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2004-05-04 issue:

Just adoptions

Ethics and international adoption

by Anton Flores

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My eldest son, Jairo, is a joy to his parents. He’s creative like his father, sensitive like his mother and energetic like all 5-year-old boys. But Jairo was not born into our family. The youngest of three children born in the highlands of Guatemala, Jairo joined our family in 2000.

Adopting Jairo was a transformational experience for my wife and me, the result of several years of deliberation and prayer. The concept of adoption resonates with our Christian faith. Scripture clearly paints a picture of believers being adopted into the family of God, and adopting a child struck us as a calling from God. We felt God was leading us to have both biological and adopted children and that adoption was a perfect way to merge spiritual obedience and social justice. However, living a God-honoring life is not without its complication.

It wasn’t until we had already committed to adopting Jairo and our bond to him was formed that we learned of the existence of a vocal community of activists opposed to international adoptions of children from countries like Guatemala.

The number of families from industrialized countries adopting children from primarily less-industrialized countries is growing at an astronomical rate. In 1992, U.S. families adopted 6,472 children from foreign lands, and a decade later the numbers swelled to 20,099.

Leslie Doty Hollingsworth, associate professor of social work at the University of Michigan, contends that international adoptions are the result of social injustice and directly benefit families from industrialized nations. In her article “International Adoption Among Families in the United States: Considerations of Social Justice” (Social Work, April 2003), Hollingsworth describes the historical development of international adoptions from various factors, including wars, poverty, the fall of Communism and oppressive governmental policies.

With a rapid increase in adoption rates, we must do all that we can to ensure that we are not just perpetuating the unjust structures that create orphans. International adoption has become big business in countries such as Guatemala. If people continue to demand Guatemalan children, a supply will be found—regardless of ethics or law. The average annual income in Guatemala is only $1,640, and the income of women in urban Guatemala is only 55 percent of men’s. When the typical adoption in that country costs about $24,000, the enticement for wrongdoing is strong, and the ground for corruption is fertile.

Guatemalan children allegedly have been bought from their birth mothers for as little as $300 by exploitive adoption professionals. For years international human rights organizations have decried the inhumanities that poor Guatemalan families have had to endure while Guatemalan officials (real or alleged) involved in the adoption “business” amass wealth by manipulating the misery of a largely indigenous community. Approximately 200 attorneys in Guatemala work in the field of adoption, resulting in a $60 million-per-year business for these attorneys. With 98 percent of all Guatemalan adoptees going to international families, skeptics refer to that country’s children as one of its most valuable exports.

In view of these facts, can international adoption ever be ethical? Can an adoption from a country such as Guatemala—the third most popular country for Americans seeking to adopt (after China and Russia) and one that provides the greatest number of children per capita for adoption in the United States—ever meet the standards of a justice-loving Christian?

A child becomes an orphan largely because of structural evils that our global society refuses to address. Civil and international wars, famines, corrupt governments, the subjugation of women and children and pure greed are all complicit. International adoptees are in large part the result of the exploitation of the world’s poorest families, and some come to our homes via the despicable practices of child abduction and trafficking.

Should Christians abandon the notion of adopting a child internationally? I suggest that a way exists to bring together the macro-perspective advocates, who insist upon eradicating institutional social ills, and those who hold the micro-perspective, that adoption rescues a child from what would likely be a life of abject poverty in a substandard orphanage. That way is through the promotion of ethical adoptions.

Here are concrete ways prospective families can ensure they are engaging in an ethical adoption.

Preadoption
Select the best agency possible: First, contact the state licensing office in each of the states where this agency is licensed and inquire about any complaints filed against this agency. Ask how long the agency has been licensed in that state. To find the corresponding licensing agencies, go to the Web site of the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse (http://www.calib.com/naic).

Second, contact the Better Business Bureau in the state where your agency is located and see if any complaints have been filed against it there.

Third, use the Internet to investigate. Join online discussion groups with others seeking to adopt, both from your agency and from the country you are considering. This provides not only wonderful support throughout the process but also insider information on possible problems you may encounter. Every agency will have problems, but one should consider the frequency and severity of the problems that come to your attention.

Finally, do not assume that just because an agency calls itself “Christian” it operates in an ethical fashion. Above all, adoptive parents should want to know that the child they now claim as their own has arrived in as ethical and legal a manner as possible. While these steps may seem cumbersome, consider it a labor of love.

Consult with your home country’s embassy, located in your prospective child’s country. Ask the agencies you are considering to provide you with the names and contact information of the foreign staff you will be relying on to complete the adoption process in their country; most specifically get the name and contact information of your foreign attorney. Contact the unit responsible for issuing visas in your country’s embassy and share with them the name of the attorney who potentially will be representing you in that country’s adoption process. While the embassy cannot share detailed information or recommend an attorney, they should be able to tell you if they have received complaints or if they have concerns about the indicated attorney. If so, you should seek another attorney and possibly another agency.

Learn about the sociopolitical realities of your prospective child’s country. Acknowledge that adoption is more than a transaction between a family and a child and that it also means the adoption of the child’s culture and country of origin. Learn about the conditions that have led to the creation of orphans in your prospective child’s country. What are the realities of children and women living in that country?

Postadoption
Regularly contribute to an economic-development organization in your child’s country. An ethical adoption is one that understands the complexities of our global existence and the creation of orphans from both a micro- and macro-perspective. All of us living in the wealthiest nations should consider our obligation to our poorer neighbors; however, I believe an extra responsibility befalls those of us who adopt a child from one of those poor countries. As adoptive families we must do what we can to reduce the number of orphans in our child’s native country; in Guatemala alone there are approximately 200,000.

To apply this concept, my wife and I have implemented some new actions into our family life. First, through World Vision we sponsor a little boy from Guatemala who is the same age as Jairo. Doing this not only enables our son to grow up with a pen pal from his homeland whom he will one day visit, it also allows us to help a child remain with his family while receiving quality health care, education and spiritual formation.

Second, we purchase only fair-trade coffee  from Guatemalan cooperatives to ensure that the women and children who work the fields receive a greater share of the profits.
Finally, I have worked with Central American Study and Service, a program of the Latin American Anabaptist Seminary in Guatemala City, to create an immersion tour for adoptive families that explores the economic and human rights issues affecting its children. By seeking to be a tool for economic development in the developing country of your child’s origin you may find yourself being a prophetic voice for God’s shalom.

Keep your child connected to her homeland. In addition to travel, decorate your child’s room with authentic articles from her birth country. Read to your child books, folk tales, legends and other stories that originate in her country. Fill your home with the traditional and contemporary music of that country.

Befriend not only other adoptive families but also individuals and families from your child’s home country. Many adoptive families seek other adoptive families to build friendships. But don’t stop there—seek other families of the same ethnic background as your child. Ethnic churches are a great place to start.

In conclusion, adoption can be a wonderful gift both to children and families. Indeed, adoption is at the heart of who God is. But why stop there? We should all seek to elevate our current adoption industry by promoting ethical adoptions.

Anton Flores teaches social work at La Grange (Ga.) College and is involved in helping plant a Mennonite congregation in La Grange.

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