CBC recently ran a story about the resurrection of an agency specializing in international adoptions that had gone bankrupt last year. This post isn’t about the CBC story, it’s about the comments to the CBC story.
Many people commented on this story and many of those comments quite obviously came from a place of ignorance. I will assume most people just wanted to share their opinions and weren’t trying to be mean or hateful…but I could be wrong. There were a large group of commenters who assumed international adoption is tantamount to “buying babies”. This is not true. It is true there are numerous fees for social workers, doctors, translations, facilitation, etc. None of these fees are for the purchase of a child. Many of these fees are also present for domestic (I’m in Canada) adoptions, but they may be covered by the tax payer.
A large number of commenters were critical of international adoptions using the argument “there are plenty of Canadian kids who need our help”. I don’t disagree with this statement. There are lots of Canadian kids who need help and need homes. My wife and I support various charities that help some of these kids. That’s charity, not adoption. When my wife and I adopted our youngest daughter, it was because we wanted another daughter, not because we wanted to save the world. Adoptive families are not “opening their homes for the less fortunate” or “doing selfless work”, they’re expanding their families. Period.
Adoption, not just international adoption, is a way to expand your family, it is not charity. Keep this in mind when you comment about adoption or meet an adoptive family.
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- Me and the girls
Thank you for your thoughts about adoption. I am an Chinese-American, adult adoptee, and my parents are as caucasian as can be. My mom has light brown hair and bright blue eyes, and my dad had blonde hair and hazel eyes. We never viewed my adoption as a “rescue” but as a way for them to build a family.
Thanks Kimberly! I try really hard to look at “opportunities to educate” when it comes to international adoption (I frequently do so through clenched teeth though). In Alberta, my wife and I had to go through an approval process where we were interviewed by a social worker. If we said we wanted to save orphans and give them a good home, the social worker said she probably wouldn’t have approved us. I’m pretty sure most adoptive parents aren’t trying to “save” any orphans. The fun part is trying to tell well-meaning people that we’re not saving anyone. Often, good-intentioned, but ignorant people, will say how lucky my daughter is that she was saved by us….I usually tell them that I’m the lucky one.