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The Problem with Global Adoption
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, November 10, 2008.
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International adoptions are steadily rising in the U.S., Canada and Europe. In 1995, around 22,000 children were adopted from developing countries. In 2006, that number swelled to just under 40,000. More than half of those kids were brought to homes here in the U.S. Behind those numbers is mounting evidence that some of those babies are not really orphans at all.
International adoptions can net between $15,000 and $35,000, a big incentive in countries where many live on less than a dollar a day. Corruption makes news when the boy Madonna adopts from Malawi turns out to have a father, or when authorities arrest aid workers boarding a planeload of Sudanese orphans bound for Paris - the children were actually from Chad, and most had families. But thousands of these transactions take place without scrutiny. Some governments are tightening up, but who wants to get in the way of parents pining for a child? Even if it turns out that they’ve been swindled.
E.J. Graff is assistant director at Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She wrote about what she calls the "myth of a world orphan crisis" in her article "The Lie We Love," which appears in Foreign Policy magazine. She joins Word of Mouth with more.
The Adoption Agency Checklist offers advice for prospective adoptive families on how to choose an adoption agency and reduce their chances of becoming victims of adoption fraud.
We also hear from an orphanage in Afghanistan, where the descendants of Genghis Kahn suffer for the warlord’s deeds hundreds of years ago. The decedents of Genghis Khan and his warriors are known as "hazaras" – and they make up one-fifth of the population of Afghanistan. The Taliban murdered tens of thousands of them in the 1990s, creating many orphans. More than 200 of those children are now cared for in an orphanage outside the city of Bamiyan, but that orphanage appears to be a victim of discrimination. Producer Will Everett filed this story for The World Vision Report. Click here to listen.
(Photo by real00)
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Word of Mouth is all about what's new. Online and on-air, the show looks at our fascinating and ever-changing world, and puts the latest ideas under a microscope. Word of Mouth investigates everything from science and technology, to health and the environment, to new trends in popular culture. The show airs Monday through Thursday at noon and is hosted by Virginia Prescott.
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Beyond the danger of receiving a child that already has a family, prospective parents should be aware of disorders that adoptive children suffer, especially when they come from international orphanages. Some suffer from attachment disorder, and while others may show no symptoms of physical or mental illness, their childhood traumas may manifest themselves later in life. A close friend of mine recently lost her cousin to murder; the killer was the girl's adopted brother, who had suffered from physical, mental, and sexual abuse before being adopted.