Waiting Families vs Waiting Children

Lara at The Farmer's Wife Tells All had an interesting post today entitled "Children are not Commodities"

I typed a very long comment, which it turns out was too long for a blog post comment (oops!) so I thought I'd paste it here:

Lara-I am so glad that you prompted this discussion.  10 months ago I became the mother of an amazing son who is now 3 1/2.  My husband and I feel beyond blessed to be his parents.  The past year has had many ups and downs, many challenges and blessings, but it is an amazing journey as we are knit together as a family.

We were shocked that our then 2 1/2 year old son was a waiting child.  He was (and in many ways still is) such a baby. As first time parents who suffer from unexplained infertility we started the process thinking we would adopt a baby; then we thought a baby or young toddler; then we thought a baby, toddler, or preschooler...and then we learned about waiting children and were matched with our son--who was one of 7 2-4 year old waiting boys and 3 young boy-dominant sibling groups who were also waiting at that agency.

Since children needing adoption in Ethiopia (our son's birth country and the system we are most familiar with) are roughly 50-50 divided between girls and boys, and since young girls have a higher likelihood of being adopted domestically in Ethiopia, it was very surprising to us to see so many waiting boys. Then we became more observant on adoption listserves, blogs, yahoo groups, etc. and realized it seemed that the vast majority of adoptive families have narrow parameters requesting infant girls (0-6 months, 0-12 months, 0-18 months, or under 2) as healthy and as young as possible, followed by healthy infant boys (usually under 0-6, 0-12, or 0-18 months).

There are many, many challenges in adoption as a system/process and they are exacerbated in adoptions between a developed country like the U.S. and the developing word.  From large-scale political/social/financial agendas on the country to country level to the individual dynamics of money, power, and influence between first families and adoptive families, and everything in between.

I think that we would all agree that children need families.  They need love and care and nurturing and hope and faith and all the amazing things that come from being part of a family.

I also think that we would all agree that we don't want to take a child from their first family if they want and are able to care from them, or from their birth country if loving, stable families want and are able to take care of them...

but, adoptions typically fall on a spectrum between these two scenarios.  There are many grey areas, and often making things "better" for one child can negatively impact more children (here is one small example of how that can happen): LINK

The comparatively huge amount of money and resources that adoptions by families in countries like the U.S. bring to adoption players in developing countries, especially orphanages/orphanage workers, can incentivize orphanages to offer children for whom there are the most demand to U.S. (or other powerful, rich, and developed nations) rather than working aggressively towards family reunification, in-country adoption, and/or long-term, sustainable, effective models of orphan care which can have a positive impact on far greater numbers of children than international adoption.

As much as I hate to describe it as such (b/c as Lara pointed out, in reality, children are not by any stretch of the imagination commodities) when it comes down to it, adoption is a very simple business of supply and demand.  If the demand is for infant girls, that is what agencies and in-country orphanages are going to try and supply--that's how they make money and support their operations.  The aforementioned financial/social/political/power inequalities will only serve to negatively reinforce this.  There have been, and continue to be instances of fraud, child recruiting, falsification of paperwork, etc.  In my mind, adoption agencies should be the gatekeeper, going out of their way to not push pressure on in-country staff or orphanages to supply children that fit within certain parameters, as well as to verify children's paperwork and information to ensure it is true...but that is not currently the case.

By requesting very narrow parameters (such as "healthy infant girl 0-6 months") families create pressures on adoption agencies who create pressure on in-country staff who create pressure on in country orphanages who seek to fulfill that demand, and thus begins a very uncomfortable reality of grey areas, and blatantly not grey areas, surrounding child recruiting, false abandonment, incentivizing relinquishment, actively working against in-country adoption, failing to provide for "unadoptable orphans", etc.

In my mind, the main driving issue in his equation is potential adoptive parents having such specific requests.  If the majority of adoptive parents were limiting their adoptions to "nine year old boys with cerebral palsy" it would have a similar negative effect...but they are not...the majority of families are requesting healthy baby girls.  Since we know this is the case, and since we have the power to help mitigate the irresponsibility and greed of many adoption agencies by researching the most ethical agencies we can find, demanding more stringent standards (in ensuring children are not referred until their paperwork is complete in country, they are legally free for adoption, and ensuring that their paperwork is accurate and verifiable), and not putting pressures on them to deliver an overwhelming majority of a certain type of child (e.g. infant girl 0-6 months), why would adoptive parents make such a narrow request?  Furthermore, in pregnancy one cannot choose gender or health of a child, so why should one be able to in adoption?

I will say without reservation, that I don't think there is any place for gender selection for waiting families in adoption, that age requests should be very broad (I would suggest at least three or four year spans, e.g 0-4, 5-9, 10-14, etc.), and that adoptive parents should carefully, thoughtfully, prayerfully, and intelligently consider the negative impact that narrow parameters can have, particularly on adoptions from the developing world.

I fully agree that God can call one to adoption and will admit that there is a possibility that in very rare instances that that call could be as specific as "healthy infant girl 0-6 months", but I also think that far to often the "call" that we hear from God can be the voice of our own fears/desires/insecurities.  God doesn't call us to "care for the infant girls" He calls us to care for orphans and widows and it seems that they are the ones who are most underserved in the current adoption system...

Why are legally freed, adoptable children around the world and in the U.S. waiting for families while families wait for years to be matched with an infant?  What call from God do you think the waiting children hear?   I am willing to bet that it's not "healthy infant girl aged 0-6 months" and more along the lines of "God sets the lonely in families".

This is a polarizing issue for adoptive parents, and prospective adoptive parents.  I say all of this from a place of having adopted an Ethiopian child and as a mother who is currently seriously considering beginning a second adoption (Ababa is still not totally on board so we're not ready to move forward yet--I'll keep you posted:-).  We do not feel called or equipped to specifically pursue the adoption of a child with severe special needs or who is a teenager at the time of placement (Ababa's upper age range is 3-4 years old and mine is 10), so clearly we have set some parameters and are praying and thinking about what that would mean if/when we move forward with another adoption.  We are grappling with these very real issues too!