Please read this very important post by Rachel’s Tavern. I want to comment on it, but I need more time to thoughtfully respond.
Harlow's Monkey
an unapologetic look at transracial and transnational adoption
Please read this very important post by Rachel’s Tavern. I want to comment on it, but I need more time to thoughtfully respond.
Harlow's Monkey 
As a parent who has adopted internationally, not Guatamala and basically for the reasons the Hague HAS to be instituted there, I am appalled by this woman!
Unfortunately I have encountered those of her “breed” among the adoption community as a whole. I would call her the exception, but also one that the adoption agencies tend to love.
International adoption is a complicated matter, sometimes in the best interest of children and sometimes not. We find it an honor that China allowed us to adopt one of their children (one that THAT woman obviously would bypass with a visible limb difference and too old since she was adopted at 25 months), strive always to make our daughter find a place within both cultures as best as we are able (only hoping it will be enough to make her confident and filled with pride of her culture and her heritage), maintain relations with her foster mother, parent with truth and not “best case scenerios or feel good stories”.
I hope that all children will find homes and that their homes will be in their home cultures in loving families–what does being rich have to do with anything?! Isn’t that the goal we should all be striving for!
GAWD my post seems to be going everywhere, but this is an attitude that makes me sick! I am so sick of the holier than thou, “rescue the children from worse than hell countries”, parents! We have fought these attitudes for the two years we have been “in the system”, but it seems an uphill battle.
Thank god there is a community within the community that despises these attitudes and who are trying to make change–sadly our voices are drowned out by the adoption money making machine.
Sorry to rant, but that witch is giving us parents a bad name! as well as perpetuating racism at its worst=under the cover of helping.
Thanks for the referral! Great to read a critical post like that from an anti-racist perspective.
Thanks for the link. I wish to the gods that I could shake “Cheryl.” Hope she reads Rachel’s remarkably reasoned response.
If I ever manage to feel too comfortable with being an adoptive parent, all I have to do is read comments like those of that perspective parent, or meet someone like her, and voila, I am back to being humble.
I can only hope the experience somehow changes her and she miraculously turns into a good parent.
There IS, at least there was for me, something in the thought that hey, I will give everything I have or will ever have to these children.
BUT.
The idea that it is a “better life” than being raised by the family they were born into seems to me the worst insult we might convey to our children.
Now that I have calmed down I too am going to think of a thoughtful way to respond. I should have taken your advice. Sorry to rant in your comment section. A post on my own blog will be coming soon about issues related to the “superiorty” found in the adoption community and where we can go from here.
sweet jesus that’s…disgusting…for lack of a better word.
oh, and michael on that board, MUST be a republican (gasp! sweeping generalization – he might verbally stab me in the eye!) – cuz he argues like one. instead of arguing the point, he argues the rhetoric, syntax, derivative, or when pressed, an entirely different topic. his drivel is annoying.
that whole comment got me annoyed…
but i have tomorrow OFF! so HA!
There’s this part of me that
wishes that Cheryl is writing
a parody, something like
you see in “The Onion”, but
having heard enough sick
opinions from other ap’s
I guess it must be true. I
feel really sorry for the
baby.
A few months ago, someone
commented on Research-China
that she was hoping for
a power outage in China
so that more unwanted
babies could be born.
Very disturbing.
Wow- that is the type of person that gives adoptive parents a bad name. It is almost not believable, but as said above, they do exist.
Wendy: First I’d like to agree that Guatemala concerns me for the reasons it concerns you.
I’d also like to speak on behalf of adoption professionals and say that we do not love this kind of woman. We, in fact, don’t approve homestudies for folks who say things like this. (Maybe this is why she’s had such a hard time adopting.)
And also, really, we don’t make a lot of money. I qualify for affordable housing because I make less than 50% of the median income in my city. This is also the best-paid job I’ve had in my ten-year adoption career.
Yes, the fees are high. Way too high. They generally cover about 75-80% of operating costs. The rest is covered by grants and donations. The money goes toward the salaries of qualified and ethical people, classes, workshops, support groups, book clubs, cultural events, search assistance, homeland tours, counseling, and humanitarian aid projects – including family preservation – in every country we serve, along with countries which don’t allow adoption.
You’re right to think its flawed. Adoptive parents shouldn’t be forking over so much money. Parents around the world shouldn’t be losing their children by the millions. Reform is absolutely necessary.
I can’t help but think that “Cheryl” could’ve really used some of the classes we require our clients to attend. The adopted adult and birth parent panels in particular. I like to think that I could have – gently, kindly, with a smile on my face – educated her.
And if it didn’t work? We’d submit an unfavorable homestudy to the state. And then I guess she’d go to the “black market.” Sigh.