it difficult to believe that NO PARENTS would do this without Holt. It still happens today here in America and in China and in African nations. And it probably still happens in Korea.

The blogger also points out that many of the kids in orphanages in Korea are special needs orphans and questions why these kids are in orphanages rather than families. The blogger then goes on to point out that Korea has the resources to send 30 doctors to VietNam to perform surgeries for special needs kids but they don't do so in Korea. The blogger states "And Korea has plenty of money to [take care of the special needs kids]. But by setting up orphanages we tell Korea it’s okay to throw away the children you don’t want, to abandon the citizens who can’t defend themselves." I'm not sure why the blogger is angry at Holt for helping out and not angry at Korea for not taking care of their own. The anger is justified; I just believe it is misplaced.

The blogger goes on to say "Eliminating adoption would instead remove outside forces and allow this country to find its own balance and finally heal itself." That is a true statement. But how many children would suffer as a result? Is it worth 1 life? 10 lives? 100 lives? 1000 lives? for Korea to have time to figure this out on their own? What, if instead, Korea began to set up a means for cultural change (I don't know how at this time - governmental or faith-based approach) to eventually eliminate the need for orphanages? It can be done. It was done here in the US - though there are still orphanges here and many kids grow up in foster care. However, as far as I'm aware, the US does not do international adoption which seems to be the goal of the blogger.

The blogger then tackles the subject of support for unwed mothers. The blogger argues that the only support given is the strong encouragement to place their children for adoption. Admittedly, I don't know the prospects for a child of an unwed mother in Korea, however, the prospects for a child of an unwed mother in the US aren't that great - 27% of single mothers live in poverty. From another perspective "In 2007, children living in households headed by single mothers were more than five times as likely as children living in households headed by married parents to be living in poverty—42.9 percent compared with 8.5 percent." Given the propensity for single mother households to be living in poverty in the US (a land full of opportunity - mostly), does it make sense to support this solution? Maybe the dynamics of the Korean culture would be different enough from the US culture that with the proper support a single parent could be successful. Given what I have read here - I doubt it.

Finally, the blogger states "Adoption is NOT the best solution: giving a country true autonomy by discontinuing interventions which warp society is. Helping Korea return to family values and community values of uri nara is. Developing social services is. Preserving families is. Finding balance is. But you have to work at it. And you have to RESPECT people, have FAITH in humanity, and treat them with DIGNITY." I disagree and I think if the blogger really thinks about it, this isn't really what he/she means. The blogger's problem seems to be with INTERNATIONAL adoption rather than domestic adoption. That's fine with me.

The bottom line for me, like I said in this post, a child deserves to grow up in a loving family - not an institution. Because this is what happens after just five years in some institutions: Healing Rain