Is it the shoddy American quality?

August 26, 2005 9:07 AM

Why fly halfway around the world to adopt a child?

Why would a couple fly around the world to another country where everyone is a different nationality to adopt a child? China, Russia, Thailand, Malaysia, etc. Is it cheaper? Easier? Faster? Is there an orphan shortage in America? Do cultural problems develop? I'm curious.

posted by clearlynuts to society & culture (35 comments total)

It's faster, for one.
posted by agregoli at 9:10 AM on August 26, 2005

I believe it also can be hard to find an infant in America, since the foster system often tries to keep a child with his/her biological parents or other relatives whenever possible--and adoptive parents often prefer getting a child as young as possible. Trying to find an infant through private channels (i.e. private agencies or ads in a paper) is probably harder and more costly in America than going to a true orphanage in a foreign country. Many couples also go to Eastern Europe because they want a caucasian baby, which can also be hard to find in America.

I hate to make a baby sound like a commodity, but in some cases I do believe that issues of age and skin color are a big concern. Just like with anything in life, some prospetive parents are probably eager to have a child no matter what, while others feel strongly about certain factors.
posted by handful of rain at 9:18 AM on August 26, 2005 [1 favorite]

Sometimes local kids don't match the furniture.

In other words, sometimes it isn't as hip to have a local baby as to have a Chinese one.

Before anyone yells at me though, I certainly don't think this is in any way universal, though I do believe it happens.
posted by Pollomacho at 9:20 AM on August 26, 2005

Not that many people give up their children for adoption in the United States. I am not passing judgment, but as your page title suggest, I think people often fear getting "damaged goods" if they adopt in the United States.
posted by missmerrymack at 9:22 AM on August 26, 2005

Let me hazard a guess. Many children up for adoption (in Canada, at least) are older and suffer from what was inflicted upon them by their natural parents, such as fetal alcohol syndrome. (Previously on MeFi.) Perhaps the local pool is less desirable -- culture shock may be easier to deal with than FAS or the after-effects of abuse.
posted by mcwetboy at 9:24 AM on August 26, 2005

I've always believed that it was out of a desire to help these kids out. Right or wrong, some people believe, for example, that a girl born in China is going to have a better life adopted into their family than left in a Chinse orphanage. I have friends who have adopted a Chinese girl for this very reason. I've heard of others wishing to adopt children from one country or another for similar reasons.

I don't think anyone adopts a child from another country to be "hip". That kind of statement misses the degree of commitment and responsibility required to adopt a child.
posted by jdroth at 9:30 AM on August 26, 2005

Some agencies that deal with international children allow parents to have a gender preference. Most in US won't do that anymore.

Do cultural problems develop? The short answer is yes. I have a friend working on a doctoral dissertation on this exact subject, so I'm aware the many sides of the issue but most experts agree there will be problems. It's hard to raise a third culture child when neither parent shares their culture of origin.
posted by wallaby at 9:31 AM on August 26, 2005 [1 favorite]

My aunt & uncle have adopted a few kids from China. Even though they're both pillars of their community, make a metric fuckpile of money, and have proven their parenting skills by raising three kids they created themselves, the paperwork to adopt an American kid is overwhelming. To the point where it's easier to go through the long distance adoption dance. So they got a pair from China who are growing up quite well.

It certainly isn't due to a shortage of kids in the American foster system, or a fear of "damaged goods".
posted by cmonkey at 9:31 AM on August 26, 2005 [1 favorite]

Oh, and I haven't noticed any cultural problems with my adopted cousins, they're turning out as well as any child can turn out.
posted by cmonkey at 9:34 AM on August 26, 2005

Ever since abortion was legalized, there's been an orphan shortage in the US.
posted by smackfu at 9:49 AM on August 26, 2005

I think that it's primarily the paperwork and the desire to help somebody out. Relatively few children are flatout put up for adoption in America these days. Definitely fewer than would fill the demand. Consequently, the DFS folks have designed the screening process for perspective parents to filter out lots of folks who would make fine parents.

Furthermore, many folks who adopt from elsewhere in the world see themselves as taking in an unwanted child from an unpleasant environment. They believe that they can provide the kid with a better life than it would have had wherever they started out.

Also: I know that in the gay community, it's essentially the only way to get a child. Even if a gay couple can find a child in America, it's almost guaranteed that the child will have been labeled as "less desireable"... severe health problems and/or emotional issues seem particularly common. Essentially, they get the kids nobody else wants.

I notice that lots of folks here have implied that wanting to choose the ethnicity, health, gender, and age of your child should be frowned upon. It seems to me that if I had the chance to select those things about my child, I most definitely would.

You don't have the genetic bond to the child that you would if you actually spawned it, so it seems vital that in its lieu, you have precisely what you wanted.
posted by Netzapper at 9:54 AM on August 26, 2005

My parents adopted a child from India in part because they felt like it was a way to help alleviate some of India's problems.
posted by aneel at 10:03 AM on August 26, 2005

There are a couple paths for adoption.

1) Older kids from the local orphanage/children's ministry/whatever. No waiting time. These are "special needs" children, requiring a greal deal of care, because they've typically been bouncing around the foster care system for many years and they're deeply distrusting of all adults.

2) Babies from the local orphanage/whatever. No special needs, cheap, waiting time can be six to eight years or more. Ouch.

3) Special needs kids. Birth defects, Down's, fetal alcohol syndrome, whatever. Few parents want to commit to this voluntarily.

4) Babies from overseas. Reasonably fast, expensive, but you can get a non-special needs infant before you're old and grey.

All of the alternatives involve quite a bit of paperwork - I don't think there's a real paperwork advantage for any of them.

Adoption illustrates the old adage: good, fast, cheap, pick any two. Good and cheap involves waiting eight years locally. Fast and good involves going overseas. Fast and cheap means caring for a special needs child.
posted by jellicle at 10:22 AM on August 26, 2005 [2 favorites]

Adoption in the US is difficult, prolonged, and infants are in great demand and rare that anyone actually gets to adopt an infant. International adoption appears to have plenty of babies to offer other countries as long as you have the money to pay the costs to speed the process. I have family that have adopted children from Russia at about $10k a pop.

Is it an urban myth or is it the truth that due to China's limit on the number of children a couple can have, they often give up female babies for adoption in hopes of trying again to get a male? I've never seen a male adopted chinese baby so I figured this close to the truth.
posted by mathowie at 10:29 AM on August 26, 2005

It's easier and cheaper and there are babies to be had.

Matt that is absolutely true, yes. There are tons of female babies available in China because they aren't as culturaly "valuable" as sons.
posted by glenwood at 10:39 AM on August 26, 2005

A lot of these responses are rubbing me the wrong way. Anyone who goes through the process of adopting, regardless of which route they take, has done an immense amount of research, given up every shred of their privacy, and never stops thinking about the process, regardless of how long it takes.

There are an endless number of reasons why someone might choose one route over another. Some people actually have objections to international adoption! Of those who have objections to domestic adoption, I find the number one reason is the fear of losing their child (i.e. the birth parent(s) seeking the return of their child at a later date).

Also many people have moral objections to foster-adopt. There are a number of reasons a child might be removed from a home, and many potential adopters don't feel it's their place to pass judgement on those birth parents by taking that child away from them permanently. My best friend in grade school lost a cousin that way. The child's single father was growing pot, she was removed from his custody, placed in foster care, and eventually adopted.
posted by peep at 10:42 AM on August 26, 2005 [1 favorite]

I don't think anyone adopts a child from another country to be "hip". That kind of statement misses the degree of commitment and responsibility required to adopt a child.

My statement has nothing to do with someone else's lack of commitment and responsibility. Someone who would adopt for the shallow reason of fad would however and I am fairly certain they exist.

As for Chinese orphans, yes, most are female due to the one child system and China's tradition of relying on boy children to care for aging parents. That does not mean that there are only girl children for adoption in China and I know several couples that have adopted Chinese boys.
posted by Pollomacho at 10:48 AM on August 26, 2005

I adopted my daughter from India in part because of domestic laws regarding open adoption, the ability of a mother in the US to change her mind at the last minute, problems with drug abuse and alcoholism (which, at the time, seemed less problematic in India), and a desire for my child to share my own sense of foreign "otherness" in the US.
I did not "fly halfway around the world" since she was delivered to LAX. It was more expensive than domestic adoption and took considerably longer.
She was undernourished when she arrived, but she had obviously been very well-cared for so I don't think I was necessarily doing anything "good" by adopting her (she was in an orphanage).
She's now a lovely young Valley Girl!
posted by johngumbo at 10:54 AM on August 26, 2005

peep is right. Read some blogs from people who are adopting internationally, foster-adopting, or adopting domestically, and you will see that every family has its own reason for adopting the way they do.

And Matt, the reason for the vast number of Chinese female babies available for adoption is linked to family policy in China. One daughter is fine, one daughter and one son is also fine (I think; my knowledge of the policy gets a bit muddied here), but if you have more than one daughter, there is a fine which has to be paid. The fine itself is fairly significant, and many families simply can't afford to pay it. There are occasionally Chinese boys for adoption, as Pollomacho pointed out.
posted by Felicity Rilke at 11:05 AM on August 26, 2005

I recall reading recently about a trend developing among European (Scandanavian in paticular, I think) families looking more and more to adopt black and hispanic American babies. Apparently this is happening for a lot of the non-monetary reasons US parents go to China or some other locale where the child may be "disadvantaged" in some way. I'll see if I can dig it up this afternoon.
posted by jaysus chris at 11:23 AM on August 26, 2005

This isn't exactly what I was thinking of but describes the "exporting" of American orphans...
posted by jaysus chris at 11:26 AM on August 26, 2005

We adopted from China last December. This is a fairly common question, although some people - not me - get fairly indignant when asked for their motivation for adopting internationally. We chose to adopt internationally because:
1) Every child deserves a family.
2) We really despise the U.S. adoption/social-work system.
3) We had no desire to possibly have a domestically-adopted child removed from us post-adoption, which does happen.

My mother has been a social worker most of her life (for both public and private agencies), and cannot say enough bad stuff about how poorly domestic adoptions are run.

Once we decided to skip the issues with domestic adoptions, we had to choose a country. Unfortunately, you must choose at the start of the process, since all the paperwork is country-specific. We chose China since I was a Chinese history major, and because Haiti (our first choice) was not yet open through the agency we wished to use. You cannot choose gender in the China program, though 90+% of the children placed are female.

All together, including the adoption trip to China (not a horrible burden, instead a life goal), the adoption cost us about $18K, although we are getting $10K of that back as tax credits. We paid no federal or state taxes last year due to Clio's adoption expenses, which I found strange, but pleasant.

She's doing great.
posted by Invoke at 11:55 AM on August 26, 2005 [1 favorite]

Birth parent preference and positive impressions of how their biological children will be treated in the US (or another country) or an agency's attitude toward an adoptive parent's home country probably play some role in attracting international adoptions. Regarding the "exporting" of American orphans mentioned by jaysus chris, I've come across news articles about black infants being adopted by Canadians that mention an impression - perhaps that of the agency, birth mother, or both - that such children are being adopted into a society that will treat them better, even if (or because?) they are seen as exotic/unusual.
posted by PY at 1:09 PM on August 26, 2005

Just a few of the great adoption blogs that offer many, many first-hand answers to these questions:

The Naked Ovary's Karen is waiting to hear from China about her daughter Maya;

Soper at Uterine Wars is in Kazakhstan with her Moonpie right now; and

Cole and Shannon at Peter's Cross Station just celebrated six months with their domestically-adopted daughter Nat.
posted by rdc at 1:25 PM on August 26, 2005

People adopt because they want to love and nurture a family.

Everyone thinks hard about their options when they choose adoption. When we decided we wanted to extend our family the choices were dictated to a degree by our circumstances - lesbian couple, one using wheelchair, the other an intelligent life form from another country - and we chose the route which gave us the best chance of success. We were deemed too gay and too gimpy for international adoption and we felt too inexperienced for foster-adoption which we would have dearly liked to do. We got great advice from an excellent agency, found a lawyer we liked a lot and learned to love the risks (fewer than you may think) and thrive on the advantages (more than you can imagine) of open adoption. About 16 months passed between the day we first talked to our lawyer to the day we took our son home.

I'm more than willing to acknowledge the fact that adoption is often, if not always, a manifestation of economic inequality but the problem of who is disadvantaged by the deal is very complex. In our case at least, I think everyone involved is better off.
posted by firstdrop at 2:05 PM on August 26, 2005 [1 favorite]

Overpopulation. There are enough kids in this world already that need a quality life. Since Russian babies have been mentioned, keep in mind that in countries with low birth rates, such as Russia, foreign adoptions are a problem.

a desire for my child to share my own sense of foreign "otherness" in the US
I share this desire, would want to adopt from overseas, and I'm not sure it is really necessary for me to have children, i.e. overpopulation.

but if you have more than one daughter, there is a fine which has to be paid.
Can you provide a source for this? The BBC or World News Tonight reported on how China has instituted benefits for having female babies at all levels.

I recall reading recently about a trend developing among European (Scandanavian in paticular, I think) families looking more and more to adopt black and hispanic American babies
There was a recent BBC story discussing this happenning in Canada, however that it is happenning with a very small number of children.
posted by scazza at 3:20 PM on August 26, 2005

Fascinating answers. Thanks for asking the question, clearlynuts!
posted by languagehat at 4:13 PM on August 26, 2005

Can you provide a source for this?
Sure.

Arthur E. Dewey, Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees and Migration Aug 2004: "The evidence drawn from these follow-on steps clearly showed us that the large fees and penalties for out-of-plan births assessed in implementing China's regulations are tantamount to coercion that leads to abortion."
link
posted by Invoke at 4:29 PM on August 26, 2005

Weird adoption laws could be a reason as well. Where I live (Ontario, Canada) adopted children's birth names are, in fact, serial numbers*, false and internationally UNaccepted birth certificates* are given, and it's next to impossible to actually make anything close to a binding open adoption contract.

If that matters to the parents then they'd have to complete the adoption in a freer country.

* seriously, I'm not joking about this. I'm living proof.
posted by shepd at 6:04 PM on August 26, 2005

I recall reading recently about a trend developing among European (Scandanavian in paticular, I think) families looking more and more to adopt black and hispanic American babies.

Yes, I have read about this too, particularly with regard to Canadians. Some say that organizations like the National Association of Black Social Workers have effectively stigmatized transracial adoption in the U.S. (The group called black-white adoptions "cultural suicide" awhile back.)

Congress passed the Multiethnic Placement Act in the mid 90s. This was intended to prohibit denying adoption based on race or nationality of the child or the adoptive parents. I don't think the act was wholly successful. Adoption agencies are still allowed to consider race as it affects the "best interests of the child." Conversely, some chid advocates say the act has stripped a necessary cultural sensitivity from the adoption process.

To the point, there are black children waiting to be adopted in this country. But, as others have pointed out, significant hurdles, not to mention the chance that the adoption will be overturned, dissuade many.
posted by Sully6 at 6:25 PM on August 26, 2005

what's wrong with waiting eight years? Isn't a child worth waiting for?

Or adopt a black baby. Anti-racism starts at home, in your head, in your conversations with your family, and it ain't an afterschool special. Suck it up.
posted by By The Grace of God at 8:15 PM on August 26, 2005

And in response to Sully - Black nationalism is part of the problem, too. We're trying to get to internationalism.

And, take the thousands you save not going overseas, and spend it getting a good lawyer to write you a good contract and mitigate the overturnment risk.
posted by By The Grace of God at 8:16 PM on August 26, 2005

Invoke: Your link doesn't provide a source for the two-daughers comment. In fact, it also says that there's a campaign to encourage parents to value having girls.
posted by duck at 9:50 PM on August 26, 2005

I would imagine that in addition to the other things mentioned already, there's a perception that when you adopt a kid from an orphanage in a developing country you're rescuing them to a greater extent than you are with a domestic adoption.

Yes, it's absolutely true that a life lived in foster-care in the US sucks, but does it suck as much as life in a Chinese orphanage? Whether it does or it doesn't, I'm sure common perception is no.
posted by duck at 9:53 PM on August 26, 2005

BTGoG, why should we have waited 8 years when we didn't have to? Why should we have gone to great lengths to legally sew everything up when we didn't have to? We should we have adopted domestically when we didn't want to? Why should we have had an open adoption when we emphatically didn't want one? For nationalism? As an anti-racist stance?

The simple fact is that every child needs a family, beyond that my wife and I don't care to get into a moral triage of history, racism and nationalism.

Duck: The issue isn't a greater fine for two girls, that is a misinterpretation of what is going on. Instead, it is a fine or forced abortion for more than one child in the city, or two in the country. Our in-country guides told us that most of the children we were adopting were likely second-daughters since our group was adopting from Jiangxi. It is a rural village a few hours away from Nanchang, where most families can get approval to have two children. The first is a girl ... keep her ... try again and get a girl, abandon her at the orphanage. Repeat. The campaign to value girls is partly the driver for this looser "two children sometimes" policy.
posted by Invoke at 10:03 PM on August 26, 2005