Many individuals who adopted in the name of their religion have vibrant, happily integrated families. However, religiosity does provides a cover of moral legitimacy that often discourages scrutiny of organizations or individuals. Adoption agencies are not legally required to be accredited, and many faith-based agencies are not. Only organizations are accredited per international standards of the roughly 3, agencies that perform adoption services in the United States.
Central to this issue is the white-savior industrial complex, a term coined by notable author and activist Teju Cole.
Children are stripped of their culture and forced to adapt to Western norms overnight, and face dire consequences when they cannot conform. Individuals have relayed being severely disciplined for hesitating to eat unfamiliar foods, not adapting to American norms for eye contact quickly enough, and for speaking their own languages. This is a direct violation of the human right to culture. Abuse and deaths in intercountry adoptive families are common.
Numerous appalling incidents involving the misfortune of adopted children have circulated in the media in the past few years. International adoption is a tricky subject. Exploitation can occur on a number of levels, as the adoption process includes a variety of actors. The adopting families, the adoption agency, and the source institution can all be separately complicit in unethical behavior.
To amplify corruption, there is little to no legislation to identify or prosecute exploitation on any level. This is one of the most critical issues — the sending countries, who are most often relatively disadvantaged compared to receiving countries, carry the burden to make major policy reform in order to protect their children from exploitation.
International policy on intercountry adoption is scarce, vague, and often unenforced. While the international adoption system contains many flaws, the most identifiable fundamental issue is lack of oversight and policy.
Adoptions are most often conducted through private, individual agencies who each have different standards of what the adoption process should look like. These private agencies operate without much restriction placed on their activity. It seems unacceptable to permit adoption to occur through non-accredited agencies, yet that is the current norm.
In addition to the fact that U. Take a look at the number of adoptions in the top 10 countries in the world from to , based on immigrant visas issued to children adopted by Americans.
As you can see, China has been the number-one country from to Source: U. In many countries, the adoption is considered final after a court proceeding in the country the child is from; and as a result, if there are any problems after you leave the country—such as undetected medical problems or other issues—the child is still your legal responsibility.
You can't return the child. Is it easier to adopt a child in the United States than in another country? With a few exceptions, I don't think adoption is easy no matter what, whether your child comes from the United States or anywhere else. Children don't drop into your lap from the sky which is good—it would be pretty painful if they did! In some ways, U. For example, there's no language barrier with most U. You are not allowed to consider a Southern drawl or New England accent as another language!
But language barriers are frequent with international adoptions, in which you must rely on your agency and their interpreters for a lot of information.
In some countries, including China, Russia, and many others, you actually adopt the child in the country itself; thus, your presence there is required. In the case of a married couple, sometimes one person can travel; however, it's best if both go and provide moral support to each other. That makes it difficult if the visits are weekly! Again, this is not meant to scare anyone away from foster care, nor to advocate for a policy change. My wife and I firmly believe in foster care, and found it very rewarding and successful.
Sixth, people adopt from other countries because there is wider list of reasons that children enter institutional care. In the US, most children are in foster care because they are victims of abuse and neglect. In other countries, children also enter care for these reasons. That is probably the norm. But there are also children in care because:.
Some of the above reasons also lead to parents in the US losing custody, but often there is someone in the extended family network who can care for the child, preventing him from entering foster care. But in the case of abuse and neglect, the child will hopefully enter the foster care system. That means fost-adopt parents must be willing and able to care for children with such a history, and the issues that go along with abuse and neglect.
International adoptive parents should be prepared for the same issues. But in general, intercountry adoptions have a stronger chance of leading to a referral of a child who was not abused or neglected. This is obviously a criterion of which adoptive parents are conscious. Seventh, there is a case that children in other countries are in greater need.
All orphaned children need parents, and this is their paramount need. But adoptive parents drawn to intercountry adoption reason that children in developing nations face threats that US children do not face. This is undeniable. Orphaned children in other countries are:. Simply put, children in the US foster care system do not face these risks.
They do face other risks, such as mental health problems, lack of success in their future career, and the life-long feeling of displacement that goes along with having no family! But when families consider how they can make a difference, they weigh the risks these children are facing, and some see greater urgency in developing countries. The next two reasons parents choose intercountry adoption are juxtaposed to the possibility of adopting children from the US in a private domestic adoption.
In other words, what follows is not in apposition to the choice of foster care, but the choice of adopting a US child who is voluntarily relinquished. In domestic, private adoption, the birthmother voluntarily relinquishes her child. She chooses the family with whom she wants to place her child. She may have any number of criteria.
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