A Different Kind of International Adoption

[shanendoah]

We've been talking a lot about adoption lately here (and it's not just me, even though it is one of the top things on my mind), but there seems to have been a focus on negatives.
Here is an article about adoption that I think is worth talking about, but is really much more positive.

Overseas Adoptions Rise- for Black American Children

It's about how black babies from the US are being adopted by overseas couples. This article focuses mostly on Dutch families, who adopt the second most kids of any other country from the US (after Canada), and the numbers aren't exactly high, a few hundred babies adopted from the US by parents from other countries each year, but I thought it was an interesting read.

And the fees mentioned for the Dutch families are pretty much on par with what I found in my research if we had decided to adopt an infant via private or agency assisted adoption.

[whoisjohngalt]

This article is too long for my short attention span - why BLACK kids?

[mmhmm]

According to the article, the Dutch don't care what color the child is.  They just want an infant.  There are more black infants available for adoption in the US than there are white children because most people who adopt here in the US are white and want white babies.  This is a wonderful thing for these kids! 

[shanendoah]

I have to admit that if I were a birth mom, I would totally choose to have my kid raised in Europe, learning multiple languages, the travel opportunities, etc.

C and I were open to an infant placement, but we got pop tart first, which has worked really well for us. However, we were one of the few couples in our training classes that were interested in an infant and did not care about race. The other folks who didn't care about race were the two lesbian couples (no gay men in our group, oddly enough) and the Indian (from India) couple. But the other hetero, white couples wanted a white infant. For many of them, they had tried conceiving and adoption was their last choice and they really, really wanted a child that looked like them. (This is not a judgement, just a statement.)

The Dutch families were likely open to any infant, but given the statistics in this country, it does not surprise me that they almost all ended up with black or bi-racial children because there was less competition and roughly the same number of opportunities.

[mmhmm]

I've never been involved in the adoption process, anne, so I don't know why that might be.  Perhaps, some who have actually gone through the process will have pertinent information for us. 

[raeoflyte]

My guess is that they want a closed adoption that is final from the moment they get the child.

You can adopt minority infants through foster care, but parental rights aren't usually severed right away.

Not sure, but there may be less of a concern of infants born with drug and alcohol issues if you're going overseas (or at least the perception that the issue is diminished)?

[whoisjohngalt]

Sept 19, 2013 13:09:46 GMT -5 @anne81 said:

I find it a little weird that families in the U.S. are willing to take kids from Africa but not black kids from here, especially since it's cheaper. It's nice that they are finding a home somewhere.

Does anyone have information on why that is?

My guess would be that those kids are healthier.   Less chance of drugs/alcohol in their system

[whoisjohngalt]

If I were adopting, I don't think I would care if the kid looked liked me (I don't think any of my own look like me either), but I would have cared about the race.

This is all hypothetical, of course, since I haven't been through the experience

[Phoenix84]

Susan also wanted her son to grow up far away from the life she knew.  She was a 30-year-old prostitute addicted to crack beginning a prison sentence when she learned she was pregnant.  She did not know whether the child's father was a man who raped her "for hours" or a drug dealer whom she "had done something with" one time, she said.  But both men were African American, and she believed the child would face discrimination growing up in the United States."

"There's too much prejudice over here.  The white people are going to hate him because he's half black, and the majority of black people are going to hate on him because he's half white," said Susan, who is Caucasian.  "And then he'll have to do extra things to prove what kind of a Negro he is, and extra things to prove what kind of a honky he is and I don't want that.  I did not want that for my kid."

"Even her own daughter, then aged 11, said "she would never accept that N***** child."

   Ummm... nice family... and an.... interesting take on race relations.

It's too bad she feels the need to blame the rest of the country for her failures.

Anyways, interesting article, thanks for posting it.

[raeoflyte]

Bring raped was not "her own failings"...

[raeoflyte]

Sept 19, 2013 14:18:37 GMT -5 raeoflyte said:

Bring raped was not "her own failings"...

Reread, and hopefully I misunderstood your point, that its too bad that even she couldn't accept her child of another race. Which I agree with, although considering the way the child was conceived I can see attachment issues regardless.

Probably the best option for the baby.

[zibazinski]

Geez, my kids don't look a thing like me. I still love them. 

[Phoenix84]

Sept 19, 2013 14:18:37 GMT -5 raeoflyte said:

Bring raped was not "her own failings"...

When you're a drug addicted prostitute, the lines of "consensual sex" can become a bit blurred.  Regardless, we don't know the specifics of the rape, and that's not what I was referring to anyway.

I was referring to her factoring in race into the decision to keep her baby or not, and then basically calling America a racist country.

[Deleted]

and then basically calling America a racist country.

But it is a racist country. Like most countries are. Stereotypes run VERY, VERY deep. 

This week I did a "who would you save from a sinking ship" exercise with my debating class. Divided the class in two, left them 30 min to decide who would be saved and who would sink, then told both groups to go up to the board, write their list. When they were done I made both groups justify their choices. (Each hypothetical person on the sheet had a profession, an object, plus another bit of info about him or her.)

Imagine my joy when one group decided they needed to save the token Jew (the random bit of info was that he had served in the Israeli army). When I asked them why (I ALWAYS ask them why they decide to save somebody, whoever that "somebody" is, because I need them to be able to articulate their choice), one student told me "because eventually we will need money, even on this deserted island, and everybody knows that Jews always have money."

I have an Israeli kid in that class and my heart was bleeding for both of us. I said "that sounds pretty racist to me." The Israeli kid said nothing. But my DH is not Jewish and I have an EXTREMELY British, non-Jewish last name. 

I was just floored by that comment. Trust me, Phoenix, racism, religious prejudice, sexism, ageism are all still alive and well in the western world, whether it be the US or Western Europe. 

[Deleted]

Shan I never responded to your last thread because I was too busy with work. My college boyfriend (who I am still in touch with) married an older woman who was too old to have kids. They initially looked at international adoptions. From what J told me, the only way Russia (because that's the country they were looking at) would release a child to be adopted in the US was if the child "had problems". So since Russia wanted these kids to be adopted (at the time, this was about 17 years ago), ALL the kids "had problems". Some of those problems were real, and some were bull. Good luck figuring out which were which.

Per J, the problem was, the adoptive parents in the US had ZERO way of knowing whether the child really had health issues, or if the Russian gov't had just written that in to free the child up for adoption. Remember, this was in the days before internet.

In the end they decided to adopt in the US. They adopted a Mexican baby at birth, the mom was young and wanted to give the baby to "a good family", chose J and his wife, and the rest is history, their DS is 16 now. They subsequently found out that he has (many) siblings and they have joined the group so that their son can see his siblings (half or full, I don't know, we don't care about that in our house)

My friend's husband's daughter adopted a little girl from Russia about 8 years ago. This child is the smartest, fastest, brightest kid you can imagine. 

So, you just don't know what can happen. It's a crap shoot when you reproduce, and it's a crap shoot when you adopt. 

[shanendoah]

@tbird- Yes, bio parents are the ones choosing the European parents, but part of that is because there are significantly fewer families willing to take black or bi-racial children than there are white children. This increased the statistical odds of the European parents being chosen. It is very likely that these same European families have their "dear birth parents" letter submitted to women who are giving birth to white babies, too, but there are so many more applicants for those children, that it is much harder for the European families to stand out.

Phoenix84- You can only know the life you have experienced. This woman had not experienced a great life, and based on that experience, she predicted an even worse one for her biracial son if he stayed in the US, so she chose a European family, based on her assumptions about what his life would be like in the US vs the Netherlands. And like it or not, her experience was one of a very racially divided country. The US is HUGE, huge. I have no doubt that in the world she lived in, biracial kids were treated exactly like she said. No, that's not true everywhere in the US, but that was her experience of it, so she chose something as far from her experience as she could get.
You can blame her for her poor decisions, but you can't blame her for the world she lived in. That is society at large's problem, and the US is so far from a post-racial society that it hurts.

whoisjohngalt & zibazinski- But you are birth parents. While your kids may not look like you, you KNOW they are half you. And it does make a difference. For many adoptive parents, especially those for whom adoption is a last choice, they KNOW with all their beings that the kids are not half them, and so any comments about the kids not looking like them just seems to rub salt in an old wound, no matter how much they love the child.

@anne81- In my experience (and my experience alone) people who adopt internationally were never going to adopt domestically (in the US), so comparing how many white people are willing to take a child from Africa vs how many are willing to take a black child from the foster care system or via infant relinquishment is like comparing apples and oranges. People who adopt internationally tend to do so because they feel a very strong connection to the place they are adopting from or react strongly to the plight of the children there. (My step-sister and her husband had no plans for another child when my sister saw a news special about the little girls in China, and reacted very strongly. Less than 2 years later, my youngest niece came home from China with them. Another friend has always dreamed of adopting from Russia. Her family heritage is Russian and she feels a strong connection there. Her dream of adopting is specifically related to the place she would adopt from.)
*I will note that there are posters on these boards who have done international adoptions, and some of them have stated reasons along the lines of closed adoptions, no birth parent interference, etc, so I certainly don't discount that as a reason either. Though its interesting to note that this article seems to indicate that the current trend in open adoptions in this country was started by Europeans adopting US kids. Maybe that's because there's a lot less fear of bio-family interference when there is an ocean that separates you.

I don't think adoption from foreign countries has a lot to do with health concerns. I say this because while you may get less fetal alcohol syndrome or drug exposure, a large number of kids being adopted from overseas have physical or mental health problems. That's actually one of the reasons European families are turning to the US to adopt via relinquishment- better medical history, fewer health problems.
Children coming from Africa specifically have a much higher chance of coming from an HIV+ mother, being exposed to malaria, or any number of health issues that plague that continent. Their healthcare overall is much worse than that of kids coming from the US.
The health concerns are often different than the ones for kids in the US, but that doesn't mean there aren't very serious health concerns when doing an international adoption.

[shanendoah]

@debthaven2- The previous thread about the underground child exchange in the US, especially as it pertained to international adoptions was not actually my thread. Shocker, I know

[Deleted]

Sorry! Yes, it was Swamp's. It was absolutely spellbinding.

[whoisjohngalt]

Sept 19, 2013 18:19:46 GMT -5 shanendoah said:

whoisjohngalt & zibazinski- But you are birth parents. While your kids may not look like you, you KNOW they are half you. And it does make a difference. For many adoptive parents, especially those for whom adoption is a last choice, they KNOW with all their beings that the kids are not half them, and so any comments about the kids not looking like them just seems to rub salt in an old wound, no matter how much they love the child.

Like I said - how the kid looks - I can only speculate.

Race, however, I am more certain about.

[Deleted]

Ok, you guys can flame me, but being raped was pretty much the only reason I would have been willing to consider an abortion.  If I was giving birth to a Caucasian (I don't know many "white" people), I probably wouldn't have gotten one.  Although the child would have caused me to spend several months of my life pregnant with a child that was reminder of a painful period of my life, I wouldn't have aborted because I know many people are eager for that child.

Had I been raped by a black man, I would have thought harder about the abortion.  I wouldn't want my child to grow up abandoned or in the foster system.  I also wouldn't want a child that was a reminder of a painful period of my life.  That is a personal problem, and it is neither right nor wrong.  It is just me.

So I think it is awesome that there are Dutch parents that want to adopt these children.  It isn't that I can't be color blind.  I can.  But I know the chances in the USA for a white infant to be adopted are really good.  And for a black infant, not so good.  I don't want to condemn a child that I don't want (sorry, but I don't want a child born of rape, which is a violent crime) to be condemned to the foster care system.

Flame me away.  It is how I am.  It has little to do with race except white babies find it easier to find adoptive parents.  If black babies could find them that easily, I would carry either to term and surrender either equally.

[Pants]

Holy shit.

[Angel!]

Sept 19, 2013 13:48:31 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

Susan also wanted her son to grow up far away from the life she knew.  She was a 30-year-old prostitute addicted to crack beginning a prison sentence when she learned she was pregnant.  She did not know whether the child's father was a man who raped her "for hours" or a drug dealer whom she "had done something with" one time, she said.  But both men were African American, and she believed the child would face discrimination growing up in the United States."

"There's too much prejudice over here.  The white people are going to hate him because he's half black, and the majority of black people are going to hate on him because he's half white," said Susan, who is Caucasian.  "And then he'll have to do extra things to prove what kind of a Negro he is, and extra things to prove what kind of a honky he is and I don't want that.  I did not want that for my kid."

"Even her own daughter, then aged 11, said "she would never accept that N***** child."

   Ummm... nice family... and an.... interesting take on race relations.

It's too bad she feels the need to blame the rest of the country for her failures.

Anyways, interesting article, thanks for posting it.

Well that is just sad. Maybe in her small world it is that difficult to be biracial, but most of the country isn't quite so prejudice. I believe it is around 10 percent of births are biracial now, so her child would have grown up in a very different world than she did.

That being said, I would have had an abortion if I was raped regardless of the race of the rapist.

[Wisconsin Beth]

I believe the end of the article stated that that particular mom was now 4 years clean and sober, had another child with her fiance and both she and her daughter had a relationship of sorts with the child given up to adoption. 

[Phoenix84]

Sept 19, 2013 17:32:09 GMT -5 @debthaven2 said:

and then basically calling America a racist country.

But it is a racist country. Like most countries are. Stereotypes run VERY, VERY deep. 

This week I did a "who would you save from a sinking ship" exercise with my debating class. Divided the class in two, left them 30 min to decide who would be saved and who would sink, then told both groups to go up to the board, write their list. When they were done I made both groups justify their choices. (Each hypothetical person on the sheet had a profession, an object, plus another bit of info about him or her.)

Imagine my joy when one group decided they needed to save the token Jew (the random bit of info was that he had served in the Israeli army). When I asked them why (I ALWAYS ask them why they decide to save somebody, whoever that "somebody" is, because I need them to be able to articulate their choice), one student told me "because eventually we will need money, even on this deserted island, and everybody knows that Jews always have money."

I have an Israeli kid in that class and my heart was bleeding for both of us. I said "that sounds pretty racist to me." The Israeli kid said nothing. But my DH is not Jewish and I have an EXTREMELY British, non-Jewish last name. 

I was just floored by that comment. Trust me, Phoenix, racism, religious prejudice, sexism, ageism are all still alive and well in the western world, whether it be the US or Western Europe. 

I'm aware racism exists in America, just as it exists just about everywhere.  Again, I was commenting on this particular mother lamenting how racist America is, then turning around and using terms like "Negro" and "honkey" and basically using race as the reason for giving up her child.  Doesn't that just seem a bit ironic to you?

Plus, it seems a bit naieve to think that there's no racism in the netherlands, or anywhere for that matter.  As you said, it's a worldwide problem.

I was also implying that I don't think the netherlands is inherantly less racist than the U.S.  I don't know a great deal about the Netherlands, but I think it's safe to assume Racism exists there in some capacity.  If there's a utopia out there where racism doesn't exist, I'm not aware of it.  

It's just flawed logic on the mother's part to think that having their kid adopted out to the Netherlands is an "escape from racism."