Continued from previous post...

Powerful stuff, huh? Here are my thoughts…

For one, I do not believe that this was a well-thought out or well-planned article. I believe it was a knee-jerk reaction by an adult adoptee from Africa, to all the outrageous coverage of Madonna and her trip to Malawi and her possible adoption. I have not read Hannah Pool’s book, but I am going to go out on a limb and guess that it has a very different tone to it than this article.

I think probably the biggest thing that we can learn from this article, is how important it is to try and get as much of the truth as possible for our children. It seems a lot of Pool’s anger comes from being lied to for a long time and for not knowing the truth about her first family.

The second thing that I think adoptive parents need to take from this is that children adopted internationally or domestically are not going to grow up and be thankful that we “saved” them, and we should not expect or want them to be. I have said it before and I will say it again…if your motivation in adoption is to “save” someone, than you should rethink your plans. Adoption is only the right thing if you have the true desire to parent, love, cherish, raise and care for…for better or for worse…a child that was not born to you.

Now all that being said, I feel that Pool makes a lot of gross generalizations and assumptions and stereotypes in this article.

For one, most adoptive parents are not Madonna. Most adoptive parents do not have piles of money to throw around, and on a whim, decide to adopt a “shiny new little baby” to show off to our friends. PLEASE.

Anyone who has been there done that, knows that the mountains of paperwork and the agony of the wait and the process and the worries about bonding and race and culture and on and on and on…make adoption a process that I believe very few people enter into lightly.

Most of the adoptive families I know have had to scrape together the money that they needed for their adoptions. We take out second mortgages, we do fundraisers, we apply for grants and low-interest loans, we ask family members to help, we pinch our pennies and worry where it will come from, but go forward anyway because we know what we are doing is right. Honestly, did any of you have the wad of cash you needed for your adoption just sitting around??

And, most of the adoptive parents I know did NOT choose to adopt from Africa because they wanted to save a child and wanted a “vanity project” (Pool’s words). While on some level most adoptive parents do understand or feel that by adopting their child or children they have given them a “better” life…a life with medical care, education, a safe home and most importantly, a forever family that loves them…most adoptive parents choose adoption because they have the true desire for a child. I don’t know a single adoptive parent that chose to go through the scrutiny and endless paperwork and stress and financial challenges of an adoption because of “Western White Guilt”.

For example, I can see and understand that for our daughter Belane, growing up in Ethiopia as an HIV+ orphan would be a very limited life for her. I understand that by us adopting her, she will have access to the best medical care and have the opportunity to live a long and full life. I understand that by adopting her she will not just be one of many children in a bustling orphanage, but will be a cherished member of a family. And yet we are not saving her. We are not adopting her for charity or because we felt bad for her. We are adopting her because when I saw her little face, I had an instant connection with her. We are adopting her because I knew in my heart that our souls are connected and she was meant to be with us. We are adopting her because we love her and we want her. She (like all of our children) is an unbelievable blessing to us.

My husband and I are the lucky ones.

And we believe in our hearts that adopting her is the best thing for her, and that is a conclusion that every adoptive parent must come to on their own. You must know and believe that it is the best option for the child you are adopting to be adopted by you.

I don’t know Madonna. I have no clue as to what her motives are in Malawi. I have no idea what she is doing or why, and therefore, I don’t have the right to judge her. However, I do believe that if some “unknown” person were to fly to a third world country and donate millions of dollars to the care of orphans and adopt a child themselves, that the media and world in general would not be having such a negative backlash about it all.

I take offense to Pool’s claim that us adoptive parents have our children to “show off”. How many threads have I posted on this blog in regards to how to handle all of the extra (UNWANTED) attention our families get when we are out in public? How many stupid, offensive and down-right rude comments have we had to take…?

Seriously….do you know how many times my sanity has been questioned because of my family? Do you know how many times I have been judged or faced opposition because of the make up of my family? Does anyone really think that being a transracial family in the US is easy or glamorous? If this is an attempt at a “vanity project” or showing off, I am failing miserably.

Pool states, “I am sick of the idea that adoption by white westerners is the best thing
for an African child.”

Well, I do not believe that adoption by white westerners is the best thing for all African children. I believe that Africa is a wonderful place and I wish that some of the values, beliefs, practices and attitudes that abound there were more prevalent here in the US. I would never suggest that an African child with a loving family would be better off in the US because they would have “more” in the material department.

And yet while, I absolutely stand firm that yes, as Pool stated, transracial adoption IS a “complex process”, and I have said time and time again that it is not a perfect plan for children and is not without its challenges, I do believe in my heart of hearts that it is the best possible option for many children, not just in Africa, but around the world.

I have stood in orphanages overflowing with children…children with no parents, no family at all able or willing to care for them. I have stood there while those children pulled on my shirt and my pants and my hair, calling at me, “Mommy! Mommy!” in a hopeful and heart-breaking way. I have held those children and given them few sparse moments of love and attention, and felt them claw on my neck to hold on for a few moments longer, and then fall on the floor and cry when I finally had to put them down and move on. Those children did not care that my skin was white. They did not care that I did not live in Africa. Their hearts ached for someone to claim them…someone to belong to….someone to love them, and hold them, and rock them, and feed them, and snuggle them and give them the time and attention that all kids needs and deserve.

It is heart breaking every time a child anywhere in the world loses their parents, their home and their family and ends up alone. And yes, when they are adopted internationally there is the added loss of being taken away from their birth country and culture. These losses should not be ignored or discounted.

Is adoption going to fix the many struggles regarding food and health and standard of living in Africa? Certainly not. Should getting all of Africa’s children into Western homes be the goal? Ahhhh, no. Should we all keep striving to find solutions to keep African parents alive and African families together? Heck yes!

But, what does Pool suggest is “right” for the millions of children out there RIGHT NOW, that have nothing? No parents, no family, no security, no hope for a future. Should they live their lives in an orphanage and then suffer through the life that is reality for a person with little education and no family in a third world country, just for the sake of remaining in Africa? I say no.

I say that for the children suffering right now…for the children longing to be loved right now…for the children in desperate need of medical attention right now…for the children facing a life without love and family right now…for those children, I say international adoption IS the best option. Perfect…no. Perfect for these kids would have been to be born into a healthy, stable family that was able to not only love them, but to feed them, educate them and live long enough to raise them. But that is not reality, and reality is rarely perfect. The world we live in is not cut and dry and is not one of nice, neat, easy solutions, and sometimes the best second option is as close as we can come to perfect.

So I think that it is important that we listen to what Hannah and other adult adoptees say and how they feel. Their experiences and feeling are real and cannot be discredited. We should learn from them…learn how our children might feel, learn how others out there feel about transracial adoption, learn what challenges we may face in our families.

And yet I hope and pray that these articles don’t scare potential adoptive parents off.

Because the reality is that there are millions of children right now that are waiting. Not waiting to be “saved”, but waiting to be loved.