“People desperate to raise other people’s children can’t seriously be expected to make decisions based on what’s best for the kid.”

I’m sorry that you had a bad experience, and I want to be sensitive to that…yes, if you have an axe to grind, you’re entitled to it.

But to take your bad experience and act as though it gives you the right to smear every parent out there who has loved and raised “other people’s children” as their own…that’s just low. And WRONG. Four members of my own family are adopted and to hear you describe their parents that way offends me deeply.

And maybe I have an axe to grind, but so what. Adoptees are entitled to their axes, they earned ‘em like everyone else. The commodification of children is very real and exists in varying degrees across the adoption and fertility spectrum.

As I see it, informed consent in this context wouldn’t be limited to adults. Domestically, group homes and supportive foster care are two alternative solutions until consent is given. Children in divorce custody cases oftentimes are asked which parent they want to live with. Why is it ridiculous that children without current parents should be extended the same opportunity to weigh in on such a profound decision?

It’s disheartening when the experiences and perspectives of adoptees are so summarily dismissed, especially when they don’t conform to the “grateful” stereotype. That in itself is revealing.

occhiblu: excellent points.

Getting back to the story, thank you russian woman living abroad for the additional info. And thank you harpyness for writing about it. Interesting discussion.

http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/04/a-new-look-at-global-adoption

Swing by your local group home, folks. I doubt you will find many out-of-control youth signed over to the care of the state by adoptive families.

For whatever reasons. Which at this point, the rest of us know little about.

The mother may have felt that the child would be better off trying for another chance with a different, better-suited family. Which hopefully will be what happens.

To repeat, NO it’s not okay that she shoved him on a plane. But maybe what the local child welfare agency told her was the equivalent of “tough luck, he’s your problem now”, and that was her desperate, irrational response.

Mostly though, I’d rather postpone the tar-and-feathering until the facts are in.

I’m really not ok with this, especially the idea that we should automatically seize children born to women who use drugs during pregnancy (and what drugs would those be? An occasional glass of wine? Coffee? Or just the ones that more disadvantaged women tend to use?) Strengthening social services and making them more accessible to more people makes sense, so that these families can get help; punishing women and children who are already in difficult circumstances by tearing apart their families and sending children into a generally insufficient system really does not help anyone.

There are certainly times when children should be separated from their parents, but it really shouldn’t automatically be a first-and-forever step.

Not only is the consumer culture mindset a huge problem with some international adoptions, I think that the cultural narratives of ‘love is all you need’ and ‘families take care of their own’ combine dangerously in IA. People feel that all they need to do is have enough love, then all will be well. When that doesn’t happen, they feel that they need to handle everything on their own. When *that* doesn’t happen, you can end up with clusterfucks like this one, and people feeling like ‘oh, we’re not really a family because we can’t make it work.’ The long process of making it work is what makes a family – the vast majority of bio and adoptive families know this, but I think adoptive families can have a really hard time if they’re not prepared for problems with bonding.

And I cannot agree more about how much racism is involved in IA, but I hadn’t thought about how people will ignore the cultural transition issues with a white European kid that they’d pay attention to in an Asian kid.

Give me a fucking break. You obviously have a personal ax to grind, and you’re willing to be a total asshole while you do it. Your blanket characterization of parents of adopted children as “desperate” people who can’t possible care for any child who’s not genetically theirs is incredibly offensive—it’s purely nasty, judgmental and mean-spirited. It also sounds like you’re saying only biological parents are capable of being good parents; a two minute trip to your local family court will blow that assertion out of the water.

On the practical side of things, you also don’t make much sense either.

Since the vast majority of adopted children are adopted as babies or when very young, how exactly do you propose to get their informed consent?

And if you think only informed-consent-giving adults should be adopted, who do you think should raise children given up by their parents? Orphanages and foster care?

@Russian woman: Thanks for that comment–that’s way more concrete information than I’ve read in most news coverage of this story!