Bashir,

Your writing reveals that you are indeed a good, kind and noble man. From my point of view, I cannot fault your argument.

Especially this - "Retrospectively looking at the event, I cannot but admire my father’s wisdom in following his parental inclination of no other love or material comfort ever equalling that of a father looking at his own child growing before his eyes and passing down to him his people’s culture and history. I wonder if my culture and my village would have a home in my heart if I were raised abroad."

I further wonder if you might not now hold the obvious compassion for humanity that you now express so eloquently.

Many thanks.

Great article.

Glad I read it, and I agree wholeheartedly with your' sentiment.

The current trend amongst American celebrities is really quite sick, and the US administration should really be legislating against this kind of rotten behaviour.

Why don't these people see the folly of this selfish spin on philanthropy?

The sentiment of the article is great. Always better to leave the kids within families and cultures where at all possible. The only problem with some war torn countries is that the villages are often pillaged and destroyed. Complex issues with no easy answer. It was a good point that Celebrities often neglect their own countries. It is more fashionable to be an overseas missionary these days than to be a missionary at home.

There are always two ways of seeing things. I remember watching TV with my young neice and a spoilt-cat-food ad came on straight after images of boney children in Ethiopia to which I responded "They should grind up all the cats and dogs and feed them to the starving children" whereas my neice replied "They should grind up the starving children and feed them to the dogs and cats".
Whatever, I'm sure I'd rather be a pet human than starving to death somewhere.
Botoom line; half the world is obese while the other half starves. Just goes to show what a greedy animal the human is.

Bashir

Your wisdom (and that of your father) is simply undeniable.

Adoption of African and Asian children by Westerners is about meeting the needs of the adopters, not the adoptee.

I know of such a couple personally, who are going to extraordinary efforts to adopt a child in Malaysia. They give me breathtaking reports of the progress they are making 'to become a family'.

To my deep shame - and though Bashir's view has long been my own - I keep my own counsel, and wish them well. I think, but do not say, 'If you really cared for those children, you would adopt the orphanage, and not a child."

They have profound needs, and it is easy for me (having kids of my own)to feel like I am taking the high moral ground. Perhaps I should just send them your article! Yes

Bashir,

While I agree with your sentiments, I don't think they apply universally.

For as long as there have been humans there have been orphans (you were not) requiring care. Families and states are not always able to fill that need. Did you see the footage of the Romanian orphanages? The condition those children were in defied belief. Who could seriously suggest children would be better off there rather than in a loving adopted family?

I agree there's something distasteful about wealthy people who put their careers above raising a family, found they missed the boat, and then want to go get a child from overseas. It's even more distasteful if done because it's the 'in' thing to do.

But I think we need to avoid the 'all adoption is bad' ideology that has pervaded social services in this country and take a more practical attitude. After all, many internationally adopted children may lose something, but they also gain an awful lot.

Bashir is on the money here -

but lets face it we in the west have commodified children - we are engineering the type we want when we have them and how we have them - and then there are those who can just fly of to some third world baby mart and shop around:

and woe betide any health practitoner who is involved in the delivery of a sub standard product - while there is no money back garauntee there is always a law suit to off set pain and suffering from what is usually bad luck - of course there is always the option of flushing the faulty ones away as well.

Well, I suppose I will be the first to respond to this as an adoptive mom of 3 children. 2 from Russia and 1 from China. First I will tell you that the orphanages were appalling. The care? they were given was minimal. My daughter had bruses on her legs where they would strap her to a potty to train her. 1 of my sons was mutilated in the care of his birth mom and weighed 16 # by the time we got him when he was 2 years old. The other has severe birth defects and as an adult would have been no more than a begger. But according to most of you I should not have gotten my children and stuck with the USA for kids where there is always the chance that birth mom or dad will suddenly show up? And the kids in foster care in the US are in MUCH better shape and have real hope for a future than the kids overseas. When we adopted each of our children we took as much as we could carry to donate to the orphanages (clothes, medicines, etc.) to try to help others. Not everyone who adopts internationally is made of money and this was all we could do. (Especially considering our Chinese daughter was paid for by putting a 2nd mortgage on our home.) Yes, I think the celebrities can certainly afford to do more than my family was able to do. Perhaps they did. There are a lot of little lives in this world that can be bettered. If you feel so strongly about people adopting American children, start looking at the horrible system there is in place which makes it so incredibly difficult to do! Adopting internationally was not easy but at least it was do-able. We started out to foster with the intent to adopt and were told by the agency that this was a poor thing to do as most kids ended up going back to their possibly abusive, etc. birth parents. No thank you!

Watching those Television adverts of children in deprived areas, made us think of sponsoring two children. We contacted the respective agencies and received all the information, seeing the pictures of these children and reading of their circumstances and environment, brought the reality of that other world out there to us.

However reading of basic needs in the villages, we took another approach and decided to contribute monthly through a secular charity to community needs in those villages.

JSV,

Great to hear your story. I think your children are infinitely better off and some of the luckiest children in the world :)

cheers

Adopt a village! I wish we had the resources. I would say all the adoptive parents I know are like JSV - not rich. Still all the adoptive parents I know support their child's family with money and gifts and/or sponsor children through WV etc, raise money for orphanages, etc.

Nothing in Mr Goth's article alarms, offends or threatens me. Yes as adopting parents we have a need but we would only want to adopt children who are genuinely orphaned or relinquished freely. Countries that are signatory to the Hague convention on international adoption are obliged to ensure this is the case.

I don't know about Malawi but the US have not signed the Hague convention on international adoption that outlaws buy babies - some argument about the constitution preventing any American from making a profit (most US adoptions of children o/s is facilitated by a private agent).

What annoys Australians adopting from overseas is the time. Our first adoption took 4 years. We are up to 4 1/2years waitng for the second. Compare that to celebrity adoptions.

And we are almost paying as much as the celebrities because government agencies charge $10 300 to apply and then full cost recovery for costs of assessing your application, migration sponsorship and visas, court costs, travel, foster care fees, agents fees etc. Its the orphanages that miss out on their cut except for any voluntary donation adoptive parents make.

Our child was relinquished for adoption when the father was killed in a car accident, the mother died and left a 16 year old to care for a 9 year old and 2 year old. Our child comes from a country where the average life expectancy is 45. We now have three daughters 1 here and 2 in our child's country of origin. Don't ask me why we can't bring the other 2 siblings to Australia - it will just make me angry again.