Mare's Mess

I’ve been extremely blessed by having two incredible kids who were adopted internationally. I used to be a big cheerleader for international adoption. But recently my views have begun to change. There have been quite a few contributing factors. Last year, the owners of a very well-respected adoption agency were charged with buying children from impoverished families in Cambodia and then creating fraudulent paperwork so that the U.S. government would view them as orphans and allow them to be adopted. There were also reports that this agency would send out representatives to the poorer areas of the country and convince families that they were humanitarians who would take their children to orphanages and feed them and care for them. The families were told they could come visit the children and take them back home whenever they wanted. But when families would come looking for their children, they were told that they had been adopted. This has been the most highly publicized case. I’m on several international adoption email lists and people often post links to news stories of uncovered baby buying rings in countries where international adoption is big business. Recently, in China a group who had kidnapped hundreds of babies was discovered by police and prosecuted. Since so many babies are abandoned in China (due to the one child policy), these criminals made arrangements with unethical local officials to find the "abandoned" babies in predetermined locations. Since they had been abandoned they were eligible to be adopted. There have been many similar reports from all over the world. The only motivation for crime like this is the huge amount of money generated by international adoption. U.S. citizens have not been able to adopt from Vietnam for over 2 years now because of corruption in the system. When the shutdown first happened, everyone feared that the orphanages would soon be full and overflowing. This has just not been the case by most reports. Other countries are still adopting, but the U.S. made up the lion’s share of international adoptions in Vietnam. The orphanages are definitely fuller than when Americans were still adopting, but it’s not been what would be expected considering how drastically adoptions have been cut. Interesting.


This has all caused me to become very jaded about international adoption, along with the fact that I’m aware of so many families who have been taken advantage of or lied to by agencies or their in-country representatives. Most international adoptions take place quite smoothly, but I’ve heard of horrible experiences some adoptive families have suffered. None, however, as horrible as the thought of children being ripped away from their families or families having their children taken from them.


Many people consider us a poster family for international adoption. If someone’s friend or family member is interested in adopting they are often told that they’ve got to talk to us. It’s an awkward position. People who come to me with questions about international adoption are usually people who have already been through devastating disappointments. They have then looked into domestic adoption and been discouraged by it. And now they have new hope through international adoption. How can I be so heartless as to tell them, "I got my great family through international adoption but I don’t think you should because I now have serious reservations about the social ramifications to the people of third world nations." And the kicker of it is that most children who are adopted internationally are legitimate orphans. Do I want to deny any of them a family? But, at the same time, do I want to continue to promote something that also leads to so much heartache and wrongdoing? I don’t know what the answer is, so when someone asks me about international adoption I just smile and answer their questions - but less enthusiastically than I used to.