Madonna, Malawi and adoption madness - Los Angeles Times
Another great article. Here's an excerpt:
The concerns about Madonna's latest adoption request seem to focus on such superficial aspects as what she was wearing when she toured the orphanage, her wealth, her race and her celebrity. What difference could these things make when weighed against the reality of the life the little girl she sought to adopt might face if left in the orphanage?
The questions that should be asked -- "Does a viable alternative to the orphanage exist for this little girl in Malawi, and does it exist now? Is there someone there who is willing and able to give her the love and care that is needed by all children?" -- are subsumed by ridiculous snarking about clothes and statements about what Madonna "should" do instead of adopting this child.
Meanwhile, a flesh-and-blood child waits for someone to come to his or her senses and consider her legitimate and immediate needs.
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Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Well said.
My adoption agency director posted this on Facebook today:
International Adoption Editorial
Barbara Adde
February 19, 2009
I entered the world of parenthood much later than most.
At the age of 42, in a stark, unfamiliar orphanage in a small, poor town, not even a dot on the huge mass of land on a map of Russia, I had the great joy of handing a dark-eyed infant girl I had just met to my husband and introduced our daughter.
By the time she came home with us 3 months later, she had gone from stranger to dearly beloved daughter. By the time she was 2, she could repeat with me that Mommy and Daddy would always keep her "happy and healthy, safe and warm."
Julia, and 4 years later, our son Benjamin, have become the light of our lives. They are as different as the 2 continents they were born on -- Julia from Asia and Benjamin, with his blond hair and pale grey eyes, from just over the border Russia shares with Europe.
Julia at 7 reminds me of a cat -- feline grace, mysterious deep thoughts hidden behind sleepy eyes, only to open with a sunny smile. At 4, Ben is a happy-go-lucky puppy, bouncing everywhere, stopping only to eat (often) and get a pat on the head.
Somewhere along the way between Russia and now, they stopped being adopted and became a part of me. They are clearly etched into my chromosomes -- each on their own, of course -- their internal continental divide.
And so it is with great pain that I read stories of children stolen from their birth parents to be sold to Americans, so desperate to become parents, supposedly, that they will look away from what is happening.
Perhaps this is true in some places, and it absolutely needs to be stopped, but these stories are affecting the lives of the hundreds of thousands of true orphans who will lose their one chance to know a family, because the fear that is being created by these stories is all but stopping international adoption.
Has anyone writing these articles stopped to look in the many, many orphanages that exist around the world, looked in the eyes of the children whose childhoods are passing them by? These aren't someone's living warehouses, storage for future sales. These are children whose parents, for whatever reason -- poverty usually, illness, personal crises we don't know -- have handed their children to the State to raise. And the orphanage women who struggle to do their best to keep these children fed, clothed and housed with the limited resources available to them.
Some of the children in these Russian orphanages are visited by parents and extended family; these lucky ones are identified as not available for adoption. The majority are never visited. These children exist -- or as one orphanage director told us -- "they do not live, they survive" -- until the day they are released to the street, with no home, no family, no hope. No past to give them roots, no future to look forward to.
Julia and Ben were among these children. It scares me how close we came to missing them. In fact, any one of these children could have been the one assigned to us by the Russian Ministry of Education. So each one is in some way mine also. And I had to leave them behind, with no mother to hold and comfort them, as I hold and comfort Julia and Ben. It is impossible to forget the children I met there and the multitudes each represents.
We can't leave them behind because of misinformation and politics. Those children who are truly without parents and family deserve their chance for a happy childhood too. Being born in the right place and time should not be a prerequisite for knowing a parent's love.
I don't know why my daughter and son had to be born to other parents on the other side of the planet -- I don't really think there is an answer. I don't know if there an answer to the pain I can only imagine those parents must still feel from a decision they felt they had to make -- or the pain my children will one day learn when they truly understand what they lost very early in their lives.
But I do know that the four of us are a family, bonded for life by much more than the pieces of paper that transferred their lives to our care.
I hope that the many waiting children reach the arms of the parents who can keep them happy and healthy, safe and warm.
International Adoption Editorial
Barbara Adde
February 19, 2009
I entered the world of parenthood much later than most.
At the age of 42, in a stark, unfamiliar orphanage in a small, poor town, not even a dot on the huge mass of land on a map of Russia, I had the great joy of handing a dark-eyed infant girl I had just met to my husband and introduced our daughter.
By the time she came home with us 3 months later, she had gone from stranger to dearly beloved daughter. By the time she was 2, she could repeat with me that Mommy and Daddy would always keep her "happy and healthy, safe and warm."
Julia, and 4 years later, our son Benjamin, have become the light of our lives. They are as different as the 2 continents they were born on -- Julia from Asia and Benjamin, with his blond hair and pale grey eyes, from just over the border Russia shares with Europe.
Julia at 7 reminds me of a cat -- feline grace, mysterious deep thoughts hidden behind sleepy eyes, only to open with a sunny smile. At 4, Ben is a happy-go-lucky puppy, bouncing everywhere, stopping only to eat (often) and get a pat on the head.
Somewhere along the way between Russia and now, they stopped being adopted and became a part of me. They are clearly etched into my chromosomes -- each on their own, of course -- their internal continental divide.
And so it is with great pain that I read stories of children stolen from their birth parents to be sold to Americans, so desperate to become parents, supposedly, that they will look away from what is happening.
Perhaps this is true in some places, and it absolutely needs to be stopped, but these stories are affecting the lives of the hundreds of thousands of true orphans who will lose their one chance to know a family, because the fear that is being created by these stories is all but stopping international adoption.
Has anyone writing these articles stopped to look in the many, many orphanages that exist around the world, looked in the eyes of the children whose childhoods are passing them by? These aren't someone's living warehouses, storage for future sales. These are children whose parents, for whatever reason -- poverty usually, illness, personal crises we don't know -- have handed their children to the State to raise. And the orphanage women who struggle to do their best to keep these children fed, clothed and housed with the limited resources available to them.
Some of the children in these Russian orphanages are visited by parents and extended family; these lucky ones are identified as not available for adoption. The majority are never visited. These children exist -- or as one orphanage director told us -- "they do not live, they survive" -- until the day they are released to the street, with no home, no family, no hope. No past to give them roots, no future to look forward to.
Julia and Ben were among these children. It scares me how close we came to missing them. In fact, any one of these children could have been the one assigned to us by the Russian Ministry of Education. So each one is in some way mine also. And I had to leave them behind, with no mother to hold and comfort them, as I hold and comfort Julia and Ben. It is impossible to forget the children I met there and the multitudes each represents.
We can't leave them behind because of misinformation and politics. Those children who are truly without parents and family deserve their chance for a happy childhood too. Being born in the right place and time should not be a prerequisite for knowing a parent's love.
I don't know why my daughter and son had to be born to other parents on the other side of the planet -- I don't really think there is an answer. I don't know if there an answer to the pain I can only imagine those parents must still feel from a decision they felt they had to make -- or the pain my children will one day learn when they truly understand what they lost very early in their lives.
But I do know that the four of us are a family, bonded for life by much more than the pieces of paper that transferred their lives to our care.
I hope that the many waiting children reach the arms of the parents who can keep them happy and healthy, safe and warm.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Snowman pajamas!
Owen in his favorite snowman pajamas. He insists on wearing them every night, and he insists on wearing shoes with them to bed. The shoe thing is recent, and it's a bit of a regression -- in Vietnam and the first few weeks home, he wore his sandals to bed and would start to fret if he didn't have shoes on.
So, while he's going through the daycare transition...why not snowman pajamas and shoes to bed? How can I argue when he's smiling like that?
Show me your tears
Rough week, and it's only Wednesday.
Owen started full-time daycare on Monday. I want to believe it's getting better every day, but I think that's wishful thinking at this point.
The transition didn't go as planned. Two weeks ago, Ray started taking Owen to daycare for a few hours a day, gradually lengthening the time. We thought he'd only stay a few hours the first week and we'd increase the time the second week, but he was doing so well that he was staying through nap time by the end of the week.
Then, six days off. The second week, the provider and her kids got a terrible flu, and she closed from Monday through Thursday. So instead of five more days to get used to daycare, Owen went for one day, had the weekend with us, and then we dropped him off early on Monday, Ray's first day back after paternity leave.
Owen wasn't happy about this. I think it threw him to go so early, and the fact that Mommy and Daddy were both in the car for the drop-off, and clearly going somewhere together without him, was tough. He screamed and cried for a long time, the provider said.
Tuesday was a little better, she said, although he was hysterical when I left him. Today, he started crying as soon as we turned onto the provider's street, and was clinging to me and calling for me as I tried to hand him to the provider. It broke my heart.
When we pick him up in the evenings, we can hear him screaming from the driveway. The provider says it's because he sees us pull up, and he starts crying for me until I get in the house.
The provider is great, the setting is small -- only a few kids. I really have no worries about Owen's daycare. I think once we get over this hump, he's going to do great there. I think I found a good place for him.
But this first week...ugh. I feel like the worst mother in the world, walking away from him while he's holding his arms out and screaming for me to take him with me. I wonder if this is causing his little brain to recall, in some fashion, his first days at the orphanage, when he didn't know what was happening to him.
And now Ray is off in the morning to California for four days, throwing another monkey wrench in the transition. Owen will wake up tomorrow to find no Daddy in the house.
I feel like I'm asking an awful lot of the little guy these days.
Owen started full-time daycare on Monday. I want to believe it's getting better every day, but I think that's wishful thinking at this point.
The transition didn't go as planned. Two weeks ago, Ray started taking Owen to daycare for a few hours a day, gradually lengthening the time. We thought he'd only stay a few hours the first week and we'd increase the time the second week, but he was doing so well that he was staying through nap time by the end of the week.
Then, six days off. The second week, the provider and her kids got a terrible flu, and she closed from Monday through Thursday. So instead of five more days to get used to daycare, Owen went for one day, had the weekend with us, and then we dropped him off early on Monday, Ray's first day back after paternity leave.
Owen wasn't happy about this. I think it threw him to go so early, and the fact that Mommy and Daddy were both in the car for the drop-off, and clearly going somewhere together without him, was tough. He screamed and cried for a long time, the provider said.
Tuesday was a little better, she said, although he was hysterical when I left him. Today, he started crying as soon as we turned onto the provider's street, and was clinging to me and calling for me as I tried to hand him to the provider. It broke my heart.
When we pick him up in the evenings, we can hear him screaming from the driveway. The provider says it's because he sees us pull up, and he starts crying for me until I get in the house.
The provider is great, the setting is small -- only a few kids. I really have no worries about Owen's daycare. I think once we get over this hump, he's going to do great there. I think I found a good place for him.
But this first week...ugh. I feel like the worst mother in the world, walking away from him while he's holding his arms out and screaming for me to take him with me. I wonder if this is causing his little brain to recall, in some fashion, his first days at the orphanage, when he didn't know what was happening to him.
And now Ray is off in the morning to California for four days, throwing another monkey wrench in the transition. Owen will wake up tomorrow to find no Daddy in the house.
I feel like I'm asking an awful lot of the little guy these days.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Happy Year of the Ox
Owen at my adoption agency's new year's party on Saturday. Lots of good food, and it was great to see all the kids. I dressed Owen in his pinstripe suit, since I didn't buy him the traditional Vietnamese tunic and pants that many of the other boys were wearing. They all looked so handsome, I'll have to order one for next year.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Toto, I don't think we're in Vietnam anymore
First significant snowfall of the season. Owen played in it and caught snowflakes on his tongue.
He also made two tiny snowmen. Then he ate their heads.
He also made two tiny snowmen. Then he ate their heads.
Hatin' on the breeders
I had my court-appointed interview yesterday for the readoption. It came in the middle of a long day -- stressful day at work including giving a presentation, then rushing home for the interview, then heading back downtown for a working dinner.
The investigator was very nice, very personable. I really shouldn't complain.
But still.
I have never gotten used to the intrusiveness of the adoption process. I really hated having to answer so many personal questions, particularly about my relationship with Ray. I know we're doing this whole thing in a nontraditional way. So we're under more scrutiny even than a married couple. I know we have to 'splain ourselves to people appointed by the court who are only doing their jobs, and part of that job is looking out for the best interests of a child.
But still.
When breeders have to go through this kind of 3rd degree every time they pop a child into the world, I won't be so cranky.
The investigator was very nice, very personable. I really shouldn't complain.
But still.
I have never gotten used to the intrusiveness of the adoption process. I really hated having to answer so many personal questions, particularly about my relationship with Ray. I know we're doing this whole thing in a nontraditional way. So we're under more scrutiny even than a married couple. I know we have to 'splain ourselves to people appointed by the court who are only doing their jobs, and part of that job is looking out for the best interests of a child.
But still.
When breeders have to go through this kind of 3rd degree every time they pop a child into the world, I won't be so cranky.
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