Listening To Adult Adoptees: A Lesson For Adoptive Parents

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Adoptive parents are familiar with the difficulties of fielding intrusive comments, so why have they begun challenging and quizzing adopted adults?

Lydia sits down next to me and begins talking with an adoptive mother. Both Lydia and the woman’s eleven-year-old daughter are adopted from Korea. “What about the guys you date?” The mother asks, looking over the tops of her reading glasses. She raises her eyebrows. “Do you go out with Asians?”

Lydia freezes. Then she sighs and shrugs her shoulders, her expression so dramatic changes across her face like sunlight slipping behind a cloud.

The carpet beneath my feet seems to press upward, and I wish I could become part of the wall. It’s unintentional, of course, this mother thinks she is only asking appropriate questions, and that it’s OK to expect an adult adoptee to open up her life for her examination.

I'm older than dirt. And over the years, as a parent of Korean born-children, I’ve met my share of noisy questions, but today the tables are turned. Instead of the insensitive comments from strangers that trailed me when my kids were growing up, today the rude remarks and probing questions I hear asked, slip from the mouths of adoptive parents, and are directed towards adopted adults.

Read more at her site.... and www.terratrevor.com

Adoptive Mom prosecuted

Mom gets life in death of adopted son

Teen was beaten and bound

Updated: Thursday, 23 Dec 2010, 1:34 PM CST
Published : Thursday, 23 Dec 2010, 1:34 PM CST

MARSHALL, Texas (AP) - A Northeast Texas woman has been sentenced to life in prison over the 2008 starving and beating death of her adopted son.

The victim was 13-year-old Samuel Hudson.

A jury in Marshall deliberated nearly two hours Wednesday before convicting 47-year-old Cynthia Hudson of capital murder. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, so State District Judge Ralph Burgess sentenced Hudson to life in prison without parole.

Investigators say the teen was beaten and his hands and feet were bound with plastic zip ties.

The trial was moved to Harrison County due to extensive publicity about the case in Cass County

Comment UAI

Last decade more cases of violence and (sexual) abuse by adopters/adoptive parents are published. One of many extreme examples are the death of Korean Adoptees and Russian Children who where beaten to death or passed away after violent abuse. Also many adoptees who are becoming adults, tell about their cases of sexual abuse. It is 'strange and creates awkward' situations that the international adoption community, aware of this all, is keeping silent of these issues or trying to pretend that these issues are incidental. The same argument which people used for decades if not centuries to cover the abuse of children - also adoptees who where more afraid to report than others - by the clergy of the church. There still exist a huge taboo in the adoption-world to admit these practices as for real. In the meanwhile adoption still can be used as a portal for child-molesters or paedophiles without less or none control. while the home-studies do not provide a thorough check ups in these area. As long they do not have a criminal record many can adopt without have been questioned by professionals regarding this issue.

Those cases reported tot the Police in the Netherlands have not been taken seriously or where denied for investigation while many of these offences have been legally barred due to the timespan of the actual offence. It seems in the above case someone has to die before the authorities will act.

Adopted Children as Objects

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Adopted Kids as Guinea Pigs

If you've been hanging out here for a while you know I love research studies. It's part of my job, admittedly, but it goes much deeper than that. It's that geeky need for knowledge for knowledge's sake. I've admitted to being a research-based parent -- mother-instinct? phooey! Give me something empirical!

But this study, How can we boost IQs of “dull children”?: A late adoption study, bothers me. Here's the crux of it:

Our study contributes in a direct manner to the question of the extent to which environment, defined by the SES of adoptive parents, can alter the cognitive development of disadvantaged children after early childhood. Late adoption represents the only human situation that provides a scientific opportunity to conduct a methodological evaluation of the impact of a total change from a deprived environment to an enriched one.

What's bugging me about the study, I think, is that it really isn't about adoption. It's simply using adopted kids to prove some unrelated point about the malleability of IQ. At least in other studies where adopted kids are the guinea pigs, we're studying adoption, and hopefully coming up with a better understanding of adoption that will directly benefit the guinea pigs. Here, the adopted kids are merely instruments who happen to inhabit "the only human situation" that allows for a study of something unrelated to adoption. There's just something icky about that, to my mind.

UNICEF's effective attack on inter-country adoption

HOW ADOPTION PARENTS KEEP PUSHING FOR MORE (UNREGULATED) ADOPTIONS

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

NEW YORK, N.Y. — UNICEF has undergone worldwide scrutiny in regard to its position on inter-country adoption. And for good reason. Its position that a child’s birthplace and culture is superior to a stable
home in any other place or culture has had dire consequences on some adoptees around the world.

In recent months there’s been some effort on the part of UNICEF to temper some earlier pronouncements, but the fact remains that the organization is fundamentally misguided when it comes to inter-country
adoption.

UNICEF claims that international adoption robs children of their heritage and culture. The organization’s has staked out a firm position: children must be given to birth parents, regardless of the circumstance. In lieu of that, children should go to extended family. Next, to his or her “community.” Finally, domestic adoption should be explored. Inter-country adoption is “one of a range of options” according to UNCEF and should be turned to as a last resort. The organization goes so far as to claim that international adoption must
be “subsidiary” to in-country adoption, at all costs.

UNICEF declares that inter-country adoption “is not as a good as being raised in their families of origin but better than staying in orphanages.” That would make sense if the world was a perfect place and this Polly Anna viewpoint had any basis in reality. But that’s not the world, nor is it the reality of millions of orphans around the world. Shared DNA does not make for the best families, contrary to UNICEF’s claims. Children wind up eligible for adoption for myriad reasons, ranging from poverty to abuse to neglect.

In some cases, UNICEF’s positions border on racist. In a position paper on inter-country adoption the organization states, that every effort should be made to keep a child “within his ethnic group.” Huh?
Some vague notion about cultural ties should trump the basic human rights of children? For what end UNICEF does not say.

There’s a disconnect between UNICEF’s position and the welfare of children. Somewhere along the way the behemoth organization lost track of advocating for children and began abstracting the issue.

You can even hear it in the language used in the organization’s Innocenti Digest entitled “Impact of International Legal Standards and the Safeguards of The Best interest of the Child in Domestic and
Intercountry Adoption,” where “different stakeholders” in intercountry adoption are mentioned. Stakeholders? What about the children?

To promote its agenda, UNICEF points out that abuses have taken place with inter-country adoptions. They are right. They have. Just as they have and do with domestic adoptions, which UNICEF advocates. The
Hague Convention was developed to provide guidelines for inter-country adoption with the hope of reducing abuses of the system and reducing the risk for child trafficking and profiteering from orphans. This
issue so often raised by UNICEF is a canard. C’mon. Who isn’t against corruption and abuse?

What’s so disappointing about UNICEF’s position is that for years the organization has been a leader in child welfare around the world. The work that they do to help feed and immunize children is unimpeachable.
And perhaps this is the problem. The organization’s success in this area has jaundiced UNICEF’s view on adoption.

Arbitrary national borders on a map have become a greater priority to UNICEF than the complicated issues of placing children with safe, loving families wherever those families may be.

UNICEF has repeatedly stated that it prefers the expansion of social welfare programs for poor families within countries, so that children can stay in kinship groups. The practical outcome has been that
unparented children are being denied the best homes so that UNICEF can score cheap points in the international arena about the insufficient aid poor countries receive. The pawns here are the children.

Harvard Law School’s Elizabeth Bartholet, an adoptive parent herself and a well-regarded child advocate, has publicly stated that “international adoption is under siege,” largely because of UNICEF’s unrelenting assault on inter-country adoption.

In Batholet’s paper International Adoption: The Human Rights Position she writes, “Preferences for what UNICEF calls permanent family or foster care [in country] are dangerous. UNICEF’s argument is that such
care could preserve children’s birth and national heritage links. But foster care doesn’t exist as a meaningful option in most sending countries – unparented children are instead relegated to orphanages.
UNICEF wants foster care expanded, but denying children adoptive homes now because in the future foster care might exist is unfair to existing children.”

The influence of UNICEF on the world community cannot be overstated. It has used its reputation as a leader in children welfare to lobby countries, including the United States, to reduce the number of inter-country adoptions. The results have had dire consequences for children around the world. International adoptions have plummeted and most countries are now closed to American parents.

The dark and highly influential shadow that UNICEF has cast on intercountry adoption has left millions of children around the world stranded, without homes and without hope.

'Raising child not a matter of choice'

Richard Boas, an ophthalmologist from Connecticut, and his wife adopted a four-month-old baby girl from Korea 22 years ago.

"We had a sense of rescuing the child from the very uncertainty in Korea and doing a favor for her mother and for Korean society," Boas told The Korea Herald on his visit to Seoul last week.

Until a few years ago, he helped other Americans adopt foreign children.

However, it was in 2006 when he encountered his "own blind spot" that had bothered him over the years since his daughter's adoption.

While visiting Korea along with other social workers, he met a dozen of pregnant women, all unmarried and around 20 years old, at an adoption facility in Daegu.

"We were sitting around a table. They all had already agreed to give up their children.

"I realized that I had not validated a real woman, my daughter's natural mother who loved her child as much as I did and likely had to give up her daughter for adoption very painfully," he said.

Then, he began rethinking his activities promoting international adoption and decided to help unwed moms in Korea raise their children for themselves.

In 2008, he started the Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network, which is aimed at advocating the rights of the mothers and their children -- the nation's first of its kind.

Even though it has been just two years since the establishment, the KUMSN has already increased the visibility of the unwed moms' issue in Korean society. It has sponsored scholarly research and provided direct support for some women and children as well as agencies advocating them.

The 60-year-old American father is now called "godfather of Korean unwed moms" here.

"One of the most satisfying things is to share my story to brining up the issue of unwed moms and people started recognizing it," he said.

Many Koreans say it would be better for the kids of unwed mothers to be offered a better life through international or domestic adoption.

The nation's adoption rate also reflects an age-old mindset. According to the state-run Korean Women's Development Institute, nearly 70 percent of Korean unmarried mothers gave their children up for adoption in 2008, while the figure in the United States was only 1 percent.

He still thinks that adoption is needed and should be an option for vulnerable women. The situation in Haiti is an example, he said.

"However, Korea is a developed country with advanced democracy. Why does Korea see itself as an exception?"

The Hague Adoption Convention, an international resolution aimed at ensuring the best interests of adopted children, prioritizes birth mothers to raise their children over domestic and international adoption.

While some 70 nations in the world have already signed the agreement, Korea is one of few countries that are yet to join.

He pointed out that the nation's discussion on adoption is still superficial.

"Those who promote adoption think they are doing the right thing. I also used to have that mindset. However, at the root of it, there are mothers and kids that need support.

"I think it's a matter of simple mathematics. If more mothers raise their children, there's going to be less adoption, domestically and internationally," he said.

He also gave some encouragement to the unmarried pregnant women who still hesitate to bring their babies into the world.

"You are an individual who needs to live a life that you feel is best for you, a life of your choosing. And you have to determine your path. This would include woman's or couples' desire to raise a child.

"If you decide that you want to have your own child, I will say more power to you. There are people and resources out there that can help you." (jylee@heraldm.com)

By Lee Ji-yoon