International adoption
Sunday March 9, 2008
Saving the world, one child at a time
Our daughter Sharon has gone to Ethiopia to adopt her second child – a son for her, a grandson for us.
This is not her first international adoption. Three years ago, she adopted a little girl who had been abandoned at the entrance to a school for the blind.
Sharon called her Katherine; the Ethiopian orphanage had named her Rediet, which means “blessing.”
As I doting grandparent, I can affirm that her adoption has indeed been a blessing. Certainly for us. And, we trust, for her.
But international adoptions can be controversial. I know of two couples who got shaken down in India for several thousand extra dollars before they could get their child, even after paying all scheduled fees. Another couple told about completing all the paperwork, paying all the fees, but when they went to the Ukraine, they found that crooked authorities had substituted a different child.
It’s too easy for unscrupulous persons to take advantage of yearning parents-to-be. When you have your heart set on a child, you’ll pay almost anything – until you realize that you’re getting ripped off.
I hasten to say that none of this has happened to Sharon. Both Ethiopia and the Canadian agency, Canadian Advocates For the Adoption of Children (CAFAC), have been strictly aboveboard. There have been no hidden fees, no shakedowns, no last minute hitches.
But not everyone is that honorable.
Producing children for sale
Taken to an extreme, international adoptions could turn children into a commodity to be bought and sold, much as slaves used to be. Poor families could produce babies purely for sale to the highest bidder.
If impoverished parents can be persuaded – or hoodwinked – into selling a kidney for transplant to a wealthy white person, why not a baby?
Governments could see excess children as potential for profit. Madonna paid $3 to evade Malawi’s rule that prospective parents must live in the country for a year before adopting.
Malawi’s rule actually makes good sense. International aid workers can become deeply attached to stray children. The one-year rule honours family relationships over societal loss.
But rules can be broken, if the price is right.
The difference between adoption and slavery, as I see it, is the purchaser’s intentions. Adoption is for the good of the child – and in Canada, at least, a veritable army of social workers and government agencies monitors the child’s welfare.
I would guess that there is more chance of a naturally birthed Canadian child being abused or sexually exploited than an internationally adopted child.
Loss of culture
Yet there remains controversy about the merits of international adoption.
While she was in Ethiopia last time, Sharon chatted with a young Ethiopian couple. The husband, who had attended university in America, supported adoption: “It gives the child a chance he wouldn’t have otherwise.” The wife opposed it: “It robs the child of her cultural heritage.”
Their disagreement neatly encapsulates a multitude of learned papers.
I’ve given both perspectives considerable thought, as I have watched our granddaughter grow and develop. And while I have sympathy with the woman’s view, I find myself increasingly supporting her husband’s.
Because an infant does not have a culture. Not yet.
Culture is not bred into DNA. It is learned, absorbed, by living within that culture, by being immersed in it.
Ethiopia is a spectacular country, with its own unique language, a rich artistic tradition, and an illustrious religious heritage. Former emperor Haile Selassie claimed direct descent from biblical King Solomon. And the Church of St. Mary, in Axum, in the far north of the country, may preserve the original Ark of the Covenant that Moses built to house the Ten Commandments.
But a one-year-old knows nothing of that.
Katherine will grow up as Canadian as any child born in Canada. She has known no other culture – although she will, over time, be introduced to as much as possible about the land of her birth.
Is that a loss to her? I think it is more a loss to Ethiopia than to Katherine.
Killing culture
The child is not robbed of her culture; the culture is robbed of the child.
And that too, taken to an extreme, can become harmful. That’s essentially what happened in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools. The dominant European culture robbed native communities of all their children, attempting to raise them in a different culture.
The results, as we now know, were catastrophic.
What we don’t know, what we can never know, is what might have resulted from leaving those children in their home environment.
Ethiopia’s rate of infant mortality, for example, is 20 times higher than Canada’s, its per capita income 40 times lower. By international reckoning, Canada has near-universal literacy (although Canadian agencies estimate that 40 per cent of Canadians may be functionally illiterate); only one-third of Ethiopians qualify as literate. Canadians, on average, live 30 years longer than Ethiopians.
Under those circumstances, does remaining in one’s home culture outweigh the risks?
One child at a time
Obviously, exporting children to Canada is no solution. A long-term solution requires improving Ethiopia’s situation – economically, socially, environmentally – so that all children can benefit, rather than a select few.
But in the meantime…
A modern parable describes a mother and son strolling along a beach littered with starfish left behind by the receding tide. The boy starts flinging starfish back into deep water.
“What are you doing?” his mother asks.
“Saving the starfish,” he replies.
“But look how many there are,” says mother, pointing down the beach. “You can’t possibly save them all.”
The boy picks up another starfish.
“What difference will throwing one starfish back into the water make?” his mother persists.
“It makes a difference to this starfish,” he says.
Last year, CAFAC facilitated 80 Ethiopian adoptions. Obviously, that’s not a solution to poverty. But for each child, it will make a difference. Perhaps that’s enough.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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PROMOTION PLUGS
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