posted
You know, if I found out later that when I was 2 years old some aging rock star and his partner had wanted to adopt me but it was against the rules because he was too old plus gay, and instead I grew up orphaned, I would NOT thank the adoption officials who made those rules. Elton John and his partner totally ought to be allowed to adopt the little Ukrainian boy who stole their hearts from the orphanage. That is all.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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He's 62 years old! I know that people do become parents at that age sometime, but I also think that age is a legitimate reason to deny someone an adoption. I don't believe that should be no standards at all when it comes to adoptive parents, and I don't believe that rock stars should be given a pass on those rules just because they are famous.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
His husband's 44. There's relatively little chance a child wouldn't have a surviving parent well into maturity. And his considerable fortune certainly suggests he would be taken care of.
Is there a news link reporting on the actual stated reasons for refusing the adoption?
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I'm just looking at it from the kid's point of view. Okay so I'm 21 now, I'm Deaver Teague from Folk of the Fringe. I've never had any family and I'm struggling to make a living. Orphanages are probably pretty rough places. I probably got beat up a lot and shaken down by older kids for most of my life. And for sure I never got enough adult attention and love.
How exactly is this person better off than someone who grew up in a home with loving parents, even if they were old, (and gay, as if that makes any difference), and given access to education, health care, shelter, food, clothes, toys, books, etc. all his life at the level of a wealthy family? I'd be pretty angry, actually, if those things were all withheld supposedly for my own good. Wouldn't you?
posted
That's only true if we assume the choices are 1) be adopted by Elton John or 2) live in an orphanage all your life.
There is a third alternative, you know - adoption by a another couple who is younger and while not as rich, still able to provide a comfortable existence and a loving home.
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posted
Elton is 62, but his husband/partner/companion, David Furnish, is almost 47, which seems a reasonable age to adopt.
Do both adoptive parents have to meet age restriction criteria? Does anyone know of any similarly aged couples that were allowed to adopt (straight or gay)?
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posted
What is the percentage of kids who grow up in orphanages who get adopted by good families? My feeling is that it's fairly low, particularly after the child reaches a certain age. Worldwide there are a whole lot more orphans of all ages than there are loving homes willing to adopt them, at least. That is certain.
posted
From what I read, the rules in the Ukraine require married couples, and they don't count gay couples as married or something like that. So it does have something of a place in Ukrainian adoptions laws still. I'm glad it's not a problem here in the states anymore, if that's what you meant, Samprimary. Is that true in every state? Or just some? I think adoption laws very state by state here.
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posted
Thing is, the child is also HIV positive, so his chances of being adopted domestically are slim.
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posted
I'm actually generally opposed to international adoptions, not that it's necessarily germane to this topic.
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posted
I would agree that age is a reasonable factor, but it seems like an exception should be made for terminally ill children. What are the odds that anyone else is going to take this HIV positive child in?
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posted
Looks like the adopting parent needs to be less than 45 years older than the child. That seems like a reasonable cut off. It has to be put somewhere, and if the need for adoptive parents was very pressing, it would be higher.
I am also leery of international adoptions, although I have several friends who have done it well. I have heard of many incidents in places like Malaysia or Guatamala or the Ukraine where the children being adopted are not exactly the homeless, hopeless orphans they are being described as. No opinion about this particular child, but there should definitely be rules and regulations governing the practice, possibly more than already exist, and the age of the adoptive parents is a legitimate factor. It isn't fair to place a child in a situation where he is very likely to have a adoptive parent die before having a family of his own. Probably, that's already happened once; hence being available for adoption. Or, he's not actually an orphan and was placed in the orphanage because of being HIV. Wouldn't it be better to make it possible for him to return to his mother?
Adopting the child is not the only way to help the child. It isn't a choice between an international adoption by a senior citizen and lounging in a subpar government orphanage.
I applaud Elton John's efforts to help, and I hope he would continue to want to help even if he doesn't get to take the baby home to another country.
posted
I've head that the sum of the parents' ages can't exceed 100. Honestly, all parents can die young and leave their kids.
I have always found it ironic that there are so many standards for taking care other people's unwanted kids but almost none for producing them in the first place.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
All parents might, but old parents almost definitely will.
Definitely not interested in restricting people's rights in terms of the children their own bodies can make, but that's hardly a compelling reason for not having standards at all in terms of who can adopt.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I'm all for international adoption. In a lot of countries there's a stigma against adopting for one thing...So some children are less likely to be adopted domestically in their own countries. There are instances of fraud in international adoption, but you also can find that in domestic adoption. It's the exception, not the rule though. There is a genuine need for loving homes for children whether they are American children or children overseas.
Also adopting from foster care is difficult (I'd like to try it one day when I am more mature) because many children in the foster care system are not available for adoption as their parents haven't had their legal parental rights severed. So, yes, the foster care system does need reforms, but we at least HAVE a foster care system and many foster parents that are not like foster parents on a Lifetime movie. So I definetly believe in having options open such as international adoption for the children and for potential adoptive parents.
Also adopting from Africa is not trendy. I had an argument like this from a friend of mine, so it's not.
The Ukraine I think used to allow single parent adoptions, but they don't anymore because of a few abusive single parents. Plus there already are quite a few rules and standards that vary depending on the country. China at one time allowed single parent adoptions from females, but they banned that and they also banned folks above a certain body mass index from adopting. Other countries that have at one time allowed single parent adoptions have closed for adoption and may reopen in the future.
Also it's much better and healthier for a child to have an actual parent than living in an Orphanage. I can see if a child is there because of poverty and there's the possibility of a parent getting out of poverty, but the issue is very complicated and it varies depending on the child.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
1) If the child is HIV-positive and up for adoption, the odds are very high that the mother is either dead or severely ill. 2) The kid looks so much like Elton that if anybody unfamiliar with EltonJohn's personal life saw them together, they'd automaticly ask "How's your son doing?" 3) As of 2003, the life expectancy for an average person born in 1921 after they became 62year-old was ~21years. Life expectancy has steadily increased for every birth-year cohort since then. EltonJohn was born in 1947, so he would have to die unusually young to fail living long enough to see his kid graduate from college. Life expectancy is noticibly longer for those in the upper-income bracket. Elton would have to die unusually young (for those in his income bracket) to fail living long enough to see his grandchildren.....even considering that people get married and have children later in life than they used to.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Adoption is such a tricky subject. There simply are no "right" answers. In a perfect world, there would be no need for adoption. Every single child would be born to parents who actually wanted them, could take care of them, and would live long enough to do so. Unfortunately, this isn't a perfect world.
In this particular case, I think the agency made a mistake. An HIV+ child, in particular, would benefit greatly from having rich parents. An HIV+ is extremely difficult to place, and one would assume that living in a communal home with many other children (like an orphanage) would dramatically lower his life expectancy just due to the sheer number of potential virus carriers running around sharing bugs. Therefor, Elton should have been allowed to adopt the child, in THIS circumstance.
Unfortunately, countries have hard and fast rules on adoption because it is so very difficult to figure out what makes a "good" parent. They come up with a bunch of dry data, and put rules into place based on that data to allow any bureaucrat to easily give a yes or no answer to adoptions. It's a horrible system, but I don't think anyone is doing it to hurt the kids. They just have far too many kids to try to match and too little time to do it - but they want to make sure they aren't sending them out of the frying pan and into the fire.
As far as international adoption goes - I used to be strongly against it. I've seen the US foster system, and I've known kids who languished in it. I remember visiting my brother (before he was adopted) in a home where they put every kid under 5 into a high chair up against a wall and fed them spaghetti O's strait from the can as if they were feeding dogs. I found out when I was a little older that this was FAR from the worst foster situation my brother had been in (that was his 7th foster placement and he was only 3!). I used to think people who adopted internationally were just looking for a baby with no strings and turning their backs on kids who were hurting right here. That coupled with the horror stories of children kidnapped from their parents, or even taken by the government to be put up for American Adoption led me to believe that International adoption was the next thing to evil. (And some of those stories ARE too - particularly in Latin America)
But as I've researched it more, I've come to see that there is both a place and a need for IA. There are children in other countries who are truly orphaned, and those orphans often live in conditions far worse than the foster system in the US. In my brothers foster home, kids were fed cold pasta, but at least they were FED! I think that people choosing international adoption still have to be very careful to investigate the program they choose to make sure it is ethical, but in some cases (as with the boy EJ wanted), IA is a kids only real chance!
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
I saw the picture of Elton and the little baby boy, and it just broke my heart that the adoption was denied.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I'm actually generally opposed to international adoptions, not that it's necessarily germane to this topic.
Why? Do you believe favoring stateside adoptions is more effective long-term? Or is it something else? Just curious.
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posted
I think many of the things broken about stateside adoption are being ignored precisely because international adoptions allow people to make an end-run around the broken systems -- or, with enough money, indeed any system at all. This makes fixing our system less important, and therefore it never happens. Among other things.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Elton John simply needs to hire a crack team of commandos to kidnap the baby, then the US can tie things up with Ukraine diplomatically for a couple years, there will be international uproar, and Ukraine will let him keep the baby to save face, while he'll secretly donate a couple million to some key people.
quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: ... China at one time allowed single parent adoptions from females, but they banned that and they also banned folks above a certain body mass index from adopting.
As an update, this was something that was directed by their equivalent of a federal government. However, the large sums of money that foreigners can "donate" in order to get a child have highly encouraged sporadic enforcement from province to province.
In particular, the combination of China's growing economy and the increasing acceptance of adoption within the country has greatly reduced the number of children available for international adoption. However, the lure of foreign cash has lead to illegal situations where children would be kidnapped from parents.
quote:In 2005, there was a child-trafficking crackdown in Hunan province. Six orphanages were caught purchasing young infants from baby traffickers who had transported them from the neighboring Guangdong province.
In three years, nearly 1,000 children were purchased by these six orphanages, which then adopted the children out to domestic and foreign families for a profit, according to court documents in this case.
Twenty-seven people were arrested; 10 were given jail time. Despite this warning to offenders, ABC News discovered the baby-buying practice seems to be continuing in the same province.
We traveled to Hunan province's Changde Welfare House orphanage. There were reports that the orphanage gatekeeper approaches people on the street, asking them whether they know anyone looking to sell their children. She reportedly tells passers-by that the orphanage will pay around $350 per child.
Aside from plainly illegal kidnapping, there are also highly immoral situations where the lure of foreign cash has encouraged local officials to levy large fines on families with children past the one-child limits in the hope of coercing them into giving up the children. These children are then sold with the orphanages and the corrupt officials pocketing the cash. As an example:
quote: Nearly 80 baby girls in a county in Guizhou province, in the south of the country, were confiscated from their families when their parents could not or would not pay the fine, Southern Metropolis News said.
The girls were taken into orphanages and then adopted by couples from the United States and a number of European countries.
The adoption fee was split between the orphanages and local officials, the newspaper said.
Child trafficking is widespread. A tightening of adoption rules for foreigners in 2006 has proved ineffective in the face of local corruption.
So while I can sympathize with the desire to adopt children internationally, I tend to think that at least in China's case one should be very careful about what secondary effects might be going on.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
I totally agree with the urging of caution for adoption in China now. I don't think ALL foreign adoption is bad or wrong (and honestly, would we want our Hatrack without Sasha?) but certainly we should be aware of potential problems.
We should strive to assist and help out domestically if possible, and it is unfortunate that so many kids languish in our foster systems.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I don't see why both can't be done, but the foster care system in a way is a different issue that needs to be focused on. Again, not every child languishing in the system is available for adoption and it's more about, or should be more about giving a child a safe home than adoption, especially since it's quite difficult for a child's parental rights to be severed. Then there's domestic newborn adoption, but there's the potential for coercion there, so it's a complex situation as I said before. I think in cases where the parent has no intention of changing they should get their rights taken away. There's no way a kid should be allowed to be stuck in the system for years without a real family. But that equals some extreme reforms and it's just not on the menu. I don't think international adoption detracts from this. There's no law saying you can't adopt from foster care AND internationally. There's probably a lot more children who need homes than families for them. HEALTHY families regardless of being gay, nuclear heterosexual or single parents.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Dear friends of mine felt like finding a surrogate in India was their only option. They can't adopt minority babies, and white babies have too long of a waiting list. They are too worried about mother's rights with private adoption. Its a shame.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
They can't adopt minority babies? Someone has forbidden them? I'm not being snarky, I'm genuinely curious. Usually it's that people don't WANT to adopt minority children, not that they can't.
Although I know white families who have adopted black children, so it's not as if it never happens.
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posted
I would. Since I am minority... Perhaps for some reason they wanted to have a biological child... Some people think that's very important... Sometimes (COUGHTHEBLACKSOCIALWORKERSASSOCIATE) there's a lot of opposition to interracial adoption, which I do not understand as, A. black culture is American culture, dang it, and B. these kids need families. If only I was mature and financially stable now...
quote:Originally posted by Belle: They can't adopt minority babies? Someone has forbidden them? I'm not being snarky, I'm genuinely curious. Usually it's that people don't WANT to adopt minority children, not that they can't.
Although I know white families who have adopted black children, so it's not as if it never happens.
quote:Originally posted by Belle: They can't adopt minority babies? Someone has forbidden them? I'm not being snarky, I'm genuinely curious. Usually it's that people don't WANT to adopt minority children, not that they can't.
Although I know white families who have adopted black children, so it's not as if it never happens.
They were told that it is extremely difficult, because minority groups have fought to keep children with families of the same ethnic group.
Now I am just going by second hand information of course.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
That bugs me... What if someone black ended up with a foster child that is white and then adopted him or her as they had been with them for years?
quote:Originally posted by Stephan:
quote:Originally posted by Belle: They can't adopt minority babies? Someone has forbidden them? I'm not being snarky, I'm genuinely curious. Usually it's that people don't WANT to adopt minority children, not that they can't.
Although I know white families who have adopted black children, so it's not as if it never happens.
They were told that it is extremely difficult, because minority groups have fought to keep children with families of the same ethnic group.
Now I am just going by second hand information of course.
posted
Adoption is a serious issue, one that takes a lot of effort and research before you begin. There are traps and pitfalls around each and every corner that some call "shortcuts".
Many here have read my story of our adoption of Sasha. We adopted him from Russia five years ago. It was the most wonderful, terrifying, and heartbreaking journey of my life.
We have tried to do it again, but are abandoning those efforts. I passed the age of 45, and that is the cut off of many of these countries.
Lets see if I can put to rest some of these rumors and stories from the Adoption world.
1) Elton John has not been given special treatment in his adoption request. This has been looked at as a shocking miscarriage of justice. On the other hand several countries and their adoptions services have been criticized for giving special treatment to other celebrities. Madonna was the most recent who's adoption of an African child sparked screams of favoritism and unfairness to those people waiting to adopt.
2) For a child to lose his parents once is a devastating event. For a child to lose it parents a second time would be disastrous. This is why countries put age limits on whom they let adopt. It is the rules of the countries not some International Rules Of Adoption or US Adoption Requirements. While 45 is young enough to be a father in the US, ad 20 years and Dad is still likely to be around, in some third world countries 45 is old, and 65 is rare.
You know, the age thing is striking people as odd, but I found Honduras's requirements even odder. There were a lot of Evangelical helpers that went to Honduras in the 80's and 90's. Despite the country being almost completely Catholic before, a strong Evangelical movement has sprung up. In their adoption requirements is the demand that you be an active member of an Evangelical church. The require verification from and of your pastor. Lets see Elton John pull that one off.
3) These countries are fighting rumors and distortions that are laughable if they weren't so persistent. One of those rumors is that the US only adopts children to use as spare parts. We adopt their children to use to replace our kidneys, lungs, and hearts. So having a bunch of older folks taking home children is seen as proving that theory true. Another reason age limits are implied, especially to the wealthy and famous. They don't want the rumor going around that the are "Selling children to keep old Americans alive."
4) Why people adopt internationally and not locally is a very personal and difficult decision. It is also one that everyone asks about. The only negativity I saw during our adoption process was from relatives who were doing Foster Care. They couldn't understand why we went so far when there was so much need so close. They wondered if it was a racial thing.
I thought then, and I think now, why we chose the way we did is nobody's business but our own. I'll break my rule of non-disclosure here anyway since so many seem to find foreign adoption as a slight to those who need families in our country.
The truth is that the US has wonderful adoption laws that set as their goals the rights of the birth mother. I knew it would kill my wife if we went through with an adoption, and gave our love to a child, only to have a birth-mother show up and demand to take that child away. I could not and I would risk that for my wife.
There are other good reasons as well.
There are three routes to adoption in the US. One is to find a pregnant woman and adopt just after birth. However the laws and ethics of this adoption means that not only are you adopting the child, but you are adding the birth-mother into your family as well.
Two is to go through with Foster Care. Here you spend months to years loving and taking care of a child before the formalities of adoption can begin. Whether or not you will be allowed to adopt a child you foster won't be known for a long time.
Three is to be put on waiting lists for adoption agencies around the country. This is a multi-year process. Yes, there is a strong desire to adopt children into their own ethnicity. Seventy to 100 years ago Native American children were adopted out, sometimes forcibly, to white parents all around the county in a plan to eradicate their native cultures. That is a big black mark on the adoption world, and they don't want to repeat it, so yes, they will hold black children for black families. You know what? There are enough families of each ethnicity that it has not become a problem for babies. Its only for the older children that there are not enough families for. This leads us back into foster care.
So there are a lot of reasons to prefer to adopt internationally instead of locally. It is intrusive to ask why, almost as intrusive as asking why someone is adopting instead of having children naturally.
5) Another thing that all international adoption groups strive to do is not lose the native culture. There are rules and promises that are given that require you to teach your child about their country of origin.
Why?
The same people who do not adopt in their own countries list as the excuse, "if they were good kids, they wouldn't be up for adoption". These people fear that the US is adopting all their best and brightest, stealing their children. To make sure that the children will want to return we must teach them love of their native land.
This is what the ethnic groupings in the US are doing, making sure that Rich White folks aren't stealing their kids.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Darth_Mauve, I didn't know you changed your name!
You say very sensible things... I read that for Philippine adoption you have to be Christian. I think that was on the Pearl s Buck site.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Well, from what I understand, a person's home study may preclude them from adopting certain demographics of children. For instance, I know people who have wanted to adopt an older child from foster care, but the system felt like an infant would better fit their family dynamic, so refused to place an older child with them (or vice versa). I suppose it's not impossible that someone may have a relative who is extremely racist. If that subject came up during a home study, I can see an agency feeling like adopting an interracial baby may not be the best thing in that situation.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Jun 2006
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quote:I would. Since I am minority... Perhaps for some reason they wanted to have a biological child... Some people think that's very important... Sometimes (COUGHTHEBLACKSOCIALWORKERSASSOCIATE) there's a lot of opposition to interracial adoption, which I do not understand as, A. black culture is American culture, dang it, and B. these kids need families. If only I was mature and financially stable now...
Hell, I know (and know of) interracial adoptees who have problems with the practice. The sentiment gets written off as ingratitude, and that may even be true sometimes, but I think it speaks to the power race still has, even in the 21st century.
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posted
Darth_Mauve: As somebody who plans on adopting at some point in the future your post was quite useful. Thanks so much.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Good timing on a new article on the adoption problem in China.
quote:Doubts about how babies are procured for adoption in China have begun to ripple through the international adoption community.
"In the beginning, I think, adoption from China was a very good thing because there were so many abandoned girls. But then it became a supply-and-demand-driven market and a lot of people at the local level were making too much money," said Ina Hut, who last month resigned as the head of the Netherlands' largest adoption agency out of concern about baby trafficking.
quote:Throughout the countryside, red banners exhort, "Give birth to fewer babies, plant more trees" and, more ominously, "If you give birth to extra children, your family will be ruined."
But the law does not give officials the power to take babies from their parents.
Some families say they were beaten and threatened into giving up their daughters, or tricked into signing away their parental rights.
"They grabbed the baby and dragged me out of the house. I was screaming -- I thought they were going to knock me over," said Liu Suzhen, a frail woman from Huangxin village near Shaoyang in Hunan province. She was baby-sitting her 4-month-old granddaughter one night in March 2003 when a dozen officials stormed her house.
She said they took her and the baby to a family planning office, where a man grabbed her arm and pressed her thumbprint onto a document she couldn't read.
Once a child is taken to an orphanage, parents can lose all rights.
"They wouldn't even let me in the door," said Zhou Changqi, a construction worker whose 6-month-old daughter was taken in 2002 by family planning officials in Guiyang, in Hunan province. Zhou tried repeatedly over three years to get into the Changsha Social Welfare Institute, one of the major orphanages sending babies abroad, until one day he was told:
"It's too late. Your daughter has already gone to America."
posted
True. Domestic ones as well. Adoption can be very risky. I wonder if the for profit element should be removed somehow.
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