Rest in Peace

for my cousins who were taken away to soon
we know you're in a better place

we will miss you

adoption making headlines

...but for the wrong reason...

The latest frenzy over Madonna's adoption of the Malawian child caused me to ponder the reasons why people are so worked up about this. Is it because ...?

a) a white family is adopting an orphaned black baby,
b) an American expat is adopting an African child,
c) that an exorbitant amount of money was spent to execute the adoption,
d) that an African child is being removed from his native land,
e) that a celebrity as had the rules bent in her favor, or
f) all of the above (and some more)

Knowing full well, it's a combination of the above, I'll ignore the various permutations and will consider points A and E below. This isn't to say the others don't deserve attention, but these are the two most prominent views expressed in the British media at the moment, and the economist in me would like to simplify the model if she may.

A) a white family is adopting an orphaned black baby

In reality, there are two factors to be considered here -- race of the family and the child AND the age of the child to be adopted -- but my attention will only be to the former.

Frankly, I have no problem with any family of any race/ethnicity/color providing a loving home to a child in need. My own grandmother was orphaned at the age of 5, and with no relatives willing or able to take her in, she was raised by a well-to-do white woman in the southern-most town in Alabama in the 1920s. (Not a decade known for biracial adoptions, but this woman happened to find my granny abandoned in the property she owned.)

The wealth and race of that woman had both tremendous advantages and disadvantages for my grandmother. She was moved, overnight, out of a life of poverty and into a life of stability and relative comfort -- access to education, clean and neat clothing, regular meals, a room of her own. She'd previously been living in a one-room shack sharing a bed with her 11-yr-old uncle -- the two of them alone with no adult supervision or care.

But of course, in the 1920s, there weren't too many whites or blacks pleased with the idea of a white (and rich) woman taking in a poor black child -- especially one who she treated as her own daughter rather than a servant. So my grandmother was the target of a great deal of violence, bullying, and abuse. No one dared harm her so long as her new guardian was around, but the minute my grandmother was on her own, all hell broke loose. That said, were it not for her adoption, who knows what her fate would have been? I'm just grateful she was adopted by someone who gave her unconditional love. Could really care less what the woman looked like or what race she was.

I'm not saying there aren't valid reasons for us to worry about the cultural ties lost when a child of color is adopted by a white family, but are those reasons enough to deny a child the right to a family at all? I think not. (There is the obvious exception for cases when families intentionally try to reprogram minority children because they think the child's cultural ties are somehow inferior...I'm thinking of the case of Native children adopted by Mormon families in Utah years past.)

Enough on that point, let's move to the second big issue...

E) a celebrity has had the rules bent in her favor

Really? Wow, that's the first time this has happened!

Okay, I'm not really trying to be flippant about this one, but let's just have some perspective here. What government have you known NOT to give in to a special interest when the incentives and benefits are attractive enough? Are we really surprised by this one?

On the one hand, we should be concerned if policies and procedures weren't followed, regardless of who the adoptive parents are. On the other hand, it brings to light how complex and difficult and political adoptions can be. In the US, becoming a foster parent is a relative breeze, but adopting is damn near impossible in some cases. We have to strike the right balance between ensuring the child will go into a safe home (and not be trafficked, for example) versus making the process so difficult that otherwise good, willing families are turned off from trying to go through with it. Might this explain why quite a large number of families spend loads of money to adopt foreign babies? Surely there are other reasons as well, not the least of them socio-political and racial, but this too may well be one of them.

I fully intend to adopt when I am able to provide a good home to a child. My motivations are a bit selfish -- my granny was adopted, and she all but legally adopted me and my sister when our mother wasn't able to provide for us. Personally, I'd much rather adopt an older child and probably more than one. The children's birthplace won't matter much to me, but regardless, I'll do my best to raise them to realize their fullest potential.