As the mother of a son adopted from Romania, I appreciate you publishing this article. Unfortunately, as in the case of Romania, it is not true that all these countries are now better able to take care of their abandoned children. Many officials just want to claim that they are. Adoption procedures should be transparent and encourage local families to adopt, but children do not have a shelf life. It is ironic as well as tragic that more barriers to international adoption and even local adoption are being erected at a time when all current research shows the devastating effects of a lack of parental bonding at every stage of a child's development.
SPONSORED BY:
Who Will Fill the Empty Cribs?
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
SPONSORED BY
In the vast majority of cases, however, foreign adoptions are successful. And for couples desperate to adopt, the shrinking pool of available children is frustrating. Some are turning to Africa, where AIDS, political instability and ethnic violence have taken their toll on families. In Kenya, adoption authorities say the recent upheaval has curtailed domestic adoptions, as parents wonder about each baby's ethnic origin. Celebrity adoptions like those by Madonna and Angelina Jolie have certainly raised the continent's profile. "Our phones were ringing off the hook with families saying, 'We want a baby girl that looks like Zahara'," says Cheryl Carter-Shotts, founder of Americans for African Adoptions, referring to the Ethiopian child whom Jolie adopted in 2005.
But interracial adoption, though increasingly accepted, still raises concerns in some circles. UNICEF has been a vocal proponent of keeping orphaned children in their home countries (next story). And many African countries, where extended families or tribes have traditionally taken in orphaned children, tend to be extremely wary of foreigners who show up to whisk off their young.
No one suggests that international adoption will solve the world's ills. But until societies are able or willing to tend to all the victims of their own fractured families, overseas adoptions can continue to serve an important function, sparing tens of thousands of youths from potential neglect, abandonment, danger and a childhood spent between gray walls. "My heart breaks when I think of the conditions at orphanages, of the fate that waits for these babies," says Olga Dereviagina, who cares for toddlers and babies at the infectious-diseases ward of Moscow's Tushinsky hospital. "I wish foreign parents would come in now and take all our babies to some beautiful, kind place, to warm, loving homes." That's what Porras and Milian and countless couples like them wish, too.
With Mike Elkin in Madrid, Anna Nemtsova in Moscow, Alexandra Polier in Nairobi, B. J. Lee in Seoul and bureau reports
© 2008
Discuss