New York Adoption Home Study Services

2007-02-16T12:00:00.000-05:00

USCIS Reminds Prospective Adoptive Parents of

New Chinese Government Requirements

WASHINGTON - U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) wants to
ensure that prospective adoptive parents are aware of the new rules for
intercountry
adoptions from China that go into effect on May 1, 2007.

The China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) officially notified the U.S.
Embassy in Beijing on December 21, 2006 of the new rules and their effective
date.
The rules will significantly impact and limit parents interested in adopting
a child from China. Some of the new requirements relate to age, marital
status,
length of marriage, health and financial status. The CCAA has indicated they
will process cases under the current rules as long as the dossier is
submitted
before May 1, 2007.

Since any family who filed an Application for Advance Processing of Orphan
Petition (Form I-600A) before December 21, 2006 were unaware of the CCAA's
new
requirements, USCIS stands ready to assist these prospective adoptive
parents. USCIS offices will exercise discretion to expedite adjudication of
any

Form I-600A filed before December 21, 2006.

USCIS offices will also allow prospective adoptive parents to file a new
Form I-600A, with the appropriate filing fee, if their current approval
notice
(Forms I-171H or I-797C) expires before May 1, 2007. The agency will work to
expedite adjudication of those applications in order to meet the May 1
deadline.

Guatemala
The announcement concerning new adoption regulations that was to have been
made today, has been postponed.

2007-02-14T22:15:00.000-05:00

Sperm Donor Father Ends His Anonymity - New York Times
The New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 14, 2007
Sperm Donor Father Ends His Anonymity
By
AMY HARMON

There is no established ritual for how an anonymous sperm donor should
contact his genetic children. But for Jeffrey Harrison, Valentine's Day
seemed as
good an occasion as any.

"It's a short life," he said, "and these children need to have some kind of
resolution. I thought I could send a little valentine, kind of, to everyone,
just saying hello."

Mr. Harrison had been thinking about getting in touch since reading in an
article in The New York Times 15 months ago that two teenagers whose mothers
had
used his sperm to conceive were looking for him. The headline, "Hello, I'm
Your Sister, Our Father Is Donor 150," made him choke on his coffee, said
Mr.
Harrison, who made $400 a month donating sperm under that number
twice-weekly during the late 1980s.

But California Cryobank, the sperm bank that had promised anonymity to its
customers and to Mr. Harrison, proved unresponsive to his repeated requests
for
assistance. Besides, he had misgivings. What if the girls were disappointed
by his humble circumstances?

Once one of the sperm bank's most-requested donors, with a profile that
described him as 6 foot and blue-eyed with interests in philosophy, music
and drama,
Mr. Harrison, 50, lives with his four dogs in a recreational vehicle near
the Venice section of Los Angeles.

"I make a meager living," Mr. Harrison said, taking care of dogs and doing
other odd jobs.

Still, he said he thought he could explain to the girls why he had taken an
unconventional life-path. Their grandfather was an
Ivy League
-educated retired financial executive, he would tell them; their grandmother
was a former volunteer president for the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty
to Animals.

Six weeks ago, Mr. Harrison logged on to the Donor Sibling Registry, the Web
site devoted to facilitating connections between donor-conceived offspring,
where the two girls, Danielle P. and JoEllen M. had initially found each
other. Four more teenagers from his sperm samples had since surfaced, he saw
on
the logs.

How many could he handle, he wondered?

As Valentine's Day approached, though, Mr. Harrison resolved to get in touch
with them all.

Last Saturday night, Mr. Harrison e-mailed a picture of his birth
certificate to Wendy Kramer, the founder of the sibling registry, to confirm
his identity.
Several dozen donors have contacted offspring on the registry, Ms. Kramer
said, but none have been brave enough to come forward with such a large
group
of teenagers.

"You don't know what to expect," Ms. Kramer said. "How do we define this
family, and what are we to each other?"

Danielle and JoEllen called Mr. Harrison together the next day. The moment
that had preoccupied their fantasies for years began in a more prosaic
fashion
than they had anticipated. But they said they were not disappointed.

"The first thing he said was, 'Holy moly,' " said Danielle, 17, who has
spent several hours on the phone with Mr. Harrison in the last three days.
"He's
sort of a free spirit, and I don't care what career he has. I got to talk to
his dogs."

Mr. Harrison met a third daughter, Ryann M., in Los Angeles yesterday
afternoon. His other newfound offspring, who live in Colorado, Florida, New
York and
Pennsylvania, are busy marveling over their shared love of animals and the
distinctive forehead evident in the pictures he has e-mailed.

2007-02-14T21:49:00.000-05:00

Message on Guatemala To Be Posted on Our Website

The following message on Guatemala is being posted on our website:

February 14, 2007

Guatemala Plans to Announce Protocol of Good Practices on February 16, 2007

The government of Guatemala has invited the U.S. Embassy to attend a
ceremony publicly announcing a "Protocol of Good Practices" on adoption on
Friday,
February 16. As details of the implementation of the Protocol become
available we will provide updated information.

Rumors that the U.S. Embassy is no longer accepting adoption cases are not
correct. The U.S. Embassy continues to process adoption cases as stipulated
under U.S. law and procedures.

The U.S. government supports efforts by the Guatemalan government to
increase protection of children and parents and a smooth transition to
implementation
of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption for Guatemala.

Miriam's Comments: There are concerns that these new practices will affect
Guatemalan children in need of adoptive homes and the adoptive parents who
wish to adopt them, in a negative manner.

2007-02-05T22:07:00.000-05:00

New Immigration fees for adoptive parents will go into effect on April 2,
2007.
I-600 and I-600A - $670
I-824 (change of Consulate for filing I-600A - $300
N-600 Citizenship application for adopted child - $420

2007-01-23T11:16:00.000-05:00

The Mystery of the Chinese Baby Shortage - New York Times
The New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 23, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
The Mystery of the Chinese Baby Shortage
By BETH NONTE RUSSELL

McLean, Va.

ACCORDING to a State Department report released this week, American citizens
adopted 6,493 children from China in 2006, a decline of 18 percent from the
previous year's total of 7,906. And yet, just over a month ago, this
newspaper reported that China had prepared strict new criteria for foreign
adoption
applications because the country claimed it lacked "available" babies to
meet the "spike" in demand.

China has always limited foreign adoptions, and it does not publish reliable
statistics on the number of children in its orphanages. So how is one to
know
whether the decrease in adoptions reflects a lack of supply or a lack of
demand?

In the week following the report on the new guidelines, more than one
bewildered person said to me, "But I thought there were lots of babies in
orphanages
in China!" My response was to helplessly reply, "So did I." My understanding
of this was based not on conjecture, but on having been to China twice to
adopt, having seen orphanages with my own eyes, and on research and other
eyewitness accounts. Many hundreds and perhaps thousands of orphanages
operate
in China, most of them full of girls.

According to a February 2005 report in The Weekend Standard, a Chinese
business newspaper, demographers in China found a ratio of 117 boys per 100
girls
under the age of 5 in the 2000 census. Thanks to China's one-child policy,
put into effect in 1979 in order to curb population growth, and a strong
cultural
preference for male children, this gender gap could result in as many as 60
million "missing" girls from the population by the end of the decade, enough
to alarm even Chinese officials.

And what happened to these girls? According to the International Planned
Parenthood Federation (a term that takes on a whole new meaning when
referring
to China), there are about seven million abortions in China per year, 70
percent of which are estimated to be of females. That adds up to around five
million
per year, or 50 million by the end of the decade; so where are the other 10
million girls? If even 10 percent end up in orphanages... well, you do the
math.

A few months ago, in a conversation with my friend Patrick Mason, executive
director of the International Adoption Center at INOVA Fairfax Hospital in
Virginia,
I confessed a growing fear: that China, the country from which my two
daughters were adopted, would sooner or later shut down its international
adoption
program. Dr. Mason immediately dismissed my concern, saying, "The number of
orphans is just too great."

And yet, I continued to wonder whether, as China increasingly asserts itself
on the world stage and prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, allowing
Westerners to adopt thousands of infants each year would fit the image it
wanted to project. I suspect not, and China's new restrictions lead me to
believe
that national pride is more important than getting these children into
loving homes.

The issue of abandoned and institutionalized children remains a taboo
subject in China, a problem the government does not even acknowledge exists.
The impulse
to hide it seems to stem partly from embarrassment and partly from fear of
revealing the grave human rights abuses the one-child policy has produced;
surely,
watching a parade of well-off foreigners cart off thousands of babies would
make the Chinese authorities understandably uncomfortable.

But the answer is not to stop the foreigners from adopting; it is to put an
end to their reasons for doing so. My fondest hope, and the hope of
thousands
of parents who have adopted from China, is for all the orphanages there to
close because there are no more abandoned children to put in them. This will
be accomplished only when China decides that there is no economic or
political justification for the magnitude of suffering that has resulted
from the
one-child policy. The government must openly acknowledge the problem, in
part by publishing verifiable information about the status of its orphaned
children,
and take real steps to correct it. To do so would go a long way toward
building the international trust and respect China seems to want so badly.

China has announced the lifting of restrictions for foreign journalists in
preparation for the 2008 Olympics. Perhaps this will allow reporters to look
for answers to some basic questions: how many children are there in
institutions in China? If there is nothing to hide, why do visitors need
approval to
visit orphanages? Why are only certain orphanages allowed to participate in
the international adoption program, and what is going on in the ones that
are
not?

The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, to which China and 69 other
countries are signatories, goes a long way toward ensuring against child
abduction
and trafficking; but it does not include provisions that would require
member countries to report such information as the number of children housed
in
institutions or the criteria used for selecting "suitable" children for
adoption.

The treaty states that "for the full and harmonious development of his or
her personality," each child should have the opportunity to grow up in a
"family
environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding." Indeed,
it requires that each signatory take "as a matter of priority, appropriate
measures to enable the child to remain in the care of his or her family of
origin." One could argue that China's one-child policy directly violates the
treaty by ensuring that many children will not remain in the care of the
family but be relinquished to the care of the state.

Under the new Chinese adoption guidelines, the international adoption
celebrity Angelina Jolie could not adopt from China (she's not married, and
alas,
she and Brad have more than two divorces between them, which is a no-no);
nor could the actress Meg Ryan (again, not married). Another person who is
not
eligible is yours truly. My husband is over 50, so I would have to trade him
in, marry again, wait the required five years (another new rule) before
beginning
the adoption process, and by that time I would be sneaking up on 50 myself.

It is comforting to know that Madonna is still eligible, at least until she
turns 50, gets fat (the new regulations call for a body mass index of less
than
40), gets divorced or goes broke (anyone with a net worth of under $80,000
is excluded).

The Chinese have asserted that the demand for adoptions far exceeds the
number of babies it deems "available," based on criteria that have never
been made
public. We can only wonder how many babies will be left behind by Beijing's
new policies - perhaps spending their lives in institutions because of these
arbitrary and artificial limits.

Beth Nonte Russell is the author of the forthcoming "Forever Lily: An
Unexpected Mother's Journey to Adoption in China" and the co-founder of the
Golden
Phoenix Foundation.

2007-01-15T20:37:00.000-05:00

Families who are trying to beat the May 1st deadline in China, should be
aware that new New York State rules concerning their criminal clearances
went into effect on January 11th. Fingerprint cards that were not
processed by that date will be returned to your home study agency along with
a duplicate fingerprint card that the state will be submitting to the FBI.
New York State criminal clearances will no longer be complete without an FBI
clearance as well. At present, New York State estimates that it will take
six to ten weeks for the FBI clearances to be completed. When new
technology arrives, in approximately two months, the FBI clearances will
take only 72 hours.

Because dossiers will have to arrive in China at the beginning of April in
order to be logged in by the CCAA by May 1, this new New York State
regulation may negatively affect you. Please be in touch with your home
study provider.

2007-01-15T20:30:00.000-05:00

In City Ban, a Sign of Wealth and Its Discontents - New York Times
The New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 15, 2007
Guangzhou Journal
In City Ban, a Sign of Wealth and Its Discontents
By
JIM YARDLEY

GUANGZHOU, China, Jan. 11 - Guangzhou, the chaotic export capital in
southern China, appeared to hit a major Chinese milestone this month,
becoming the
country's first city to reach a per capita income of $10,000 - more than
five times the nationwide figure and a rough threshold for becoming a
"developed"
country.

But in a measure of just how problematic prosperity can be here, the city
will institute a ban on motorcycles and motorized bicycles on Monday, hoping
to
quell a crime wave that has been building to more than 100,000 offenses a
year.

The vehicles, the primary mode of transport for migrant workers clawing
their way up Guangzhou's economic ladder, are also favored by criminals who
have
terrorized the city in recent years, including a shocking case in late 2005,
when a woman had her hand cut off by a thief on a motorcycle. News accounts
concluded that motorcycle thieves were divided into gangs, including one
called the Hand Choppers.

"Crime will be a long-term problem in Guangzhou," said Peng Peng, director
of research management for the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences. "As
long
as there is a vast gap between the rich and poor in the city, Guangzhou will
suffer from crime."

The Communist Party is forever trying to focus the expectations of the
Chinese people on a better, if distant, future where everyone is more
affluent and
where China is a true modern nation. Yet cities like Guangzhou and nearby
Shenzhen, which have already begun to taste real prosperity, are learning
how
new wealth can bring new problems and not always solve the old ones. As
incomes have risen in Guangzhou, so have crime, traffic and inequality.

Inequality here is unquestionably stark between the 7.5 million registered
residents and the estimated 3.7 million migrants. This week, Guangzhou had
to
lower its per capita income figure to $7,800; the $10,000 level had been
calculated without including migrants, whose wages are notoriously low.

But public sympathy has limits, particularly since studies show that
migrants are responsible for much of the city's street crime. Most major
Chinese cities
feel very safe by American standards. Still, in Guangzhou, thefts, purse
snatching, robberies and muggings have become common. One 2006 poll found
that
only 20 percent of residents felt safe. Hawkers at one pedestrian overpass
in Tianhe District were selling switchblades and collapsible metal rods as
self-defense
weapons.

Last March, Zhang Guifang, a high-ranking Communist Party official in the
city, signaled a tougher stance when he encouraged police officers to open
fire
on crime suspects when necessary. The police subsequently shot five mugging
suspects, and crime seemed to slow down.

Recently, there has been talk, including by a high-ranking official in
Guangzhou's Communist Party, of capping the number of migrants allowed into
the city
as a means of curbing social problems. As yet, the city has not instituted
any restrictions, but the motorcycle ban has already forced thousands of
motorcycle
taxi riders to leave. Others have turned over their motorcycles and
motorized bicycles to government impound lots in exchange for modest cash
payments.

"It might be because Guangzhou is richer now," said Lin Mu, 50, a motorcycle
taxi driver, offering an explanation for the ban and then laughing at his
own
words. "There are no more poor people, so there is no room for motorcycles!
Everyone has millions and millions!"

Another migrant, who gave only his last name, Gong, idled his motorcycle
with other riders along a major thoroughfare in the city's Tianhe District.
"A
lot of people have left," said Mr. Gong, 40, his eyes darting in search of
customers as well as police officers. "We're just biding our time until the
final deadline on the 15th."

Mr. Gong said he migrated to Guangzhou five years ago from Hunan Province.
He had earned about $250 a month on his motorcycle - a healthy wage for a
migrant
- but now he said he was not certain what he would do.

"Oh, here they come, here they come!" he said, suddenly racing off as two
police officers approached on a motorbike. "Sorry, I've got to go."

Along Beijing Road, one of Guangzhou's most fashionable shopping boulevards,
random interviews found that nearly everyone had been robbed or knew someone
who had been. Maggie Qu, 20, who recently graduated from a local technical
college, said a thief stole her wallet and cellphone out of her purse two
months
ago. Her friend, Chen Jianguo, 21, expressed sympathy for migrants - "They
are Chinese, after all" - but he blamed them for the crime problem. "They do
bring crime," Mr. Chen said. "Unemployed people and uneducated people have
to make a living, so they may resort to crime."

He added: "There are too many of them coming, and there are not enough job
opportunities."

Of course, migrants are also responsible for performing the hard labor that
generates much of the city's economic output - just like elsewhere in China.
Ye Cunhuan migrated to Guangzhou from Hubei Province in 2003 and opened four
stores that sell motorized bicycles. These bikes, equipped with small
motors,
are popular for deliveries and also for people who cannot afford a
motorcycle. Now, Ms. Ye has had to close two stores and is facing ruin.

"This has been fatal to my business," she said.

She has responded by filing a lawsuit that claims the ban violates a
national law that establishes the legality of motorcycles and motorized
bicycles. The
case was heard last Monday, and she expects a verdict by March. Ms. Ye
scoffed at the idea that criminals used motorized bicycles, given their low
rate
of speed, and characterized the ban as an act of discrimination against
migrants and others with less money.

"They don't want to see any of the poor or any ugliness on the streets," Ms.
Ye said. "They want Guangzhou to be a city that attracts wealth and beauty
and is full of luxury cars."

Lin Yang contributed to this article.

New York Adoption Home Study Services

2007-01-03T20:51:00.000-05:00

BEIJING, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- China's new adoption rules are not meant to restrict the number of foreigners who can adopt Chinese children, but to ensure that kids receive the best possible family care, according to an official with the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Lu Ying, director of the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) under the ministry, explained that China now has far fewer children available for adoption by foreign couples.

"More domestic families have adopted children from our center in recent years and economic and social development has meant that fewer children have
been abandoned or orphaned," Lu said.

According to international conventions, preference is given to domestic families rather than foreign couples.

The number of foreigners applying to adopt a child in China has increased, and they usually have to wait 14 to 15 months, Lu said.

"The new rules will help shorten waiting time for qualified foreigners and speed up the process for children, especially the disabled, so that
they can go to their new families, where they can get better education and medical treatment, more quickly," he said.

The rules have been made in the interests of the children, to guarantee them optimal family conditions, he said.

The new rules, to take effect on May 1, 2007, make it more difficult for overweight, single and economically precarious foreigners to adopt.
They give priority to stable, well-off foreign couples aged between 30 and 50.

Reports by foreign media said the new rules were aimed at curbing the number of foreigners who can adopt Chinese children.

Xing Kaimin, a CCAA official, denied this, saying that the new criteria were meant to protect children's interests and not to show prejudice
against less qualified applicants, who can still apply.

Obese people, for example, are more likely to suffer from disease and might have a shorter life expectancy, which is not without consequence for
the life of the adopted child, China Daily quoted Xing as saying.

Other criteria state that the applicant couple must have been married for at least two years, and those who were divorced must have remarried at least five years previously.

The current law allows single foreigners to adopt Chinese children, but requires the father to be at least 40 years older than the adopted girl.

A new requirement states that adopters must have less than four children.

The new rules will provide a reference for foreign adoption agencies, which can offer preferential arrangements for qualified families and
improve efficiency, Lu said.

More than 100 licensed adoption agencies in 16 countries have been informed of the revisions.

But Lu said the priority criteria might be modified over time.

More than 50,000 Chinese children are reported to have been adopted by foreigners in the past 10 years, with 80 percent of them going to U.S.
families.

About 8,000 Chinese children were adopted by U.S. families last year. The figure was 5,000 in 2001.

2007-01-01T14:30:00.000-05:00

Transracial Adoptions Evoke Heartfelt Responses
Work on Emotional Topic Brings Personal Stories From Others
Commentary by HARI SREENIVASAN

Feb. 28, 2005 - - There are certain moments when sharing pieces of
information can elicit much more than a response and, for me, telling people
that I was
working on a piece about transracial adoptions was a series of such moments.

One co-worker told me about the challenges and internal struggles she and
her family went through when deciding to adopt. Another said he was adopted
and
told me about his personal journey in finding out about his birth parents
and the impact it has had on the relationships with the parents who have
raised
him. These aren't the type of conversations that flow freely in newsrooms.

When some of my friends heard I was working on this piece, their curiosity
was piqued by the race factor. The topic quickly started a debate about the
state
of racism in the United States vs. other countries, and the cultural
identity dilemmas that transracial adoptees could face. These conversations
are ones
that members of the adoption community are still having, some quietly, some
loudly.

Our piece focused on a few of the elements that enable transracial adoptions
in the United States and examined the situation of black babies from the
United
States being adopted in countries like Canada or Germany.

Transracial adoption basically means parents of one race or ethnicity
adopting children of another race or ethnicity.

My producer, Nils Kongshaug, and I visited a white family in Canada who had
just successfully adopted Ethan, a beautiful, bouncing baby boy in every
sense
of the phrase. We sat down with Phil Bertelsen, an African-American
filmmaker who had grown up an adopted child in a white family, and talked
about the
unanswered questions that forced him to make a film about the subject.

Contributing to the story were representatives from adoption link , an
agency in Chicago that specializes in placing black children into adopted
families,
and Bridge Communications, a firm that helps prepare prospective parents for
the transracial adoption process.

There are several different factors that have created the reality of black
children being placed overseas with white families and, in no particular
order,
they are: The dearth of black families in the United States in line to
adopt; the fears adoptive parents of other races have that they won't be
able to
bear the challenges of raising a black child; ignorance or racism; wishes of
the birth mothers that their children be raised in a less-prejudiced society
than the United States; and the demand created by overseas parents who are
looking to adopt and find a supply of black babies in the United States.

Watching Bertelsen's film, "Outside Looking In," is a good primer to the
layers of complexity involved in these adoptions. On the one hand, there is
the
idealism of loving, prospective parents for whom race truly might not matter
when they adopt a child. On the other hand, there is also something to be
said for giving children a sense of their own cultural heritage and
preparing them for a world where race is still an issue.

In 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers called the idea of
placing black babies into white families "cultural genocide." Though it
hasn't
made pronouncements as strongly since, the group still thinks it's a good
idea to keep black children with black families. A recent law made it a
crime
to consider race as a factor when it comes to adoption and that's one of the
reasons children of all races in the United States are available to
prospective
parents of all races.

There are several great online resources if you want to learn more about
transracial adoption. They include:

Adoption.com: http://transracial.adoption.com/

AdoptiveFamilies.com:
http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/transracial-adoption.php

About.com on race relations:
http://racerelations.about.com/cs/raceandadoption/

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children &
Families: http://naic.acf.hhs.gov/pubs/f_trans.cfm

Statement from NABSW on transracial adoptions:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/archive/NabswTRA.htm

About.com on NABSW's statement:
http://racerelations.about.com/library/weekly/aa121700a.htm

Interracial Voice: http://www.webcom.com/~intvoice/point19.html

African American Adoptions Online:
http://www.africanamericanadoptionsonline.com/

2007-01-01T14:20:00.000-05:00

Born in America, adopted abroad | csmonitor.com

csmonitor.com - The Christian Science Monitor Online
from the October 27, 2004 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1027/p11s01-lifp.html
Born in America, adopted abroad
African-American babies are going to parents overseas even as US couples
adopt children from other countries

By Dawn Davenport | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

Adrian Stokkeland, a 2-year-old in Canada, dances with his mom to the music
of Elvis and sleeps with his most treasured possession, a box of toy cars.
Emma
Sonnenschein, an energetic 19-month-old in Germany, loves to "help" her mom
around the house. Elisa van Meurs, a 5-year-old in the Netherlands, is a
real
girly-girl. Her favorite outfit is a Minnie Mouse dress, paired with a Snow
White tiara and pink Barbie shoes.

Adrian, Emma, and Elisa have more in common than their charm and being the
apple of their parents' eyes. All are black children born in the United
States
and adopted as infants by parents in other countries.

They also are representatives of a little-known trend: At the same time the
US is "importing" increasing numbers of adoptive children from Russia,
China,
and Guatemala, it is "exporting" black babies to be adopted in other
countries.

Since 1995, US State Department records indicate that international
adoptions by Americans have increased more than 140 percent. Couples often
cite the
lack of American babies as the reason for adopting from abroad.

But the US is now the fourth largest "supplier" of babies for adoption to
Canada. Adoption by Shepherd Care, an agency in Hollywood, Fla., places 90
percent
of its African-American babies in Canada. One-third of the children placed
through Adoption-Link in Chicago, which specializes in adoptions for black
babies,
go to people from other countries.

The exact numbers are not available, but interviews with adoption agencies
and families in Canada, Germany, France, and the Netherlands indicate that
the
US also sends babies to those four countries as well as Belgium and England.
Most of the children are black newborns. Most of the adoptingparents are
Caucasian.

Why is it happening?

There is no simple explanation for why many white Americans prefer to adopt
from abroad rather than adopt the available black babies at home. Racism is
one reason, says Cheryl Kinnaird of Adoption-Link in Chicago. But there are
others, she adds.

Families might choose an international adoption because of an affinity for a
particular country or a desire to help. Many couples want a child who
resembles
them so that their family will not stand out as an "adoptive family." Since
most adoptive families are Caucasian, this might explain the rise in
adoptions
from Russia and other eastern European countries.

In 2003, 37 percent of all international adoptions to the US were from
countries where the majority of children adopted were Caucasian.

White couples may also be concerned about how their extended family will
react to a black child. And they sometimes worry they are not up to the task
of
raising a black child in America and are not sure it is in the best interest
of the child to be raised in a white environment.

Then, too, whites often are uncertain whether they can provide the child
with cultural exposure to the African-American community.

Most adoption professionals agree that, all other things being equal, it is
best to place an African- American child with an African-American family.
The
National Association of Black Social Workers' position is that every effort
should be made to place children with families of the same race and culture.

Most, but not all, birth mothers agree, if they have the choice. However,
they do not often have the choice, since fewer African-American couples
apply
to adoption agencies. One reason is that babies are frequently available
within their extended family or community, and they have no need to go
through
the expense of an agency to adopt. Also, the number of infertile black
couples who can afford to adopt is simply not as large as the number of
black babies
available.

The word hasn't gotten out

Some speculate that African-American babies have lagged behind in adoption
rates because many Americans don't realize they're available. Media coverage
and popular culture have focused on Americans adopting internationally
rather than domestically.

"When we started to think about adoption, we thought only of international
adoption because that's all we were hearing about," says Lisa Malaquin-Prey
of
North Carolina, mother of an adopted Russian baby. "We thought it would cost
too much and that we would have to wait for a long time if we adopted
domestically."

"I think that more Americans would adopt these babies if they knew they were
available," says Stacy Hyer, a white American living in Germany with two
adopted
black children.

There is evidence of increasing adoption of black babies by white American
families. But ingrained preferences still play a part in who is chosen for
adoption.

The majority of couples seeking to adopt are white, but there aren't nearly
enough Caucasian babies available in the US to meet the demand. Although
exceptions
certainly exist, American parents generally prefer babies to toddlers, girls
to boys, and Caucasians to African-Americans, adoption professionals report.
Other ethnicities fall in between, depending on their skin color.
African-American boys are at the bottom of this "ranking" system, they say,
which is
why they're harder to place.

"We have to work much harder to find homes for our African-American babies,"
says Robert Springer of Christian Homes, an adoption agency in Texas.

No one is equating babies with commodities, but the principles of supply and
demand apply. Adoption costs and waiting times in the US vary depending on
a baby's ranking in the "desirability list."

The children who are in the greatest demand are also in the shortest supply.
Those who want to adopt healthy white babies in the US may wait as long as
five years, agencies say. In contrast, they add, the waiting for
African-Americans is often measured in weeks and months, especially for baby
boys.

The demand for biracial (black/white) babies falls in between, and the wait
reflects this. The waiting period for a biracial girl can be more than a
year.

It's also the case that adopting a white baby costs more than adopting a
black or biracial one.

Adoption fees for healthy Caucasian babies can be as high as $40,000,
according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. For biracial
babies,
the cost is about $18,000. For African-American newborns, it ranges from
$10,000 to $12,000, agencies say.

The costs to the adoption agency for each child also vary greatly, not
because of race but due to circumstances. The agency may have paid all the
prenatal
expenses and living costs for one birth mother, for instance, and not
another, who decided on adoption in her ninth month of pregnancy.

Why fees are less for black babies

But instead of passing along the actual costs to the new parents, many
adoption agencies - most of which are nonprofit - charge a set fee that is
determined
by how difficult the baby may be to place. The agencies say this enables
them to find homes for the children who are hardest to place.

Fees and waiting times for American families adopting internationally vary
by country, but total costs, including travel, are usually about $30,000,
with
a waiting time of nine to 18 months.

Because of regulations and laws in the country of origin, most of the
foreign children adopted from abroad by Americans are more than 1 year old
when they
arrive in the US.

In contrast, American babies can be adopted as soon as their parents
relinquish them.

Families in foreign countries cite the availability of newborns as the
primary reason they choose to adopt in the US. Canada and Europe don't have
as many
babies available for adoption. Therefore, "if you want a newborn, you go to
America, " says Bart van Meurs, Elisa's dad. Families also cite the health
of the babies, the short waiting time, and the availability of medical
records as additional advantages. Race is seldom a consideration.

"Most of our families just want a baby as young as possible, and the US is
the best place to go for a newborn," explainsLorneWelwood of Hope Adoption
Services
in Abbotsford, British Columbia. "They are not ignoring the race issues, but
they don't think, like the Americans, that the less black the better."

"The families from abroad do not think of black babies as being second best,
babies that they'll 'settle' for because white babies are hard to find,"
says
Ms. Kinnaird.

Most adoption agencies encourage the birth mother to select the adoptive
family for her child. Sometimes a black birth mother prefers having her
child adopted
overseas because she believes there is less prejudice there than in the US.

"Some birth mothers view placing their child abroad as a way for them to
have a better life with less struggle," says Joe Sica of Shepherd Care in
Hollywood,
Fla.

Long-term studies of black children adopted by white parents paint a picture
of well-adjusted children and teens strongly bonded to their families.

Tianna Broad, who's 12, readily fits into this picture. She's into makeup,
clothes, soccer, and horses, as are most of her friends in British Columbia.
"She's pretty much a typical Canadian teen," says her mother, Karen
Madeiros.

Most parents abroad report little prejudice against their adopted black
children. "Canada doesn't have the same race history as the US," notes Dawn
Stokkeland,
Adrian's Elvis-rocking mom. "There isn't the 'us' versus 'them' mentality
here."

There are also not the numbers of blacks in Canada. "In my son's elementary
school [in British Columbia], there are only eight blacks out of 450 kids
and
even fewer in my daughter's middle school," says Ms. Madeiros. "Most of the
blacks here are middle-class professionals, and our neighborhoods are
completely
integrated."

"For the most part Germans have very positive views of blacks - they see
them as singers, actors, and athletes - all positive images," explains Ms.
Hyer.
"My children are almost always accepted for who they are without any
expectation of who they should be because of the color of their skin."

"I think the main reason there is little prejudice against blacks in Germany
is because there are so few blacks here," says Peter Sonnenschein, father of
two black children.

That's not to say there are never problems. Some parents say their children
have encountered racism.

"Because Holland had many colonies, many [black] people live here and there
is prejudice against them," says van Meurs.

"Although my [12-year-old] daughter has never experienced any racism that I
know of, I can't say the same for my [10-year-old] son," says Madeiros.

Parents in Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands have formed support groups
to help their children develop a positive self-image.

Signs of change

While the news may be encouraging for African-American children adopted
abroad, there's evidence of change on the home front, too, as more white
Americans
look into adopting black babies.

Since the US doesn't keep statistics on private domestic adoptions, the
exact numbers of trans-racial adoptions are not known, but anecdotal
evidence abounds
of a shift toward black infants being placed with white American families.

"We can find homes for all our babies in the US, but there are regional
differences," notesRobert Springer of Christian Homes in Texas, who adds
that "many
families in the Northeast, Northwest, and Minnesota are eager to adopt
African-American babies."

Dick Van Deelen, with Adoption Associates in Michigan, reports that for the
first time in 35 years they have a list of white families waiting to adopt
black
babies.

In a twist to the import/export world of international adoption, "We are
thinking of looking to Africa to bring over more children to meet this
need," he
says.

Adoption-Link, in Chicago, also has a waiting list of families for black
babies.

"The younger generation that is now adopting is less prejudiced and more
open to becoming a mixed-race family," says Mr. Van Deelen.

Some say that the growing willingness of Americans to adopt US babies
regardless of skin color comes at a good time, since placement of American
babies
abroad may be threatened by new regulations.

The US is in the process of ratifying an international treaty on
international adoption. Although the regulations are not final, it is
expected that they
will make it harder for agencies to place American babies abroad.

But all the talk of adoption trends and prejudice fades in the day-to-day
existence of parenting after the child arrives.

Ms. Stokkeland sums up what most parents feel. After a particularly trying
day with a strong-willed 2-year-old, she sighs and says, "I wouldn't trade
[Adrian]
for the world. He is truly the child God wanted me to have."

The adoption was such a success that Stokkeland did it again. Earlier this
month, Adrian got a new little sister, as Claire Lisa, also
African-American,
came north from Georgia to join him and his mother in Canada. Stokkeland
says she couldn't feel more blessed.

Miriam's Comments: One of the reasons why more white Americans are adopting
transracially, is that legislative and procedural barriers to this kind of
adoption have lessened.

2006-12-28T22:34:00.000-05:00

Quick, Do You Know Your B.M.I.? - New York Times
The New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 28, 2006
Fitness
Quick, Do You Know Your B.M.I.?
By ABBY ELLIN

IN the past, you could learn a lot about a person from a group of letters:
Ph.D., D.D.S., V.F.W., D.W.I.

Now another set looms ahead, and it affects everyone from teeny tiny models
to adoptive parents to schoolchildren: B.M.I. or Body Mass Index.

But few people actually know what it means.

"I know that having a low B.M.I. is supposed to be a good thing, but I have
no idea what it really is or how to figure it out," said Hilary Black, 35,
the
editor of Tango, a magazine about relationships. "Keeping track of my weight
is more important to me than keeping track of my B.M.I."

Ms. Black is not interested in adopting a child from China. If she were, she
might be very concerned with her index rating. Last week, the government-run
China Center of Adoption Affairs mandated that prospective adoptive parents
have, among financial, educational, marital and other health requirements,
an index rating under 40.

Ms. Black does not have children. If she did, and if she lived in Arkansas
or Tennessee, she would receive a report card noting her children's index
figures,
in addition to their ability to play nice with others.

Ms. Black might also be worried about her index number if she were a model:
In September, organizers in Madrid banned from its runways five models whose
index rating was below 18.5. In Milan, fashion industry officials have also
barred knife-thin models from its February shows.

The B.M.I. is a mathematical calculation of a person's weight in kilograms
divided by his or her height in meters squared. Since most Americans have no
clue what their height is in meters (remember the failed attempt to go
metric circa 1976?), it's easiest to determine an index rating by visiting a
Web
site like that of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (
www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi
), where one can determine their index rating by entering their height in
feet and weight in pounds.

And as the index, a measurement adopted by government health agencies,
increasingly gains currency in many areas of life, you may wish to know
yours. But
how important is it? The number should not be the final word for measuring
whether a person is under- or overweight to an unhealthy degree, some
experts
say.

"Our society is really fixated on numbers, and the problem is when it comes
to weight distribution and the risk for
heart disease
, it's not just one number - it's the percentage of body fat, B.M.I. and
waist size that matters," said Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a cardiologist at Lenox
Hill
Hospital in Manhattan.

Dr. Peter D. Vash, the director of medical affairs at Lindora Medical
Clinics, in Costa Mesa, Calif., compares the index to a speed limit. "It's
not always
an absolute index in the individual case," he said.

A Belgian statistician and astronomer, Adolphe Quetelet, invented the index
formula in the 1830s. But it wasn't until the 1980s that public health
agencies
adopted it as a way of identifying individuals at risk for heart attacks,
hypertension,
diabetes
, stroke and some cancers.

In 1998, two branches of the
National Institutes of Health
created new guidelines which divided people into categories: You were
"normal" if your index rating was between 18.5 and 24.9; "overweight'' if it
was
25 to 29.9; and "obese" if it was 30 or higher.

After the change, many doctors and lay people were up in arms. By the
revised standards, nearly 55 percent of the American adult population in
1998, was
considered overweight or obese, according to the N.I.H. (Today, 66.3 percent
of adults are overweight or obese, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)

The index also didn't distinguish between body fat and muscle mass, so
athletes and bodybuilders like
Arnold Schwarzenegger
, whose rating was 33 when he was Mr. Universe, were technically obese.

That struck some people as odd. Such discrepancies got experts wondering how
accurately the index gauges health. Others questioned the reliability of the
index because the figure doesn't take fitness into account.

A low number can be deceptive. Sedentary men with a rating of less than 27
were at a greater risk for heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and certain
cancers
than fit men with a rating above 30, according to a study of 25,389 men
conducted by the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas.

"In the past, it used to be felt that if you had a high B.M.I. you had a
high mortality and all these risk factors," said Dr. Michael D. Ozner, a
cardiologist
and medical director of wellness and prevention at Baptist Health South
Florida in Miami. "We now know that exercise is extremely important."

A study published in the August 19 issue of the medical journal Lancet
combined data from 40 studies involving about 250,000 people with heart
disease.
The researchers found that patients with a low rating in the normal rating
had a higher risk of death than others in the normal rating. Overweight
patients
had better survival rates and fewer heart problems than those with a normal
index number.

"We concluded that B.M.I. might not be the best way to assess body fatness,"
said Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, the lead author and a cardiologist at the

Mayo Clinic
in Rochester, Minn. "The issue is that people with 'normal' weight based on
B.M.I. may have a lot of fat, and we're labeling these people as completely
healthy when they might not be."

Yet, the index remains a widely accepted gauge of health, even though some
tools are better predictors like say the hip-to-waist ratio in the case of
heart
attacks. Part of the reason is because it's simple to calculate and cheap.

It is not the best way to test body fat, but the others are often
time-consuming or unreliable. Many gyms use the skin-fold test: a
caliper-wielding trainer
pinches your body in three to seven places to determine your fat-to-muscle
ratio. But the results vary depending on who's administering the test, and
what
body parts they pinch.

The method that many doctors consider the gold standard is both tricky and
inconvenient, since it requires a patient to be submerged in a water tank,
to
exhale, and then sit on an underwater scale. (Since fat is less dense than
muscle, the more body fat you have, the less you'll weigh in water.) But
most
doctors don't have oversize cisterns in their offices, not everyone can hold
their breath for an extended period and "Who wants to get all of their
patients
naked?" asked Dr. Amanda J. Dupont of the Austin Bariatric Clinic in Texas.

To assess her clients, Charla McMillian, a former Marine who runs FitBoot, a
training program in Boston, says body fat is more crucial than the index.
"It
has nothing to do with how's their heart, how's their cardio, how's their
strength," she said.

Maybe so, but that's not much of a consolation for Lauri Owen, a lawyer in
Bethel, Alaska, who is planning to adopt a 3-year-old boy from China, in
March.
Ms. Owen, 39, applied in July; her application was accepted a week before
the China ruling. "If it had been a week later I wouldn't have been able to
adopt
the boy," said Ms. Owen, who is single and whose index rating hovers between
41 and 42. "It's appalling. There are so many kids over there who
desperately
need homes. It was my hope to adopt him and then another child from China.
Obviously, that's not going to happen now."

Paula Schwartz contributed reporting.

2006-12-28T22:12:00.000-05:00

Malnutrition Is Cheating Its Survivors, and Africa's Future - New York Times
The New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 28, 2006
Malnutrition Is Cheating Its Survivors, and Africa's Future
By
MICHAEL WINES

SHIMIDER,
Ethiopia
- In this corrugated land of mahogany mountains and tan, parched valleys,
it is hard to tell which is the greater scandal: the thousands of children
malnutrition
kills, or the thousands more it allows to survive.

Malnutrition still kills here, though Ethiopia's infamous famines are in
abeyance. In Wag Hamra alone, the northern area that includes Shimider, at
least
10,000 children under age 5 died last year, thousands of them from
malnutrition-related causes.

Yet almost half of Ethiopia's children are malnourished, and most do not
die. Some suffer a different fate. Robbed of vital nutrients as children,
they
grow up stunted and sickly, weaklings in a land that still runs on manual
labor. Some become intellectually stunted adults, shorn of as many as 15
I.Q.
points, unable to learn or even to concentrate, inclined to drop out of
school early.

There are many children like this in the villages around Shimider. Nearly 6
in 10 are stunted; 10-year-olds can fail to top an adult's belt buckle. They
are frequently sick: diarrhea, chronic coughs and worse are standard for
toddlers here. Most disquieting, teachers say, many of the 775 children at
Shimider
Primary are below-average pupils - often well below.

"They fall asleep," said Eteafraw Baro, a third-grade teacher at the school.
"Their minds are slow, and they don't grasp what you teach them, and they're
always behind in class."

Their hunger is neither a temporary inconvenience nor a quick death
sentence. Rather, it is a chronic, lifelong, irreversible handicap that
scuttles their
futures and cripples Ethiopia's hopes to join the developed world.

"It is a barrier to improving our way of life," said Dr. Girma Akalu,
perhaps the nation's leading
nutrition
expert. Ethiopia's problem is sub-Saharan Africa's curse. Five million
African children under age 5 died last year - 40 percent of deaths
worldwide - and
malnutrition was a major contributor to half of those deaths. Sub-Saharan
children under 5 died not only at 22 times the rate of children in wealthy
nations,
but also at twice the rate for the entire developing world.

But below the Sahara, 33 million more children under 5 are living with
malnutrition. In
United Nations
surveys from 1995 to 2003, nearly half of sub-Saharan children under 5 were
stunted or wasted, markers of malnutrition and harbingers of physical and
mental
problems.

The world mostly mourns the dead, not the survivors. Intellectual stunting
is seldom obvious until it is too late.

Bleak as that may sound, the outlook for malnourished children in
sub-Saharan Africa is better than in decades, thanks to an awakening to the
issue - by
selected governments, anyway.

South Africa provides nutrient-fortified flour to 30 million of its 46
million citizens. Nigeria adds vitamin A to flour, cooking oil and sugar.
Ethiopia's
government hopes to iodize all salt by year's end. United Nations programs
now cover three in four sub-Saharan children with twice-a-year doses of
vitamin
A supplements.

Ethiopia may, in fact, have the most comprehensive program in all Africa - a
joint venture with United Nations agencies that regularly screens nearly
half
of its 14 million children under 5 for health and nutrition problems. Since
2004, the program has delivered vitamin A doses and deworming medicine to 9
in 10 youngsters, vaccinated millions against childhood diseases and
delivered fortified food and nutrition education.

Unicef
's Ethiopia representative, Bjorn Ljungqvist, said the effort sprang from a
disastrous 2003 drought in which global aid agencies fed 13.2 million
Ethiopians
- the most costly aid undertaking ever in Ethiopia. When the aid effort
ended, he said, international donors and government officials decided that
"we
have to ensure that we don't get into this situation again."

The program may be a model for Africa: similar ones try to improve
youngsters' health, but none, Dr. Ljungqvist said, addresses the nutritional
deficiencies
that leave children with lifelong disabilities. The effort saves 100,000
lives a year, by Unicef estimates. And because it focuses not just on
handouts,
but on preventive care and nutrition education, the effects could be
lasting.

Beyond that, as African nations develop Western-style mass markets, with
brand names and national distribution networks, sales of vitamin-fortified
foods
are slowly becoming common in urban areas, just as in the West decades ago.

But much of the continent has far to go.

Well over half of sub-Saharan children under 5 lack iron, vital to
developing nervous systems, the Micronutrient Initiative, a Canadian
research organization,
reported in 2004. They often have trouble concentrating and coordinating
brain signals with movements, like holding a pencil, that are crucial to
education.

Another 3.5 million children lack sufficient iodine, which can lower a child's
I.Q. by 10 or more points. More than a half million suffer vitamin A
deficiency,
which cripples young immune systems; merely ensuring adequate vitamin A can
lower child mortality by more than one- fifth. Children lacking vitamin B12,
regularly measured nowhere in Africa, have impaired cognitive skills and do
poorly on tests.

In most foods, these vital nutrients exist in traces -
vitamins
A and B12, iron, iodine, folic acid. Denied them in the womb and in
infancy, children suffer irreversible brain and nervous-system damage, even
if they
appear well fed.

"Even trained people can't always see them," said Mark Fryars, the director
of program services for the Micronutrient Initiative. "You may see a kid
whose
skin is very pale. You may go into a classroom where a child wanders off, or
falls asleep, or doesn't go out to play because he's too tired. Multiply
that
into whole villages, and that translates into an impact on the society."

In richer parts of the world, nutritional deficiencies are a nonissue. Three
percent of American children are malnourished. American flour and cereals
have
been fortified with vitamins and iron - by law - since the 1930s.

In sub-Saharan Africa, however, lost productivity from vitamin and mineral
deficiencies costs nations $2.3 billion a year, Unicef reports, and losses
of
productivity in Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi exceeded 1 percent of gross
domestic product.

Many African children sometimes receive nutrient supplements, courtesy of
the
World Food Program
, Unicef and charities. Still, donors cannot meet the need. In Ethiopia, for
example, a venture between the government and United Nations agencies is
caring
for 20,000 acutely malnourished children at 100 sites.

"But we can count 70,000," said Iqbal Kabir, the chief nutrition expert at
Unicef offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital. "We can't treat them
all."

Shimider is but a hundred or so stone and reed homes, one room each, in a
mountain valley in the Amhara region, 250 miles north of Addis Ababa. The
slopes
here have been intensively farmed for thousands of years, and their soils
are exhausted.

Twenty-two years ago, a famine here killed more than one million people.
Today, hunger is measured in squandered lives.

Thirty percent of Amhara's children under 5 are stunted, with another 26
percent severely stunted, evidence of lifelong, acute hunger. One in 15
pregnant
women experiences night blindness, indicating vitamin A deficiency and a
diet devoid of protein and red or yellow fruits and vegetables.

Among both malnourished children and their mothers, the impact of such
privation is achingly evident.

One recent Sunday, Tewres Beram, a woman in her early 20s, carried her
daughter Mekdes to a free
immunization
clinic. Mekdes, severely malnourished, sat suckling fruitlessly at her
mother's breast. "We don't have enough food," her mother said, "so there's
not enough
milk to feed her." A year old, Mekdes does not crawl. Her sister, 2, has
barely begun to crawl. "Both of them are like little dead bodies," their
mother
said.

Sirkalem Birhanu, 40, clasps Endalew, age 2 and unable even to hold up his
head. "He's always sick," she said. Endalew has company, she said; his
13-year-old
brother "is very tiny, and he loses weight."

"And he's always been sick," she added.

And there is Berhane Gebeyew, 36, whose malnourished 18-month-old daughter,
Genet, is a lump in her lap, despite receiving six months' worth of
fortified
food last May from the governments.

Mrs. Gebeyew split the food among Genet and her four siblings, ages 6 to 15.
"The other children, when they stare at my eyes, I give it to them," she
said.

She and her husband feed their children two daily meals of injera, a spongy
flatbread of fermented barley, occasionally with four ounces of bean sauce.
When the children attend Shimider Primary, each gets 10 ounces of
vitamin-fortified meal mixed with cooking oil. But attendance is spotty,
especially when
they help harvest crops in November and December.

And by the time children reach school age, much of malnutrition's damage has
already been wrought.

Wondewosen Fekadu is the headmaster at Shimider Primary. Mr. Fekadu worked
last year in Tseta, a lowland village where families eat better and drink
milk.
The difference in their students, he said, is striking. "Children there are
relatively smarter and more active," he said. "There are students here who
are up to fourth grade and they cannot even read and write, even attentively
following the classes."

Three of Mrs. Gebeyew's children attend Shimider Primary. Mogus, a
10-year-old third grader, is three and one-half feet tall - wide-eyed, sweet
and flummoxed
by academics.

"He's on the poor level - very slow," his teacher said. "He doesn't give
attention when I'm teaching. He doesn't concentrate." In a classroom of 60
children,
Mogus ranks 46th.

Mulu, 13, her ribs prominent through rips in her green school dress, races
from home to get to her beloved third-grade class. But Mulu is 47th in a
class
of 60.

Fifteen-year-old Yirgalem, about two inches taller than Mulu, has a teenager's
diffidence toward school. "It's not that tough," he said. His second-grade
teachers differ. "When he comes to school, I don't even think his mind is
normal," one of his teachers, Amelework Ejigu, said.

There is great promise that this region's future youngsters will not be
hobbled by mental disabilities. Virtually all nutritional deficiencies can
be easily
and cheaply prevented, sometimes for pennies per child, through programs
like universal salt iodization, fortification of flour and semiannual doses
of
vitamins.

Such efforts already are under way in some nations, and they are a
foundation of most United Nations children's programs. But in just as many
places, they
remain a promise.

At Tefera Hailu Memorial Hospital in Sekota, across a mountain from
Shimider, the nutrition ward's 10 beds are filled with worried mothers and
shrunken
babies. Among them are Adna Berhanu and her 5-month-old son, Agnecheu.

Mrs. Berhanu's huge goiter is decorated with blue tribal tattoos. Her
skeletal baby is severely iodine deficient, surely impaired for life should
he survive.

Although iodine deficiency is endemic in Amhara Province, "I've been here a
year, and we have no iodine in this ward," the nurse on duty said. Beyond a
blood test to estimate iron content, the attending physician said, no one
even analyzes children's nutritional status. Such tests, he said, are
luxuries.

"We focus on saving lives; that's our long-term focus," he said. "We can't
focus on what happens to them afterward."

Miriam's Comment: Many U.S. adoption atencies are placing homeless children
from Ethiopia.

2006-12-20T17:28:00.000-05:00

China Weighs Rules

Restricting Adoptions
People Who Are Single, Obese, Over 50 or Taking
Psychiatric Medications Could Be Denied
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER and ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN
December 20, 2006; Page D1

China, the most popular foreign country for U.S. adoptions, is considering
new rules that could disqualify thousands of would-be parents.

Those new rules would bar people who are single, obese, over 50 years old,
or currently taking psychiatric medications from adopting Chinese children,
according
to several U.S. adoption agencies that have seen the regulations. They would
ban disabled people and families with net assets of less than $80,000. And
they would set new minimums on length of marriage for couples seeking to
adopt. The China Center of Adoption Affairs confirmed that it is considering
new
adoption criteria while declining to discuss them in detail.

The rules, which have yet to be finalized, could take effect in May,
according to the U.S. agencies. The changes wouldn't apply to people who
have already
submitted their applications to China. But people who haven't yet begun the
process may already be too late to get applications in ahead of the new
restrictions,
some agencies say.

China's rule changes come amid a global effort to strengthen regulation of
international adoptions. The U.S. is preparing to ratify a treaty called the
Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, which is aimed at curbing abuses
such as child trafficking but may slow the adoption process and raise the
cost
of adopting a baby overseas. Guatemala, another popular destination for
people seeking to adopt, could be closed off to Americans entirely if the
U.S.
signs the treaty next year. And a number of countries, including South
Korea, Russia and Colombia, already restrict adoption by singles or older
people.
China had traditionally been one of the more flexible nations, U.S. agencies
say, but these new rules now make China among the toughest.

[Fostering Change box]

Americans adopted 6,493 children from China in the year ended Sept. 30,
2006, down from 7,906 in the year earlier, according to the U.S. State
Department.
China already had begun limiting the pool of prospective single parents, and
outright bans gay adoptive parents. The new rules could affect gay people
who currently skirt that ban by hiding their orientation and adopting as
single parents.

China says its rationale for a change in rules is simply that it cannot meet
the demand of prospective families. Birthrates are falling, and as the
Chinese
economy booms, fewer parents are abandoning their children due to poverty. A
traditional preference for boys appears to be waning, so fewer girls are put
up for adoption. And with the recent loosening of China's one-child rule,
more families are keeping their second child. The result is that "the number
of kids available for international adoption is naturally declining," says
Sun Wencan, who runs the adoption department of the Social Welfare Division
of China's Ministry of Civil Affairs.

At the same time, the numbers of overseas-adoption requests have multiplied,
in part because China's adoption process is centralized, predictable and
low-cost.
Most parents spend $16,000 to $20,000 for a Chinese adoption, including
round-trip air travel and accommodations. Adopting a baby inside the U.S. or
from
a popular country like Guatemala, where adoptions are handled privately
through lawyers, can cost double that.

China's popularity is evident at the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, a
southern city a short train ride from Hong Kong. Americans picking up their
adopted
children often stay at the White Swan because it sits next to the consulate
where the U.S. handles adoptions. The families go through a simple
two-minute
oath-taking ceremony at the consulate required for the adopted children to
get a U.S. visa.

The State Department says it hasn't received official notice of any changes,
but the embassy in Beijing has been told that the Chinese government will
update
the foreign embassies there in the next few days. "We want the Chinese to
have requirements that protect the children," says Christopher Lamora, chief
of the Intercountry Adoption Unit at the State Department. "If these
requirements do that, then we support them."

The proposed changes, which adoption agencies say were outlined at a Dec. 8
meeting with the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA), would have the
biggest
impact on single parents, who will now be cut out altogether.

Ann Hassan, China adoption coordinator at New York agency Spence-Chapin, who
was at the meeting, says that married applicants will also face new
restrictions.
As outlined, the rules would require couples to be married for at least two
years. And if either applicant was previously divorced, the couple must be
married at least five years, she says.

The rules, which have yet to be formalized, could also affect applicants who
are taking certain psychiatric medications. Ms. Hassan and other agencies
said
that there is still confusion over whether the new rules are meant to cover
only severe mental-health issues such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia,
or if applicants taking medication for depression (a fairly common malady
among people battling infertility) would also be barred. "This is why it's
really
important that we have written guidelines," says Ms. Hassan.

Some of the rules are similar to what other countries already require in an
effort to ensure that parents are healthy enough to care for children. For
instance,
many adoption agencies say that CCAA told them that only parents with body
mass indexes, or BMI, under 40 would be accepted. BMI is a ratio of weight
over
height, and a BMI of greater than 40 is usually considered "morbidly obese."
There are some stricter rules in other countries: Agencies in South Korea
may require a BMI of no higher than 30.

"What you are seeing is a more aggressive posture in terms of protecting
children's rights and insuring placements result in a permanent and safe
family,"
says Thomas J. DiFilipo, the president of the Joint Council on International
Children's Services, an adoption advocacy and education nonprofit.

China's tightening could force some prospective adoptive parents to turn to
other countries such as Russia or Vietnam, where depending on the
applicant's
situation, there may be more options. Parents may also look more carefully
at the option of adopting children with minor birth defects that they think
can be corrected in U.S. hospitals, agencies say. Even in China's new rules,
the restrictions on parents who adopt special-needs children are less
severe.

Chavonne Yee, who is single, has long wanted to adopt from China and has
already completed many of the requirements. But when the 41-year-old Chicago
resident
learned last week from her adoption agency that China may bar singles, she
decided to consider adopting a special-needs child, which would allow her to
complete the adoption more quickly before the rules kick in. "I'm concerned
that if they've made these restrictions now, they could change again," says
Ms. Yee, who is a business development manager at Texas Instruments.

--Helena Yu contributedto this article.

2006-12-20T14:04:00.000-05:00

China Tightens Adoption Rules, U.S. Agencies Say - New York Times
The New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 19, 2006
China Tightens Adoption Rules, U.S. Agencies Say
By
JIM YARDLEY

BEIJING, Dec. 20 - China is planning to issue new, tighter restrictions on
foreign adoptions of Chinese children, which would prohibit adoptions by
parents
who are unmarried, who are obese or who are older than 50, according to
adoption agencies in the United States.

The new regulations, which have not yet been formally announced by the
state-run China Center of Adoption Affairs, are to take effect on May 1,
2007, and
seem certain to slow the rapid rise in applications by foreign parents to
adopt Chinese babies.

"This is absolutely going to affect a percentage of our clientele," said
Heather Terry, a spokesperson for the Great Wall of China Adoption Agency in
Austin,
Texas. "This will probably affect quite a lot of people in 2007."

Ms. Terry said that foreign adoption agencies learned of the new regulations
at a Dec. 8 meeting in Beijing with officials from the adoption-affairs
center.
Chinese officials told the foreign agencies that applications had begun to
exceed the number of available babies, and that the new rules were partly
intended
to address that imbalance.

Ms. Terry added that China also wanted to slow foreign adoptions because
"they are opening up domestic adoptions now."

The adoption-affairs center declined requests in recent weeks by The New
York Times for an interview on adoption policy. An unnamed official cited by
the
Associated Press confirmed that the government is considering new
guidelines, but declined to discuss any specifics.

Even so, adoption agencies in the United States are already telling
prospective parents about the rule changes or posting the guidelines on
their websites.
"C.C.A.A. has decided to both reduce the number of dossiers accepted by
applying stricter standards to potential adoptive families and to increase
the
number of children available for adoption by improving the situation of
children in China's orphanages," Jackie Harrah wrote in a letter posted on
the
website of Harrah's Adoption International Mission in Spring, Texas.

Adoption agencies were told that China intended to increase the supply of
adoptable children by creating a new charity named Blue Skies, which would
focus
on improving health care for medically fragile infants or premature babies
at orphanages. An initial goal of this charity would be to buy incubators
for
many of the country's orphanages, according to the Harrah's Adoption
website.

Ms. Terry said that the most significant rule change is the new ban against
single parents. Up to now, Ms. Terry said, China has allowed single parents
to make up as many as 8 percent of all referrals; the new rules would
eliminate that quota. The age restrictions also have been tightened; China
now allows
people up to 55 to be considered.

Some of the new rules focus on the fiscal, physical and psychological health
of prospective parents. People who are taking medication for anxiety or
depression
can be disqualified under the new rules. Couples will be disqualified if
either person has a body fat measurement exceeding 40 percent (30 percent is
generally
considered obese). And a prospective adoptive family's net worth must now
exceed $80,000.

China will also disqualify families that already have more than four
children in the home.

Ms. Terry said that her agency has already started applying the new
guidelines. "We're no long accepting singles," she said. "That is the most
significant
change."

Single parents who are already involved in the application process and can
complete and file their paperwork before May 1 can remain eligible for a
Chinese
child.

Ms. Terry said she believed that Chinese officials were trying to act in the
best interests of the adopted children. "All the agencies worldwide have to
abide by these guidelines now," she said.

From the Dept. of State on Guatemala

2006-12-18T12:35:00.000-05:00

Guatemala, the Convention and the United States:

More than 70 countries have already joined the Convention, including major
countries of origin for adoptive children like China and India, because they
firmly believe that the principles of the Hague Convention offer the best
hope for the ethical and transparent adoption process and that every child
deserves
a permanent family. Many other countries have indicated their intention to
join the Convention, as well.

Guatemala ratified the Hague Adoption Convention in 2003 and is recognized
as a party to the Convention under international law. However, Guatemala
has
not yet created the infrastructure and systems necessary to implement the
Convention and its current adoption procedures do not provide the
protections
for children, birth parents, and adoptive parents required under the Hague
principles.

The United States is nearing completion of its preparations to ratify the
Convention and our goal is to do so in 2007. Three months after the United
States
deposits its instrument of ratification with the Hague Permanent Bureau, the
Convention enters into force for the United States. At that point, if
Guatemala
has not taken the necessary steps to comply with the Convention, then the
United States will not be able to approve adoptions from that country. It
is
important to note that U.S. law provides for a transition period and that
the U.S. government will not apply the new rules under the Hague Convention
to
orphan petitions (I-600A) filed with the Department of Homeland Security
before the United States ratifies the treaty.

The Way Forward:

We continue to be hopeful that Guatemala can become compliant with the Hague
Convention before the United States ratifies the Convention. U.S. and
Guatemalan
officials are engaged in a dialogue at the highest levels on the need for
the Guatemalan government to move forward immediately to become compliant
with
the Hague Convention and to establish an intercountry adoption system that
will be in the best interests of the Guatemalan children.

We are pleased that the government of Guatemala has stated that adoption
reform legislation will be a priority. In order to avoid a situation where
the
United States can no longer process adoptions from Guatemala, a
Hague-compliant process must be in place when the Convention enters into
force for the
United States.

The United States maintains ongoing high-level discussions with the
government of Guatemala about the importance of ensuring a smooth transition
to a Hague-consistent
adoption process. We believe that any sudden halt to adoption processing
would be problematic and hurt both the children and adoptive parents because
children would be caught in the process with no system through which they
could be placed internationally with a permanent family. However,
prospective
adoptive parents should be aware that changes in the adoption process could
be instituted by Guatemala with little or no advance notice and the
possibility
exists that adoptions could be disrupted.

Prospective Adoptive Parents Must Stay Aware and Informed:

The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala has occasionally received reports of
Guatemalan police in and around some of the major hotels in Guatemala City
attempting
to extort money from adopting parents by threatening to take the birth
mother or foster mother and the prospective or adopted child into custody.
There
is no basis under local Guatemalan law for such actions and we encourage all
U.S. citizens who encounter similar experiences to report them immediately
to their local lawyer and the American Citizens Services section at the U.S.
Embassy in Guatemala City at 502-2326-4405.

In addition, prospective adoptive parents may hear unsubstantiated rumors
during this time when the situation is in flux. Some of these rumors may be
generated
by individuals or organizations opposed to the very important reforms that
Guatemala needs to undertake, and designed to confuse prospective adoptive
families.
We encourage parents to contact the Department of State or the U.S. Embassy
in Guatemala and to consult our website for the latest information.
Prospective
adoptive parents should not rely on word of mouth, which is often incorrect.
This holds true particularly if someone is encouraging or insisting that you
pay additional fees or threatening you in any way.

This information will be updated as the situation changes. Please check our
website for updates. Additional information on U.S. implementation of the
Hague Adoption Convention, and on intercountry adoption from Guatemala, can
be found on the Consular Affairs' website at: www.travel.state.gov or by
calling
202-647-9090 or 1-888-407-4747 (8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST). Further information
on the Hague Adoption Convention is available from the Hague Permanent
Bureau's
website at www.hcch.net.

Sincerely,

Hague Implementation Staff
U.S. Central Authority
Department of State

2006-12-15T20:40:00.000-05:00

This information comes from the U.S. Dept. of State

Update on Guatemala and the Hague Adoption Convention

Guatemala: Intercountry Adoptions and the Hague Adoption Convention

December 15, 2006

The Hague Adoption Convention:

The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect
of Intercountry Adoption (the Convention) is a multilateral agreement that
strengthens
protections for all parties involved in adoption, including birthparents,
prospective adoptive parent(s), and especially children. The Convention
encourages
and regulates intercountry adoption by setting out internationally
agreed-upon rules and procedures for adoptions between countries that have a
treaty
relationship. The Convention is unique in that it offers a framework for
member-countries to work together to ensure that adoptions are based on what
is best for the child and to prevent the abduction, sale of, or trafficking
in children. Each member country establishes a Central Authority to provide
an authoritative point of contact for prospective adoptive parents to
receive reliable and accurate information on the adoption process. The
Central Authority
is also responsible for addressing complaints involving violations of
Convention standards. For these reasons, the U.S. government strongly
supports the
principles of the Convention. To learn more about the Convention, consult
the Hague Permanent Bureau at
http://hcch.e-vision.nl/index_en.php?act=conventions.status&cid=69

Guatemala, the Convention and the United States:

The Way Forward:

Prospective Adoptive Parents Must Stay Aware and Informed:

Sincerely,

Hague Implementation Staff
U.S. Central Authority
Department of State

2006-11-13T14:37:00.000-05:00

Couple finds 'miracle' in adoption abroad
Updated 11/13/2006 7:11 AM ET
By Greg Farrell, USA TODAY
Angelina Jolie and Madonna may be the most famous Americans to adopt
children overseas, but they're certainly not the first.

Each year, parents in the USA adopt about 20,000 children from around the
world. And though the super-rich appear to be able to swoop into a far-off
land
and scoop up adorable children with ease, for the majority of adoptive
parents, the process is a costly, emotionally wrenching grind.

I know. My wife and I just returned from Russia with a 2-year-old girl. In
just a few short weeks, we've come to learn what other adoptive parents have
been telling us for years: that adoption is an amazing, transforming
experience. It's no less a miracle than having children the old-fashioned
way.

But the road we took to get there was no miracle. It was a 2½-year journey
from the time my wife and I decided to adopt to the day we were given
custody
of our daughter. We spent months filling out an endless marathon of forms
and getting them certified. Then we shipped the paperwork to Russia and
waited
helplessly until our number came up.

And then, when our number did come up, we flew over to meet the little girl
who was randomly chosen to be ours and fell in love with her. We ultimately
decided to adopt her, even after being told by several doctors that she
probably had a severe form of epilepsy.

This adoption story began after my wife, Cathy, and I, after much research,
decided to adopt a child from Russia. The first thing to do was sign up with
an adoption agency. We chose Children's Hope International. After a social
worker visited us and approved us as adoptive parents, we had to prepare a
dossier
of information and notarized legal forms - police background checks, for
example - that would be shipped to Russia.

Paperwork usually can be done in six months or less. But because of our busy
schedules, it took more than a year. Part of the delay was spurred by the
Russian
government, which in 2005 moved the goal posts in international adoptions.

Until then, Russian orphans had to be available for domestic adoption for
three months before they became available to international parents. In 2005,
the
government doubled the timetable, which slowed foreign adoptions in Russia.

Though most Russians have no problem with foreigners adopting some of the
estimated 700,000 orphans in their country, Russia's nationalist party has
decried
the practice. The nationalists point out that since the early '90s, 14
Russian children have been killed by their adoptive parents in the USA.

To address such concerns, the Russian government has put in place stringent
new rules regarding the accreditation of international adoption agencies,
including
Children's Hope. The new process is designed to eliminate the fly-by-night
brokers who spent little time vetting the American parents for whom they
were
working.

By September 2005 we had completed our dossier, and the agency sent it off
to Russia.

The first trip

On May 30, the moment we had been waiting for arrived: The adoption agency
e-mailed us a photo of a little girl, just over 2 years old. We knew
virtually
nothing about her, including her name; all we had was a birth date, some
basic facts about her birth mother and a brief summary of her medical
problems,
one of which was translated as "congenial heart disease."

In late June, we flew to Moscow. From there, we traveled to Tver, a midsize
city about 100 miles northwest of Moscow. The next morning, Tuesday, June
20,
the head of the Children's Hope International's operations in Tver, Alexei
Savichev, came by the hotel to meet us. We learned that our girl, Irina, was
living at a "baby house" about 45 minutes away.

Our job at this first meeting was to try to establish some kind of bond with
Irina. We were also looking for potential health problems. The biggest
concern
for parents adopting in Russia, a nation with high per-capita alcohol
consumption, is fetal alcohol syndrome. Most health problems among orphans
can be
treated with medical care and parental love. But with fetal alcohol
syndrome, the damage cannot be reversed.

At the orphanage, we were ushered into a small reception room with toys and
stuffed animals. A few minutes later, a dark-haired woman in a white lab
coat
entered, carrying Irina. She sat shyly on the woman's lap, clutching two
small stuffed animals and holding them up in front of her eyes, hiding her
face
from us. The caregiver placed her on the floor in a sitting position and
tried to initiate some contact between us, but the little girl wouldn't
budge.

After a few minutes, Cathy told me to get the bubbles out. I dug a plastic
container of soapy mixture out of my wife's bag, removed the wand and began
blowing.
Each time I unleashed a stream of bubbles at Irina, she screamed with
delight.

After about 45 minutes, the caregiver spirited Irina away from us for her
afternoon nap. As she left the room, Cathy and I said "bye-bye" to Irina in
Russian.
In response, she turned back and waved to Cathy. My heart melted.

The next day's visit was much easier. Cathy engaged Irina in various
activities while I took close-up photos of our little girl's face, which we
would send
to Jane Aronson, a pediatrician and adoption specialist in New York we had
hired.

About midway through the session, Cathy was playing with Irina, who was
sitting on the floor. Suddenly, the top half of Irina's body went limp and
folded
straight over to the point where her head almost slammed the floor. Cathy
and I stared at her for a few seconds; then I reached down and returned her
to
an upright position. But Irina started falling backward, so I caught her and
let her down gently. Her eyes were open, staring toward the ceiling.

I was tempted to call for help, but Irina's breathing seemed fine. I lifted
her up and put her on Cathy's lap. Soon she was playing as if nothing had
happened.
Later, a doctor came in. Cathy described Irina's collapse, but the doctor
assured us it must have been a fainting spell. I was satisfied.

In Tver that afternoon, we filled out papers indicating our intention to
adopt Irina. Per Aronson's instructions, we e-mailed pictures we had taken
of Irina,
and Cathy wrote a description of the fainting spell.

On Thursday, we petitioned for a court date on which we could complete our
adoption, then traveled to Moscow in preparation for Friday's flight home.
We
arrived in Moscow in an ebullient mood. Then Cathy checked her e-mail.

A pediatrician in Aronson's office wanted to speak to us as soon as
possible. It was 5 p.m. in Moscow, 9 a.m. in New York. The pediatrician on
the phone,
Melissa Goldstein, told us that what we had witnessed was not a fainting
spell but a seizure.

That in itself wasn't catastrophic, she said, but there was something about
Irina's head that concerned her and Aronson. The way her forehead protruded
in one picture suggested a "dysmorphic" skull shape. That, with evidence of
seizures, suggested Irina could have serious medical problems.

We were devastated. Just a day before, we were in the presence of a darling
little girl who had won us over, and now someone was telling us that Irina
had
serious medical problems. Goldstein reiterated that there was no way to tell
for sure how serious Irina's problems were without a thorough examination.
She gave us the name of a doctor in Moscow.

Before leaving Moscow the next day, we spoke with Vadim Ivanov, the
pediatrician recommended to us. He said he'd try to go to the orphanage to
examine Irina.

During our first week back, we got some good news. Aronson and Goldstein
reviewed a 45-minute video I'd shot of Irina that dispelled any notions they
had
that the girl's physical development was dysmorphic. In retrospect, they
concluded, it was probably just a bad angle on the photos we had e-mailed
from
Russia.

There was still the seizure question. Cathy and I asked Children's Hope to
get Savichev to arrange for Irina to have an EEG. The test showed no signs
of
brainwave abnormality.

But unless Irina were tested for a 24-hour or 48-hour period, it would be
impossible to determine whether she had epilepsy and, if so, how serious her
condition
was. We described Irina's collapse to a number of pediatric neurologists in
New York and Boston. They all agreed that Irina had suffered a seizure, and
one said we'd be better off finding another child rather than running the
risks associated with Irina's condition.

We spent most of July wrestling with whether to proceed with the adoption.

On July 25, Ivanov drove to the orphanage and examined Irina. The next day,
he sent us his assessment: He was unable to find any indication that Irina
had
ever had a seizure. His examination showed no health problems of any kind.
As for her "congenial heart disease," that was simply an over-the-top
diagnosis
of a minor heart issue that would have little effect on her.

The second trip

Elated over the turn of events, we decided to go ahead with the adoption. We
returned to Tver in September for our court date. On Sept. 27, Cathy, Irina
and I flew from Moscow to New York.

Over the next few weeks, we all began to adjust to our new life as a family
of four. At first, our 8-year-old son, Sam, grudgingly accepted Irina, but
by
mid-October, he had shifted comfortably from "only child" status to the
"older brother."

In the first two weeks, Irina's screaming tantrums over trivial matters
unnerved me, but Cathy said such behavior was normal for a 2-year-old
undergoing
such an enormous life change. As time went by, Irina's tantrums became
shorter, and she seemed to revel in her new life with us at our home in the
New
York suburbs.

By late October, we had pretty much forgotten about the seizure that almost
derailed the adoption. And then one night at the dinner table, I removed
Irina's
fork or did something that triggered a tantrum. But instead of screaming,
she protested in a different way: The top half of her body slumped, her head
almost hitting the table. But her eyes remained open.

For Cathy and me, the moment was a revelation. We'd seen this episode
before, but assumed it was a seizure. Now we realized it was simply one of
Irina's
ways of protesting when she didn't get her way.

My wife and I realized what we had just witnessed and how we and a series of
top doctors had transformed a silent temper tantrum into a seizure.

Each day since Irina joined our family, Cathy and I have given thanks for
our blessings. But on that day, after laughing at ourselves and our
compulsive
need to question everything and know even more, our gratitude was even
greater.

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-11-12-adoption-cover_x.htm?POE=click-refer

2006-10-29T21:47:00.000-05:00

Africa's World of Forced Labor, in a 6-Year-Old's Eyes - New York Times
The New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
October 29, 2006
Africa's World of Forced Labor, in a 6-Year-Old's Eyes
By SHARON LaFRANIERE

KETE KRACHI,
Ghana
- Just before 5 a.m., with the sky still dark over Lake Volta, Mark Kwadwo
was rousted from his spot on the damp dirt floor. It was time for work.

Shivering in the predawn chill, he helped paddle a canoe a mile out from
shore. For five more hours, as his coworkers yanked up a fishing net, inch
by inch,
Mark bailed water to keep the canoe from swamping.

He last ate the day before. His broken wooden paddle was so heavy he could
barely lift it. But he raptly followed each command from Kwadwo Takyi, the
powerfully
built 31-year-old in the back of the canoe who freely deals out beatings.

"I don't like it here," he whispered, out of Mr. Takyi's earshot.

Mark Kwadwo is 6 years old. About 30 pounds, dressed in a pair of blue and
red underpants and a Little Mermaid T-shirt, he looks more like an oversized
toddler than a boat hand. He is too little to understand why he has wound up
in this fishing village, a two-day trek from his home.

But the three older boys who work with him know why. Like Mark, they are
indentured servants, leased by their parents to Mr. Takyi for as little as
$20
a year.

Until their servitude ends in three or four years, they are as trapped as
the fish in their nets, forced to work up to 14 hours a day, seven days a
week,
in a trade that even adult fishermen here call punishing and, at times,
dangerous.

Mr. Takyi's boys - conscripts in a miniature labor camp, deprived of
schooling, basic necessities and freedom - are part of a vast traffic in
children that
supports West and Central African fisheries, quarries, cocoa and rice
plantations and street markets. The girls are domestic servants, bread
bakers, prostitutes.
The boys are field workers, cart pushers, scavengers in abandoned gem and
gold mines.

By no means is the child trafficking trade uniquely African. Children are
forced to race camels in the Middle East, weave carpets in India and fill
brothels
all over the developing world.

The
International Labor Organization
, a
United Nations
agency, estimates that 1.2 million are sold into servitude every year in an
illicit trade that generates as much as $10 billion annually.

Studies show they are most vulnerable in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Africa's children, the world's poorest, account for roughly one-sixth of the
trade, according to the labor organization. Data is notoriously scarce, but
it suggests victimization of African children on a huge scale.

A 2002 study supervised by the labor organization estimated that nearly
12,000 trafficked children toiled in the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast alone.
The
children, who had no relatives in the area, cleared fields with machetes,
applied pesticides and sliced open cocoa pods for beans.

In an analysis in February,
Unicef
says child trafficking is growing in West and Central Africa, driven by
huge profits and partly controlled by organized networks that transport
children
both within and between countries.

"We know it is a huge problem in Africa," said Pamela Shifman, a child
protection officer at the New York headquarters of Unicef. "A lot of it is
visible.
You see the kids being exploited. You watch it happen. Somebody brought the
kids to the place where they are. Somebody exploited their vulnerability."

Otherwise, she asked, "How did they get there?"

John R. Miller, the director of the State Department Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons, said the term trafficking failed to convey
the
brutality of what was occurring.

"A child does not consent," he said. "The loss of choice, the deception, the
use of frauds, the keeping of someone at work with little or no pay, the
threats
if they leave - it is slavery."

Some West African families see it more as a survival strategy. In a region
where nearly two-thirds of the population lives on less than $1 a day, the
compensation
for the temporary loss of a child keeps the rest of the family from going
hungry. Some parents argue that their children are better off learning a
trade
than starving at home.

Indeed, the notion that children should be in the care of their parents is
not a given in much of African society.

Parents frequently hand off children to even distant relatives if it appears
they will have a chance at education and more opportunity.

Only in the past six years or so has it become clear how traffickers take
advantage of this custom to buy and sell children, sometimes with no more
ceremony
than a goat deal.

In 2001, 35 children, half of them under age 15, were discovered aboard a
vessel in a Benin port. They said they were being shipped to Gabon to work.

In 2003, Nigerian police rescued 194 malnourished children from stone
quarries north of Lagos. At least 13 other children had died and been buried
near
the pits, the police said.

Last year, Nigerian police stumbled upon 64 girls aged 14 and younger,
packed inside a refrigerated truck built to haul frozen fish. They had
traveled hundreds
of miles from central Nigeria, the police said, and were destined for work
as housemaids in Lagos.

In response to such reports, African nations have passed a raft of
legislation against trafficking, adopting or strengthening a dozen laws last
year alone.

There were nearly 200 prosecutions of traffickers on the continent last
year, four times as many as in 2003, according to the State Department's
trafficking
office.

Some countries are encouraging villages to form their own surveillance
committees. In Burkina Faso, the government reported, such committees,
together with
the police, freed 644 children from traffickers in 2003. Still, government
officials in the region say, only a tiny fraction of victims are detected.

Ghana, an Oregon-size nation of 21 million people, has yet to prosecute
anyone under the new antitrafficking law it adopted last December. But the
government
has taken other steps - including eliminating school fees that forced
youngsters out of classrooms, increasing birth registrations so that
children have
legal identities and extending small loans to about 1,200 mothers to give
them alternatives to leasing out their children.

The International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental agency
set up after World War II to help refugees, has also mounted a United
States-financed
program to rescue children from the fishing industry.

Since 2003, the organization says, 587 children have been freed from Ghana's
Lake Volta region, taken to shelters for counseling and medical treatment,
then reunited with parents or relatives.

"We sign a social contract with the fishermen," said Eric Peasah, the agency's
Ghana field representative. "If they have 10 children, we say, 'Release
four,
and you can't get more, or you will be prosecuted.' Once they sign that, we
come back and say we want to release more."

To reduce child trafficking significantly, said Marilyn Amponsah Annan, who
is in charge of children's issues for the Ghanaian government, adults must
be
convinced that children have the right to be educated, to be protected, and
to be spared adult burdens - in short, the right to a childhood.

"You see so many children with so many fishermen," she said. "Those little
hands, those little bodies. It is always very sad, because this is the world
of adults.

"We have to educate these communities because they do not know any other way
of existence. They believe this is what they need to do to survive."

That is the fishermen's favorite defense in Kete Krachi, a day's drive
through dense forests from Ghana's capital, Accra. For the area's roughly
9,000 residents,
fishing is their lifeblood. Children keep it going.

Nearly every canoe here holds at least a few of them, some no older than 5
or 6, often supervised by a teenager. A dozen boys, interviewed in their
canoes
or as they sewed up ratty nets ashore, spoke of backbreaking toil, 100-hour
workweeks and frequent beatings. They bore a pervasive fear of diving into
the lake's murky waters to free a tangled net, and never resurfacing.

One 10-year-old said he was sometimes so exhausted that he fell asleep as he
paddled. Asked when he rested, another boy paused from his net mending,
seemingly
confused. "This is what you see now," he said.

They never see the pittance they earn. The fishermen say they pay parents or
relatives each December, typically on trips to the families' villages during
the December holidays.

The children's sole comfort seems to be the shared nature of their misery, a
camaraderie of lost boys who have not seen their families in years, have no
say in their fate and, in some cases, were lured by false promises of
schooling or a quick homecoming.

On Nkomi, a grassy island in the lake, Kwasi Tweranim, in his mid to late
teens, and Kwadwo Seaako, perhaps 12 or 13, seemed united by fear and
resentment
of their boss. Both bear inchlong scars on their scalps where, they said, he
struck them with a wooden paddle.

"I went down to disentangle the net, and when I came up, my master said that
I had left part of it down there," Kwasi said. "Then I saw black, and woke
up in another boat. Only the grace of God saved me."

Kwadwo, stammering badly, said he had been punished when the net rolled in
the water.

Not every fisherman is so pitiless. Christian Lissah employs eight children
under 13, mostly distant relatives. He said he knew many children who were
treated
no better than workhorses, and some who had drowned.

"In general, this is not a good practice because people mishandle the
children," he said. Yet he said he could not imagine how he would fish
profitably
without child workers, and depends on friends and acquaintances to keep him
supplied - for a commission.

"You must get people who are a very low background who need money," he said.
"Some of them are eager to release their children."

Mark Kwadwo's parents, Joe Obrenu and his wife, Ama, were an easy sell. Mr.
Obrenu fished the seas off Aboadzi, a hilly, sun-drenched town on the Gulf
of
Guinea, and his wife dried the catch for sale. But the two often ran short
of food, said Mark's aunt, Adwoa Awotwe. Over the years, they sold five of
their
children into labor, she said, including Mark's 9-year-old sister Hagar, who
performs domestic chores for Mr. Takyi.

Mr. Obrenu drummed up other recruits from neighbors, sometimes to their
lasting regret. "It was hunger, to get a little money; the whole today, I
have not
eaten," said Efua Mansah, whose 7-year-old son, Kwabena, boarded a small
blue bus with Mr. Takyi four years ago for the 250-mile trip to Kete Krachi.

She has seen him only twice since then. In all that time, Mr. Takyi has paid
her $66, she said, a third of which she spent on buses and ferries to pick
up the money.

In her one-room hut decorated with empty plastic bottles, she forced back
tears. "I want to bring my son home," she said.

Mark also cried when his turn to leave came this year, his aunt said, so his
mother told him that Mr. Takyi would take him to his father. Instead, he was
brought to Mr. Takyi's compound of caked mud huts, to a dark six-foot-square
cubicle with a single tiny window. He shares it with five other children,
buzzing flies and a few buckets of fish bait.

In two days, a smile never creased Mark's delicate features. He seldom
offered more than a nod or a shake of the head, with a few telling
exceptions: "I
was beaten in the house. I can't remember what I did, but he caned me," he
said of Mr. Takyi.

Mr. Takyi, who sleeps and works in the same gray T-shirt, is disarmingly
frank about his household. He can afford to feed the children only twice a
day,
he said, and cannot clothe them adequately. He himself has been paddling the
lake since age 8.

"I can understand how the children feel," he said. "Because I didn't go to
school, this is work I must do. I also find it difficult."

Yet he does not hesitate to break a branch from the nearest tree to wake the
boys for the midnight shift.

"Almost all the boys are very troublesome," he complained. "I want them to
be humble children, but they don't obey my orders."

One recent morning, his young crew, wrapped in thin bedsheets for warmth,
hiked in the darkness down to the shore.

They paddled out in two leaky but stable canoes, searching the water for a
piece of foam that marked where their net was snagged on submerged tree
stumps.
Kwabena, 11, stripped off his cutoff shorts and dived in with an 18-year-old
to free it, yanking it at one point with his teeth.

Mark has not mastered the rhythm of paddling. Mr. Takyi said the boy cries
when the water is rough or he is cold. He cannot swim a stroke. If the canoe
capsizes, Mr. Takyi said, he will save him.

"I can't pay what is asked for older boys," Mr. Takyi said, as Mark bailed
out the canoe with the sawed-off bottom of a plastic cooking oil container.
"That
is why I go for this. When I get money, I go to get another one."

In the other canoe, Kwame Akuban and Kofi Quarshie plucked fish from the net
with the air of prisoners waiting for their terms to end.

Kofi, 10, said his mother had told him his earnings would feed their family.
But he suspects another motive. "They didn't like me," he said softly.

Kwame, 12, said his parents had promised to retrieve him in a year's time
and send him to school.

"I have been here three years and I am not going home, and I am not happy,"
he said quietly.

As if on cue, Mr. Takyi shouted: "Remove the fish faster, or I will cane
you."

Running away is a common fantasy among the boys. Kofi Nyankom, who came from
Mark's hometown three years ago, at age 9, was one of the few to actually
try
it.

Last December, he ran to town half-naked, his back a mass of bruises. He
said Mr. Takyi had tied up him and whipped him.

George Achibra, a school district official, demanded that the police
intervene, and Mr. Takyi was forced to let Kofi go.

But before many weeks passed, he had brought in a replacement - younger,
more helpless, more submissive. It was Mark Kwadwo.

Miriam's Comments

What does this have to do with adoptions? Well, there's been all this talk
about wealthy people adopting children from third world countries. There
are accusations about stealing children from their people and away from
their cultures. And then there's the Hague Treaty in Respect to
Intercountry Adoption which purports to regulate international adoptions in
such a way that the best interests of children will be served and there
won't be any illegal payments involved with adoptions. I don't have a
quarrel with helping chilren remain with their families in their birth
countries nor with trying to provide supports for ethical international
adoptions. But in all the rhetoric, often the terrible lives of real
children are ignored. Shouldn't efforts be concentrated on helping the
families of children like those described in this article so that they do
not have to sell their children. Shouldn't the children be rescued from
slavery, cared for, educated, and given a chance for a decent life? And
isn't it interesting that UNICEF which is described in this article as being
so concerned about the children, is often opposed to international adoption?

2006-10-17T23:05:00.000-04:00

Miriam's Comments on Celebrities and International Adoption

When I adopted a war orphan from Vietnam, I didn't think I could stop the
war or affect racism. I wanted to save one child who was living in an
orphanage situation in the middle of the war where the mortality rate for
orphanage children was 90%. Was I on an ego trip? Does it matter?
Childlren were living in cages, allowed out of their "cribs" for two half
hours a day for feeding. No one talked to them. They had no toys. They
were toddlers who could not learn to explore their environment because for
"safety reasons", they were kept in cribs with bars over the tops to keep
them from escaping. There was never enough food. There were no
inoculations against disease. There was no medical care. There were two
nuns caring for 200 children with two people coming into the orphanage each
day to help clean it out. There were no mattresses or sheets. The children
urinated and deficated through the bars of their "cribs" onto the floor and
someone sluiced out the floor once a day. I read a description later,
written by the son of one of the women who cleaned, which said that the room
smelled like a zoo.

Today I heard a BBC reporter describe orphanage life throughout Africa and
it wasn't all that different. So I don't think it matters what the "real"
motives of the celebrities are or whether they're put on a "fast track".
What matters is that a child will be fed and clothed and receive medical
care and be loved as part of a family. He will have the opportunity to grow
to his full potential.

Regarding Celebrity Adoptions

2006-10-17T13:32:00.000-04:00

Who benefits from celebrity adoptions?
By Simon Hooper for CNN
(CNN) -- The world's worst-kept secret was confirmed on Friday as Madonna flew out of Malawi after her nine-day "humanitarian mission" having apparently made arrangements to adopt a 13-month old boy.
Government officials confirmed the 48-year-old pop star had been granted permission to adopt the child, named as David Banda, who has spent most of his young life in an orphanage in the southern African country.
Malawian law, which prohibits adoption by non-residents, was even waivered in Madonna's case, although a group of charities say they will seek an injunction to overturn that ruling on Monday.
Regarded earlier in her career as a trendsetter, on this occasion Madonna, who already has two children with film director husband Guy Ritchie, could merely be seen as jumping onto the latest celebrity bandwagon.
Actress Mia Farrow has adopted 10 children from developing countries since the 1970s while Angelina Jolie started the current trend for Hollywood adoptions with her four-year-old Cambodian son and 19-month-old Ethiopian daughter.
She is now considering adopting further children with Brad Pitt, with whom she also has a daughter. And while some prospective parents may enjoy being kept guessing as to which sex their child will be, Jolie and Pitt take things one stage further.
"We don't know from which country," Jolie told CNN recently. "It's you know, another boy, another girl, which country, which race would fit best with the kids?"
In simple terms, Madonna's action may save the life of a child otherwise trapped in a society ravaged by AIDS and malnutrition. Although his father is still alive, Banda has lived in the orphanage since his mother died, with one villager admitting that, if it were not for the adoption, "we would have buried him."
Yet it's also tempting to see such actions as merely another example of the power of rampant celebrity ego in an age in which rock stars are considered authorities on global poverty and Hollywood actors are invited to address the United Nations on humanitarian crises.
Regardless of the motives of their adoptive parents, a child picked up from a developing country and dropped straight into the inevitable media spotlight becomes an unwitting poster child for poverty.
"I'm afraid only two words spring to mind: vanity project," wrote Hannah Pool, herself adopted from an Eritrean orphanage as a child, in the UK's Guardian newspaper.
"No doubt she thinks she's doing the child a favor -- but, really, this is all about her. The money she will have spent on the adoption and will spend on the child could have gone to help many more children in Malawi. But then she wouldn't have a cute black child to show off."
Although Madonna has pledged $3 million to the Raising Malawi charity, which aims to provide care and support for the country's one million (out of a total population of 12 million) orphans, even that generosity is tempered by the fact that the multi-million album-selling artist already has a fortune estimated to be worth some $460 million.
Many also argue that in most cases international adoption, whether by celebrities or mere ordinary mortals, is not in a child's best interests.
Eye of the Child, a Malawian advocacy group that is leading the campaign to stop Madonna adopting Banda, said in a statement, "It's not like selling property. It is about safeguarding the future of a human being who, because of age, cannot express an opinion."
Save the Children's exploited children advisor Daniela Reale told CNN that the best place for a child was in their home country.
"Where it is not possible for children to be with their parents or extended family then it is preferable for the child to be cared for in their home community or adopted within their own country," Reale said.
"Clearly there are situations where this is not possible and in those circumstances international adoption may be preferable to children being kept in institutions."
Perhaps there are good reasons for concern. In 2004 UNICEF warned that "substantial" "growth in international adoptions had spurred the development of an industry driven by profit rather than the interests of the children involved.
"Abuses include the sale and abduction of children, coercion of parents, and bribery, as well as trafficking to individuals whose intentions are to exploit rather than care for children," UNICEF said.
And in a world in which celebrity tastes in clothes, haircuts and diets often evolve into wider lifestyle trends, the actions of Madonna and Jolie are unlikely to help curb such practices.
Harvey Gallagher of the British Association for Adopting and Fostering emphasized to CNN that adopting a child from overseas was "not an easy option" but said that some children had benefited from the experience -- and urged those considering adoption to look closer to home as well.
"There are many children who have benefited from intercountry adoption, but we would like to remind people that there are also as many as 4,000 children across the UK right now who are waiting for permanent and loving homes," said Gallagher.

Expunged Criminal Records Live to Tell Tales

2006-10-17T13:26:00.000-04:00

Regarding the false notion that criminal records are ever "expunged". Adopting families should be certain to share any criminal or arrest records with their homestudy social worker. --Lori Kling, LMSW

October 17, 2006
Expunged Criminal Records Live to Tell Tales
By ADAM LIPTAK
In 41 states, people accused or convicted of crimes have the legal right to rewrite history. They can have their criminal records expunged, and in theory that means that all traces of their encounters with the justice system will disappear.
But enormous commercial databases are fast undoing the societal bargain of expungement, one that used to give people who had committed minor crimes a clean slate and a fresh start.
Most states seal at least some records of juvenile offenses. Many states also allow adults arrested for or convicted of minor crimes like possessing marijuana, shoplifting or disorderly conduct to ask a judge, sometimes after a certain amount of time has passed without further trouble, to expunge their records. If the judge agrees, the records are destroyed or sealed.
But real expungement is becoming significantly harder to accomplish in the electronic age. Records once held only in paper form by law enforcement agencies, courts and corrections departments are now routinely digitized and sold in bulk to the private sector. Some commercial databases now contain more than 100 million criminal records. They are updated only fitfully, and expunged records now often turn up in criminal background checks ordered by employers and landlords.
Thomas A. Wilder, the district clerk for Tarrant County in Fort Worth, said he had received harsh criticism for refusing, on principle, to sell criminal history records in bulk.
“How the hell do I expunge anything,” Mr. Wilder asked, “if I sell tapes and disks all over the country?”
Private database companies say they are diligent in updating their records to reflect the later expungement of criminal records. But lawyers, judges and experts in criminal justice say it is common for people to lose jobs and housing over information in databases that courts have ordered expunged.
These critics say that even the biggest vendors do not always update their records promptly and thoroughly and that many smaller ones use outdated, incomplete and sometimes inaccurate data.
Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a lawyer in Miami, tells her clients that expungement is a waste of time. “To tell someone their record is gone is essentially to lie to them,” Ms. Rodriguez-Taseff said. “In an electronic age, people should understand that once they have been convicted or arrested that will never go away.”
Judge Stanford Blake, whose court often enters expungement orders, said his inability to make them effective had left him feeling frustrated and helpless.
“It’s a horrible situation,” said Judge Blake, the administrative judge of the criminal division of the Eleventh Circuit Court in Miami. “It’s the ultimate Big Brother, always watching you.”
The rise in the availability of criminal histories has been accompanied by a surge in demand for them. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, criminal background checks have become routine in many employment applications.
“Something like 80 percent of large- or medium-sized employers now do background checks,” said Debbie A. Mukamal, the director of the Prisoner Reentry Institute at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “Employers need to know about job-related convictions to make a nuanced, responsible decision so that they can protect themselves and the public and give people a fair shot at employment.”
But the current system, Ms. Mukamal added, is not working. “It’s unfettered,” she said. “It’s not regulated. There’s misinformation.”
ChoicePoint, one of the larger database companies, performed nine million background checks last year, said Matt Furman, a spokesman. The company’s error rate is very small, Mr. Furman said. “One out of every thousand background checks has led to a consumer contact” disputing or complaining about the information provided, he said, “and one of a thousand contacts results in a change.”
There have been only a few lawsuits taking issue with the information provided to employers in background checks.
In one, filed in June in federal court in Brooklyn, Victor Guevares sued a company that had offered him a job and a database company that he says caused the offer to be withdrawn.
Mr. Guevares, now 33, was convicted of disorderly conduct more than a decade ago. New York considers that a violation like a traffic infraction rather than a crime and bars database companies from reporting such offenses to employers.
But Acxiom, a database company, reported the disorderly conduct charges to the Tyco Healthcare Group, which had offered Mr. Guevares a job in 2004. Tyco promptly withdrew the offer, one that would have doubled Mr. Guevares’s salary, to $46,000. It based its decision, his lawsuit says, on its mistaken understanding that he had committed a misdemeanor and had lied on his application about whether he had ever been “convicted of any crime which was not expunged or sealed by a court.”
Mr. Guevares, a gregarious man with a shaved head and big brown eyes, said that losing the job, which would have propelled his family into the middle class, devastated him. “I’ve never been arrested,” he said. “I’ve never been locked up. I’ve never done jail time.”
In court papers, both companies denied wrongdoing, and Tyco has sued Acxiom for breach of contract.
Catherine H. O’Neill, a lawyer with the Legal Action Center, which represents Mr. Guevares, said Acxiom deserved much of the blame.
“They should not have been vacuuming up this information in the first place,” Ms. O’Neill said.
A lawyer for Acxiom and a spokesman for Tyco declined to comment.
There is often plenty of fault to go around. Even within the government, various agencies often fail to coordinate their records.
“The problem often arises,” said Ms. Rodriguez-Taseff, the Miami lawyer, “because so many agencies have access to criminal records — the department of corrections, the police, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the courts. Even though you have an expunged record, oftentimes a policing agency or a corrections facility allows private entities to gain access to it.”
Some state laws place the burden on employers, on the apparent theory that the problem is not the availability of information but the use to which it is put. Illinois, for instance, prohibits prospective employers from asking about or making decisions based on expunged or sealed criminal histories.
A Minnesota man who agreed to talk about his experiences in exchange for anonymity said an expunged 1992 felony conviction — he declined to say for what — and erroneous information about a crime he did not commit have kept him from obtaining work for six months.
He said the database companies he contacted had been responsive if not especially fast in clearing up the problem. Some told him they updated their records annually. “I don’t think the consumer reporting agencies mean to be” reporting inaccurate or sealed information, he said. “They just need to get new CD’s.”
In November 2005, a Florida woman obtained a court order expunging records concerning her arrest in a domestic dispute the previous spring. The judge ordered the state and local police, the county sheriff and the court clerk to “expunge all information concerning indicia of arrest or criminal history.”
But when the woman tried to buy a condominium this summer, the arrest nonetheless popped up in a routine background check. The deal fell through.
“It’s going to haunt her for the rest of her life,” said a relative of the woman, who shared court and Internet search records in exchange for a promise not to identify her or her family. “They’re using public records at a given point in time and they’re not updating them, and they’re ruining people’s lives.”
Margaret Colgate Love, the nation’s pardon attorney for most of the 1990’s and the author of a new book called “Relief from the Collateral Consequences of a Criminal Conviction,” said problems like these were rooted in the nature of expungement.
“It does reveal,” Ms. Love said, “how perilous it is to build a public policy on a lie.”

2006-09-28T20:48:00.000-04:00

To: AdoptionUSCA
Subject: False Rumor on Guatemalan Adoptions

September 28, 2006
Government of Guatemala Efforts to Implement the Hague Adoption Convention
- False Rumor that Guatemala will halt adoptions
The Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala have become aware
of an unfounded rumor that adoptions in Guatemala will be suspended
immediately
or by January 1 as part of Guatemalan efforts to implement the 1993 Hague
Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of
Intercountry
Adoption ("the Hague Adoption Convention"). The government of Guatemala has
confirmed that there is no truth to this rumor. The Embassy is continuing to
process adoption cases.

The Department of State and the U.S. Embassy continue to monitor the
situation in Guatemala closely and are in regular contact with Guatemalan
officials
as they take steps to reform their adoption processes in order to better
protect the interests of children and families. We are encouraged by the
efforts
of the First Lady of Guatemala in preparing a protocol of adoption best
practices that promotes protections for children and families in line with
the
international standards of the Hague Adoption Convention. The Department
urges all interested parties to check our website (
www.travel.state.gov
) for updates on the process of adoptions in Guatemala. For more information
on Guatemala and Hague Adoption Convention implementation efforts, please
see
the Department's Notices and frequently asked questions on Guatemala at
http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/notices/notices_2859.html
and
http://www.travel.state.gov/family/adoption/notices/notices_2858.html.
Miriam's Comments
There are many rumos regarding the continuation of adoptions from Guatemala.
The above is from our Department of State. However, there is a lot of
conflicting information floating around.

life cycle

2006-09-24T14:58:00.000-04:00

I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should
start out dead and get it out of the way...

Then, you wake up in an old age home feeling better
every day.

You get kicked out for being too healthy; go collect
your pension, then when you start work, you get a gold
watch on your first day. You work 40 years until
you're young enough to enjoy your retirement.

You drink alcohol, you party, you're generally
promiscuous and you get ready for high school.

You go to primary school, you become a kid , you
play, you have no responsibilities, you become a baby,
and then...

You spend your last 9 months floating peacefully in
luxury, in spa-like conditions: central heating, room
service on tap, larger quarters every day, and then,
you finish off as an orgasm.

Miriam. V.

Breaking the Biology Barrier NY Times 9/1/06 (Regarding parental leave for adoptive families.)

2006-08-31T14:26:00.000-04:00

Breaking the Biology Barrier

By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
Published: August 31, 2006
KATIE LEDBETTER, who is expecting a baby girl late this year, has delighted in the fawning of baby-obsessed colleagues, the cooing commentary on the joys of parenthood and the feigned laments over the loss of social life and sleep.

But because she is adopting instead of giving birth, Ms. Ledbetter, who works for Standard Register, a document services company based in Ohio, was initially told she was not entitled to the six to eight weeks of paid leave offered to pregnant employees.

Then in January, an ebullient manager told Ms. Ledbetter to check her e-mail. Effective this year, a memo to the company’s 3,500 employees read, Standard Register would offer adoptive parents four weeks of paid leave and up to $4,000 in financial assistance. Ms. Ledbetter, her manager told her, would be the first recipient. “It was like a gift from God,” said Ms. Ledbetter, 45, a customer service specialist in the company’s Charlotte, N.C., office. “When you are in this adoption mode, you just come to expect obstacles. I was so very, very touched to know my company backed us.”

With more than 100,000 Americans adopting each year, adoption benefits are becoming a hot new perk in the panoply of workplace benefits. Whether paid time off, reimbursement for costs or both, the benefits help parents defray hefty adoption fees and afford bonding time with new children. Just as important, recipients say, the assistance sends the message that adoptive families are as valued and worthy of support as biological families are.

“Building a family through pregnancy or adoption are now viewed pretty much the same by most people these days,” said Ms. Ledbetter, who has two biological children, Zachary, 11, and Amanda, 22, and who is adopting from an orphanage in Guatemala.

A 2006 survey of 1,000 companies by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption found that 44 percent of respondents offered paid adoption leave, up from 38 percent in 2000. And 83 percent of those surveyed offered financial assistance for adoptions, up from 70 percent in 2000.
The companies surveyed ranged from small nonprofits to Fortune 500 corporations. In March the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wis., a nonprofit organization with 65 employees, added three fully paid weeks of adoption leave for full-time employees, with three additional weeks at 50 percent of their pay. Bank Rhode Island, which has 300 employees, added four fully paid weeks of adoption leave in January.

“We see this as a significant increase, given the fact that in recent years companies have generally been looking for ways to cut expenses,” said Rita Soronen, executive director of the Dave Thomas Foundation, started in 1992 by Mr. Thomas, an adoptee and the founder of the Wendy’s fast-food chain.

A similar study in 2005 by WorldatWork, a group of human resources and benefits professionals based in Scottsdale, Ariz., found that 39 percent of responding companies offered some form of adoption benefits, up 3 percent from the previous year.

Some work-force experts say the numbers may be overly rosy, because the companies that respond to benefits surveys tend to be those with commendable practices. Even paid maternity leave is not guaranteed in the United States. Companies must treat pregnant women like other employees with a temporary medical disability and give them time off.

But a 2005 study by the Families and Work Institute, a New York-based research group, found that just 66 percent of companies with 1,000 or more employees offer some sort of replacement pay during maternity leaves. Among companies with 50 to 99 employees, 36 percent offered paid leave after a birth.

If offering benefits to adopting parents is, in part, a matter of good will and creating parity with pregnancy leave programs, it is also a competitive gesture. Many adoptive parents are professionals, well into their careers — employees that companies fight to hire and keep.
Bank Rhode Island added its adoption benefit after a prized employee who was adopting from China came to her managers with a list of other companies that offered adoption assistance and a proposal for how such a policy could work for the company.

“We realized that from a recruitment and retention standpoint we wanted to stay competitive with bigger companies and the banking industry as a whole,” said Marianne Monte, senior vice president for human resources for the bank, which is based in Providence. “People increasingly want to see these work-life balance benefits up front.”

The Dave Thomas Foundation, which runs an advocacy program called Adoption-Friendly Workplace, provides kits for employees on how to lobby employers for adoption benefits, and guides for companies about how to introduce them.

Most paid adoption-leave benefits range from two to six weeks, but some companies are more generous. The Merrill Lynch Primary Caregiver Leave program offers 13 weeks of fully paid time off for all new parents, biological or adoptive, male or female. It also offers adoptive parents $3,000 to $5,000 in financial aid.

“It’s a strong statement against the philosophy that the company has to get everything that they want first and you, as a person, and your family, come second,” said Keli Tuschman, director of human resources for Merrill Lynch Commodities, who adopted a girl from China in December.

As an executive, Ms. Tuschman, 42, was determined to maintain her career. But after waiting so long to start a family — she married Jim Tuschman, a real estate developer, nearly four years ago and started the adoption process in December 2004 — she was also determined to enjoy her new baby. Since returning to work in March after her 13-week leave, the company has allowed her to work from home part time.

“You can’t get that time with your baby back,” she said. “Some other company might offer to pay me a little more, but this buys my loyalty.”

SOME adoption agencies require, or strongly recommend, that adoptive parents take several weeks off to bond with a child. Kentucky Adoption Services Inc., in Owensboro, the agency Ms. Ledbetter is using, requires that at least one parent stay home after an adoption for at least six weeks and recommends eight weeks or more, especially for older children.

“No one blinks when a new birth mother takes off six weeks or more to be with her baby, but people then wonder why adoptive parents want the same time,” said Lucy Armistead, the agency’s executive director.

Neither Amanda Lawson nor her husband, Matthew, had paid time off for their adoption leave. The couple, who adopted from Guatemala through Ms. Armistead’s agency in July, relied on financial help from family and friends so that Ms. Lawson could stay home for eight weeks.
Ms. Lawson, an executive assistant for a nonprofit organization in Owensboro, cobbled together vacation and sick leave for five weeks of paid time off. She took another three weeks without pay. But the salary loss after spending over $25,000 on the adoption, she said, has been hard.
“It kind of hurt,” said Ms. Lawson, 27, who returned to work this week. “I am as much a new mother as anybody else. Those few weeks of salary make a difference.”

Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, a Washington-based advocacy organization, said that increased lobbying for adoption benefits is part of a broader push to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act, enacted in 1993.

The law requires any company with 50 or more employees to offer workers 12 weeks of unpaid time off for certain family or health needs, including maternity, paternity and adoption leave. But labor experts estimate that 40 percent of employees in the private work force are not covered by the law because they work for small companies or do not meet the law’s tenure or hour requirements. And many who are covered simply cannot afford unpaid time off.

“We have certainly come a long way from the days when people didn’t even understand what work-life policies were,” Ms. Ness said. “But people’s lives and mind-sets are still far ahead of policies, and support is still out of sync with the day-to-day lives and needs of most families.”
Ms. Ledbetter recently took vacation time to visit Guatemala, where her adoption is in its final stages. She and her husband, Russ, an import-export compliance officer for Goodrich Corporation, expect to bring their daughter home by the end of the year. She plans to take her new four weeks of paid adoption leave, and eight weeks of unpaid leave.

Their good fortune has become an inspiration. Among the handful of soon-to-be adoptive parents that she regularly talks with online, she is the only one with paid adoption leave. “They were just so thrilled for me,” Ms. Ledbetter said. “People want to know how they can get other companies to realize the need.”

2006-08-17T17:17:00.000-04:00

Overcoming Adoption's Racial Barriers - New York Times
The New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 17, 2006
Overcoming Adoption's Racial Barriers
By
LYNETTE CLEMETSON
and RON NIXON

When Martina Brockway and Mike Timble, a white couple in Chicago, decided to
adopt a child, Ms. Brockway went to an adoption agency presentation at a
black
church to make it clear they wanted an African-American baby.

Their biological daughter, Rumeur, 3, is accumulating black dolls in
preparation for her new brother or sister. Black-themed children's books
like "Please,
Baby, Please" by the filmmaker Spike Lee and his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee,
share shelf space with Elmo and Dr. Seuss.

But the couple's decision provoked some uneasy responses. One of Mr. Timble's
white friends asked, "Aren't there any white kids available?"

Ms. Brockway's black friends were supportive. "But," she said, "I also
sensed that there was maybe something they weren't saying."

Mr. Timble cut in. "Like maybe they were thinking, 'What do these people
think they are doing?' "

Ms. Brockway and Mr. Timble are among a growing number of white couples
pushing past longtime cultural resistance to adopt black children. In 2004,
26 percent
of black children adopted from foster care, about 4,200, were adopted
transracially, nearly all by whites. That is up from roughly 14 percent, or
2,200,
in 1998, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the National
Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect at
Cornell University
and from the
Department of Health and Human Services.

"It is a significant increase," said Rita Simon, a sociologist at American
University, who has written several books on transracial adoption. "It is
getting
easier, bureaucratically and socially. With so many people going overseas,
people are also increasingly saying, Wait a minute, there are children here
who need to be adopted, too."

The 2000 census - the first in which information on adoptions was
collected - showed that just over 16,000 white households included adopted
black children.
Adoption experts say there has been a notable increase since 2000.

The reasons for the increase are varied. The Multiethnic Placement Act and
its amendments prohibited federally financed agencies from denying adoption
based
on race. The foster care system has sharply changed in recent years and now
includes financial incentives for finding more adoptive families.

The combination of legal changes and greater embracing of multicultural
families - Americans have adopted more than 200,000 children from overseas
in the
past 15 years - have lessened resistance from both blacks and whites. The
long wait for white children and the high costs of international adoptions -
typically $15,000 to $35,000 - also play a role.

And agencies are offering courses to help adoptive parents enter the process
with more cultural openness and awareness.

Ms. Brockway and Mr. Timble decided to adopt after a physically and
emotionally wrenching first pregnancy - their daughter was delivered at 25
weeks. They
did not want to deal with the long wait for a white infant, and adopting
from overseas did not appeal to them.

"Some people see Asian or other ethnicities as closer to white, more
acceptable, easier," said Ms. Brockway, a teacher. "That's just not us. We
feel like
we have the open arms and minds to be a good match to an African-American
child."

In practice, however, decisions about adoption placements are still
influenced by racial considerations, many families say. Since 1994, white
prospective
parents have filed, and largely won, more than two dozen discrimination
lawsuits, according to state and federal court records. Many more disputes
have
been settled in arbitration.

The loaded jumble of viewpoints and anxieties related to transracial
adoptions of black children are complex and often contradictory.

Rhetoric around the issue has softened considerably since the National
Association of Black Social Workers, in 1972, likened whites adopting black
children
to "cultural genocide." The group removed the genocide reference from its
policy statement in 1994, but it still recommends same-race placements. And
organizations
like the Child Welfare League have argued in recent years that while race
need not be the primary consideration in placements, it should not be
disregarded.

Many blacks still worry that white families cannot equip black children to
navigate the country's complicated racial landscape.

"Adoption, like everything else in this country, gets filtered through the
lens of race," said Joseph Crumbley, a black social worker in Philadelphia
and
a consultant on transracial adoptions. "For blacks, it is about how
comfortable can whites be in dealing with the issue of race when their race
is in conflict
with the race of the child."

At the same time, some blacks view international adoptions by whites as a
slight to black children in need of permanent and stable homes. "I can't
help
but wonder why Angelina and Brad can't adopt an African-American baby here
with so many in need," said Ishia Granger, 36, a black friend of Ms.
Brockway.

More than 45,000 black children were waiting to be adopted from foster care
in 2004. There are no reliable national figures for private adoptions.

Advocates of black adoption criticize adoption agencies as not doing enough
to recruit black families. But one strategy agencies use, in part, to
recruit
black families - reducing fees for African-American adoptions - seems to
some critics like a literal devaluing of black children. And while current
adoption
laws impose penalties on federally financed agencies that discriminate,
there are no penalties for failure to identify black adoptive families.

Both black and white families, at times, feel discriminated against.
Charlene White, a black adoptive mother in Richmond, Va., said that when she
and her
husband, Malachi, began the process in 1997, a counselor asked them about
drug and criminal records - questions a white couple they knew who were also
adopting were not asked.

"It was definitely because we were black," Ms. White said.

A white judge initially denied Nick and Emily Mebruer's petition to adopt a
black child, ruling that the Mebruers, a white couple who live in rural
Lebanon,
Mo., were "uniquely unqualified" to parent a black child because of their
limited interaction with black people and culture. The ruling was
overturned,
and their daughter, Maggie, is now 3.

"We felt like it was an indictment of us and our entire community," said
Mrs. Mebruer, a family doctor, as Maggie played with a black doll in the
center
of the living room and danced to the Australian children's group the
Wiggles. "It was assuming that we didn't have the desire or the capacity to
learn."

The Mebruers did not explicitly set out to adopt a black child. But when the
Kansas City office of
Catholic Charities
called one spring afternoon to say that an infant was available and that
they needed the couple's decision within hours, the race of the child, Mr.
Mebruer
said, was secondary.

White families adopting black children are increasingly learning that the
"love is enough" approach to adoption that families bring to the process is
often
met with skepticism.

Psychologists, researchers and adoptees themselves say many children adopted
transracially in past decades suffered from philosophies focused on
assimilation,
with little or no acknowledgment of racial and cultural conflict.

Robert O'Connor, 39, who was raised by a white family in Rush City, Minn.,
recalled his struggles growing up in a small town with few other blacks.
Throughout
his youth, he said, he felt awkward around other blacks. He did not
understand black trends in fashion or music or little things like playing
the dozens,
the oral tradition of dueling insults.

"I always felt like I had this 'A' on my forehead, this adoptee, that people
could see from a far distance that I was different," said Mr. O'Connor, who
now researches transracial adoptions as assistant professor of social work
at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul.

Today, some agencies are working to avoid mistakes of the past. Ms. Brockway
and Mr. Timble are adopting through the Cradle, a Chicago agency that gives
transracial adoptive parents extensive counseling as well as a course on
"conspicuous families."

One exercise meant to assess parents' comfort level in confronting racial
issues lists a roster of stereotypes including, "lazy," "passive" and
"athletic,"
and asks parents to assign them to the race or ethnic group to which they
are often applied.

Judy Stigger, a counselor at the Cradle and herself a white adoptive mother
of two black children, now adults, makes the issues tangible to prospective
parents by relating personal stories. She tells about the time when her son,
then a teenager, reached into her purse at a McDonald's and a clerk called
security; and the time when her daughter began crying while looking through
congratulatory cards sent by family and friends when they took her home.

"Was I supposed to have been white?" her daughter, then in the third grade,
asked. Ms. Stigger had never noticed that the children on all of the cards
were
white.

"It's about getting people to realize that they should not be thinking about
being, as one 8-year-old put it to me, 'a white family with a weird child,'
but a multiracial family," Ms. Stigger said. "The way most white people use
the term 'colorblind' is just silly. We want to create color aware families,
not colorblind families."

Ms. Brockway worked for years in predominantly black schools and now tutors
children in foster care. Mr. Timble, who owns a promotional printing
business,
has a cousin who has adopted four black children. They live in an ethnically
diverse section of northwest Chicago.

But after working through the adoption process, Ms. Brockway said, they are
considering moving to a neighborhood with more black professionals and
finding
a more diverse church.

For some adopting families, public reaction defies assumptions. Katherine
and Ryan Liebl were dining recently in the Oak Park neighborhood of Chicago,
where
they live, when a black family asked them where they had adopted their son,
Matthew, now 8 months old.

They responded that he was from Chicago and steeled for disapproval.
Instead, they said, the family cheered: "Yeah, domestic baby. Good for you!"

The Liebls, who adopted through the Cradle, were chosen by black birth
parents from profiles submitted by black and white adoptive families. The
same birth
parents had previously chosen a black couple, Dana and Drayden Hilliard, to
adopt two older children. So the Liebls' son Matthew has two biological
siblings
being raised by a black family in a nearby suburb.

The two families have become friends and are raising the children as
siblings, getting them together about once a month.

The Hilliards said they were surprised that the birth mother chose a white
family. "But wherever a child can find love, black, white or purple, that is
all right with me," said Ms. Hilliard, 39, a program analyst. "I do feel
that if parents adopt transracially they owe it to their child to keep them
connected
with their heritage. But we are happy to be a resource for that."

The two families do not know for sure what attracted the birth mother to
them, but they said worldliness seemed to have trumped race. The birth
mother commented
to each that their expressed love for travel would offer her children a
chance to explore the world that she never had.

"We feel like we struck gold," said Mr. Liebl, 31, a lawyer. "Matthew has
these siblings that he will know and this level of contact between us that
is
authentic and not forced."

In the personal letters that the Cradle requires adoptive parents to submit
to birth parents, those adopting transracially are asked to include examples
of how they would bring diversity to a child's life.

Ms. Brockway said it had been a difficult exercise. She wants to include
pictures with black friends, but not too many. She wants to write about her
black
students, Mike's black relatives and co-workers, their activities in black
communities - but not too much.

"I don't want to appear over the top, trying too hard, like we think we're
cool because we have black friends." she said. "And who is to say what any
birth
mother will think is important or how any one views or defines diversity and
culture. These things are different for everyone."

Sabrina I. Pacifici contributed additional reporting.

Miriam's Comment" A much more open and fairer article than one would have
found in the media in the 1970's and 1980's

2006-08-02T17:02:00.000-04:00

Bastard Nation Resolution -- Hague Convention in Respect of Intercountry
Adoption

Resolution of the Executive Committee
of Bastard Nation

on the Hague Convention in Respect of Intercountry Adoption

Whereas the
Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of
Intercountry Adoption
(the "Hague Convention" or the "Convention") endeavours to establish a
global procedural and regulatory framework for the inter-country adoption of
minor
children amongst the member states of The Hague Conference on Private
International Law;

Whereas Articles
16(1)(a),
16(2),
30
and
31
of the Hague Convention set forth minimum and binding procedures for the
gathering, transmission, preservation and use of personal data on a child
adopted
under the provisions of the Convention (the "Adoptee"), such data concerning
the Adoptee's origin and identity, the identity of his or her parents, his
medical history and other background information (collectively, the
"Information");

Whereas Bastard Nation ("BN") is a non-governmental organisation
incorporated under the laws of the United States of America for the purpose
of securing
through world-wide public advocacy the opening to adoptees, upon request at
age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the
adoptee's
historical, genetic, and legal identity (including the unaltered original
birth certificate and adoption decree) as a fundamental civil and political
right
of adult adoptees (such purpose being referred to hereinafter as the "BN
Mission" or the "Mission");

Whereas BN is committed to review of and commentary on public legislation
germane to its Mission, including, specifically, legislation which relates
to
the civil and political right of adult adoptees to access personal
information;

The Executive Committee of Bastard Nation,

Decries the continuing violation of the fundamental civil and political
rights of millions of adoptees around the world who are: (i) deprived by
law, policy
and custom of information about their identities, (ii) forced to rely solely
upon incomplete or intentionally falsified birth and adoption records, (iii)
denied access to their original birth certificates and vital medical
records, and (iv) otherwise subjected to humiliating, demeaning and
otherwise harmful
practices related to their personal information;

Applauds the inclusion of provisions in the Convention which set forth
minimal standards for the gathering, transmission, preservation and use of
Information,
including, specifically,
Article 16(1)(a)
which directs the originating country to prepare a report including
information about the identity of the Adoptee, the background, social
environment and
family history of the Adoptee, the medical history of the Adoptee and that
of his or her biological family, and any special needs of the Adoptee, and
Article 30(1)
which calls for the preservation of Information, with special intention to
the need to preserve information on the identity of the biological parents
as
well as medical information;

Expresses Concern that the minimal standards for Information contained in
the Convention are inadequate to assure protection of the rights of Adoptees
in
the following respects:
List of 5 items
i. the Convention does not contain any provisions for the preservation,
transmission from originating to receiving countries or, access of the
Adoptee to,
or the non-alteration and non-falsification of information on the original
birth certificate,
ii. the Convention contains inadequate provisions for the transmission of
the report of Information specified in
Article 16(1)(a)
from the originating country to the receiving country,
iii. Article 16(2)
of the Convention explicitly calls for the non-transmission of identifying
information relating to biological parents if, in the originating country,
these
identities may not be disclosed, in apparent contravention of the Convention
on the Rights of the Child,
iv. Article 30(2)
provides for access by the Adoptee to Information but permits states parties
which wish to withhold such access to do so, apparently with complete
discretion,
and
v. Article 31
appears to have the effect of further limiting access by the Adoptee to
Information required to be gathered under
Article 16(1)(a)
by overriding
Article 30(2)
with respect to this Information and limiting the use of this Information to
purposes of completing the adoption process;
list end

Requests clarification of the intent of
Article 31
of the Convention and the impact of this article on Information access by
Adoptees;

Expresses Further Concern that no provisions in the Convention provide for
mitigation to inter-country adoptees who continue to suffer the consequences
of the deprivation of Information due to past practices;

Recommends amendment of the provisions concerning Information in the
Convention to provide adult Adoptees with unconditional access to
Information gathered
and preserved under the provisions of the Convention, including transmission
from the originating country to the receiving country of a certified
transcript
of the original birth certificate if such a certificate exists, preservation
of this transcript and the original birth certificate in perpetuity and
preservation
of access for the adult Adoptees to both the transcript and the original
birth certificate free from amendment or alteration;

Further Recommends that states parties to the Convention make specific
undertakings to provide adult Adoptees with unconditional access to
Information gathered
and preserved under the provisions of the Convention through implementation
legislation;

Recognises that information on children made available for inter-country
adoption as a result of abandonment by biological parents in the originating
country
may be limited and that, as a practical matter, in such cases, the
Information provisions of the Convention may not apply in full;

Deplores the decision of the Department of State of the United States of
America, the largest receiving nation of adoptees in inter-country
adoptions, to
solicit the participation in its Study Group on Inter-country Adoption (the
non-governmental group which provided feed-back on the Convention) of only
adoption agencies and private adoption industry interests, while appearing
to exclude non-governmental organisations representing adoptees, biological
parents and adoptive parents as well as individual interested parties from
these groups;

Urges legislative bodies of states contemplating accession to the Convention
to solicit public comment from non-governmental organisations representing
adult adoptees as part of the process for ratification and drafting of
implementation legislation;

Resolves to continue to monitor the ratification and implementation progress
of the Convention and, where appropriate, to publicly comment upon this
progress,
in accordance with the BN Mission;

Expresses Hope that states parties to the Convention will give due
consideration to the civil and political rights of adoptees in the creation
and implementation
of adoption-related legislation;

Enacts this Resolution in accordance with the Bylaws of Bastard Nation, this
28th day of December, 1998.

2006-08-01T20:25:00.000-04:00

This helpful advice is from AdoptionDoctors.com.

What are some strategies that I as parent can implement to help my child
rehabilitate from the institutional care setting?

List of 17 items
1. Immediately during the post-adoption period, do not over stimulate the
child. Avoid trips to Toys-R-Us, Disneyland, and large gatherings. When
exposed
to this type of environment children tend to have meltdown, hyperactive and
out of control
2. Child should be placed in a well-structured routine. Do not allow the
child to become the center of attention
3. Families should stay home with child for as long as possible.
4. Expose the child only to close family members during the post-adoption
period.
5. One parent should be home with the child for the first couple of months.
6. Exposure to both parents is optimal as long as it is as financially
feasible.
7. Avoid daycare immediately after arrival
8. Try to communicate during the first 2-3 months in the child native
language.
9. Do not try to force the child to learn English right away, it will come
in it own time.
10. Child should stay home with a primary parent as opposed to a nanny or
babysitter.
11. If available, have the child socialize with a child from a similar
institutional setting and culture.
12. Older children should be enrolled in school as soon as possible.
13. Schools usually place these children in "English as second language
program" Insist that the child be placed in mainstream classes. Language
will develop
rather quickly if the child is exposed to the English language.
14. Post-Institutionalized children tend to become fixated on junk food,
such as hot dogs, sweets, chips and soda immediately. Let them eat but not
just
what they want or like. Set limits. Since they have never had junk food, it
becomes an obsession.
15. Initially try to recreate the diet that the children had in the
orphanage. Gradually transition them to your families diet slowly over time.
16. In regards to television, avoid shows that have aggressive tendencies.
Disney type movies are usually calm, have good language are funny and have
good
moral values. Children tend to imitate things that they see. Having them
watch power rangers is almost a guarantee to have a power ranger in your
living
room wrecking your furniture very soon.
17. Children need to earn activities and privileges based on their daily
performances. Good behaviors need to be rewarded and bad behavior needs to
be gently
punished by taking away privileges like favorite toys, games for short
period of times. Never ever use corporal punishment.
list end

Adopting a post-institutionalized child is a extremely difficult
undertaking. If your expectations of international adoption that all that
you need to do
is to travel overseas to pick-up a child, put him into GAP clothing and
expect him to function in our society without problems, then maybe
International
Adoption is not for you.
images.adoption.com/adclick.php?bannerid=4521&zoneid=531&source=&dest=http%3
A%2F%2Fwww.adoptassoc

Consistency and complete dedication towards the best interest of the child
are mandatory. The immediate gratification of the parents to form a family
unit
needs to be delayed temporarily. This will help to promote a good long-term
prognosis for the post-institutionalized child.

by
George Rogu M.D.

2006-07-30T22:38:00.000-04:00

July 30, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

Same-Sex Marriage Wins by Losing
By DAN SAVAGE

Seattle

THERE were community meetings in Seattle on Wednesday. Some of the couples
who had sued to overturn Washington's ban on same-sex marriage, a case they
lost
before the state's Supreme Court earlier that day, were going to appear. Gay
and straight elected officials who support "marriage equality" were going
to make speeches. I probably should have been there too.

But I had a previous engagement.

The Seattle Mariners were playing the Toronto Blue Jays at Safeco Field. My
8-year-old son - adopted at birth by my boyfriend and me - loves the M's
almost
as much as he hates the way a breaking news story can keep me late at work.
He would never have forgiven me for skipping the game.

I didn't feel too bad about missing the meetings. Washington's high court
rejected same-sex marriage for much the same reason the New York Court of
Appeals
did earlier this month. The speeches in Seattle would no doubt be similar to
those made in New York, and I didn't need to hear them again.

Basically, both courts found that marriage is like a box of Trix: It's for
kids.

In New York, the court ruled in effect that irresponsible heterosexuals
often have children by accident - we gay couples, in contrast, cannot get
drunk
and adopt in one night - so the state can reserve marriage rights for
heterosexuals in order to coerce them into taking care of their offspring.
Without
the promise of gift registries and rehearsal dinners, it seems, many more
newborns in New York would be found in trash cans.

At least the New York court acknowledged that many same-sex couples have
children. Washington's judges went out of their way to make ours disappear,
finding
that "limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation,
essential to the survival of the human race, and furthers the well-being of
children
by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the
children's biological parents." Children, the decision continues, "tend to
thrive
in families consisting of a father, mother and their biological children.''

A concurring opinion gave the knife a few leisurely twists: due to the
"binary biological nature of marriage," it read, only opposite-sex couples
are capable
of "responsible child rearing."

These stunning statements fly in the face of the evidence about gay and
lesbian parents presented to the court. Similar evidence persuaded the high
court
in Arkansas to overturn that state's ban on gay and lesbian foster parents.

What the New York and Washington opinions share - besides a willful
disregard for equal protection clauses in both state Constitutions - is a
heartless
lack of concern for the rights of the hundreds of thousands of children
being raised by same-sex couples.

Even if gay couples who adopt are more stable, as New York found, don't
their children need the security and protections that the court believes
marriage
affords children? And even if heterosexual sex is essential to the survival
of the human race (a point I'm willing to concede), it's hard to see how
preventing
gay couples from marrying increases heterosexual activity. ("Keep breeding,
heterosexuals," the Washington State Supreme Court in effect shouted, "To
bed!
To bed! To bed!") Both courts have found that my son's parents have no right
to marry, but what of my son's right to have married parents?

A perverse cruelty characterizes both decisions. The courts ruled,
essentially, that making my child's life less secure somehow makes the life
of a child
with straight parents more secure. Both courts found that making
heterosexual couples stable requires keeping homosexual couples vulnerable.
And the courts
seemed to agree that heterosexuals can hardly be bothered to have children
at all - or once they've had them, can hardly be bothered to care for them -
unless marriage rights are reserved exclusively for heterosexuals. And the
religious right accuses gays and lesbians of seeking "special rights."

Even if you believe that marriage plays a special role in the lives of
heterosexuals with children (another point I'm happy to concede), can it not
play
a similar role in the lives of homosexual couples, whether they're parents
or not? Marriage, after all, is not reserved for couples with children.
(Perhaps
it will be soon, if courts keep heading in this direction.)

When my widowed grandfather remarried in his 60's, he wasn't seeking to
further the well-being of his children, who were grown and out of the house.
He
was seeking the security, companionship and legal rights that marriage
provides. The survival of humankind was the furthest thing from his mind.

These defeats have demoralized supporters of gay marriage, but I see a
silver lining. If heterosexual instability and the link between heterosexual
sex
and human reproduction are the best arguments opponents of same-sex marriage
can muster, I can't help but feel that our side must be winning. Insulting
heterosexuals and discriminating against children with same-sex parents may
score the other side a few runs, but these strategies won't win the game.

So I'm confident that one day my son will live in a country that allows his
parents to marry. His parents are already married, as far as he's concerned,
as my boyfriend and I tied the knot in Canada more than a year and a half
ago. We recognize, even if the courts do not, that it's in his best interest
for us to be married.

And while Wednesday was a dark day, the M's beat the Blue Jays 7 to 4, so it
wasn't a total loss.

Dan Savage is the editor of The Stranger, a Seattle newsweekly.

Posted by Miriam V.

2006-07-19T22:00:00.000-04:00

The Case of Marie and Her Sons - New York Times
The New York Times

July 23, 2006

The Case of Marie and Her Sons
By DANIEL BERGNER

To make the letter look right, Marie needed a computer, so one day in March
she walked to a public library. There she composed at the keyboard, but the
writing didn't go well. She had the first of her five children at 13, spent
part of her teenage years in a group home and part in the home of her
crack-addicted
mother and never reached high school. "You know," she told me later, "the
way I sound sometimes doesn't sound like it's supposed to." But she wasn't
leaving
that library without the letter she needed. College students were studying
nearby, and Marie, who is 29, interrupted one of the girls. To this
stranger,
she confided her situation. And soon, with the girl's help, she began again.

"To whom it may concern," she typed, "I am writing to you to appeal for the
return of my children." Marie (I am using her middle name, as well as the
middle
names of her children, to protect their privacy) lost her kids, all of them
boys, to the State of Connecticut more than a year ago. The Stamford office
of Connecticut's Department of Children and Families has placed the boys in
an array of shelters and foster homes; it has recently found potential
adoptive
parents for four of them; and earlier this month it filed a petition to end
Marie's role and rights as a mother. If the department, known as D.C.F.,
succeeds
in court, she will lose her children forever.

For the time being, Marie is still entitled to spend about one hour each
week with her sons. I first met her in early April, in a visiting room at
the Stamford
D.C.F. office. A cloth wall-hanging of panda bears in a classroom adorned
one scuffed wall, and crayon scribbles covered another. Christopher, who is
3
and Marie's second-youngest, was sick that day and had stayed at his foster
home, and Joseph, at 16 Marie's oldest, had fled during an outing with the
family's D.C.F. social worker, Annette Johnson, the previous October and was
nowhere to be found. So just three of the boys gathered around Marie, who
is Puerto Rican-American and wore her long fingernails painted pink, her
dark hair pulled into a ponytail with a powder blue tie, a gold nose stud,
several
tattoos, blue jeans and tan work boots. Between the ponytail and her short,
square build, she looked half cheerleader and half fullback. She managed her
cranky blond year-and-a-half-old baby, Diomedes, in her lap, and played a
game called Jumpin' Monkeys with Antonio and Anthony, who are 8 and 6 and
shot
plastic monkeys from a spring-loaded launcher, trying to hook them in the
branches of a little tree. In her low, raspy voice she gave them advice when
they missed ("Papi, you got to hit it soft") and congratulated them when
they scored ("You got a banana!").

"Give me a kiss," she said, and Anthony, who has black bangs, dark
almond-shaped eyes and delicately curved lips that sometimes spread into a
beaming smile,
did. "Let me try for Mommy," he demanded, and climbed into Marie's lap
alongside Diomedes. He launched a monkey for his mother.

"Can I use the bathroom?" Antonio asked.

"Don't touch the toilet seat," Marie warned.

"Could you read us a book before we go?" Anthony begged, time running out.
"Please, now?"

Marie took a book from a table and began steadily: "Simba and Nala at play."

Her steadiness lasted through goodbye. But when Johnson loaded the boys into
a blue D.C.F. van to be delivered back to their foster parents, and when the
van turned out of the parking lot and disappeared, Marie started to tremble.
"They're going T.P.R.," she said, referring to the department's plan to file
for termination of parental rights. "I did everything they asked me. I'm
trying to believe this is what God wants, but I can't believe this." She
said
that at birth, Christopher had tested positive for marijuana, that Diomedes
had been born positive for marijuana and cocaine. "I fell in the game. I
messed
up, I know I messed up, but all I did was the drug use. I addressed
everything. I've been clean for a year. I went inpatient. I have the
paperwork. My
kids are going to be taken from me for good."

I asked if I could accompany her home. It was a chance to see her house the
way the D.C.F. social workers often see the homes of their clients, showing
up with no appointment, no warning, allowing no time for the clients to
prepare, to clean, to hide the depths of their lives' disarray. I was ready
for
dilapidation outside, decay within. We took a taxi through Stamford, a city
of about 120,000 with glass-sheathed corporate headquarters, beachfront
mansions
and crouched, decrepit houses fronted by rusty fences. A bright white picket
fence surrounded Marie's small home, on a modest, resilient block. The pale
yellow clapboard facade looked freshly painted, and inside the wood floors
gleamed. So did every surface in the kitchen, except the refrigerator, which
was covered with fruit-shaped magnets - pears, strawberries - and pictures
of the children. I asked how long she had lived here, wondering if she had
just
moved in, if there hadn't been time for the place to become run-down.

"Three years," she said. Disability payments for epilepsy and money from the
family of Diomedes's father helped pay the rent. She showed me the spotless
highchair that awaited Diomedes's return, and in the tiny bedrooms
downstairs, the children's beds and toy box and shelves of precisely aligned
kids' DVD's,
all looking like a display in a furniture store. At the kitchen table, she
laid out letters and drug-test results from the state-supported treatment
programs
she had attended, all proving that for the past year, since a few months
after Diomedes's birth in December 2004, she had stayed drug free. One
program
noted Marie's "motivation and commitment to her recovery." Another wrote
that she "has been a pleasure to work with" and "appears to be doing
everything
that she can to get her kids back home with her."

Marie knew that the department doubted not only that she had enough strength
to stay clear of drugs but also that she was fully committed to the boys and
that she had enough skills to successfully mother them - especially Antonio,
who has attention deficit and hyperactive disorder. She showed me more of
her library work: a three-page printout from the Web called "The Gift of
A.D.H.D." Alongside her drug-test results she set a gold-trimmed graduation
certificate
from a state-financed "nurturing/parenting" class, where, a letter from the
program described, she had been taught "positive parenting technique" over
a minimum of seven two-hour sessions.

The next week, at a special outdoor visit with her kids in the park across
from the D.C.F. office, Marie arrived with a pink plastic serving bowl full
of
homemade chicken, yellow rice and peas. She doled out the picnic lunch in
red and blue bowls and plucked a small bone from a piece of chicken so
Christopher
wouldn't choke. After they ate, Antonio and Anthony played with a Wiffle
Ball and bat she had bought for the occasion, and after the visit, the
social
worker who had quietly supervised it, Beverly Maybury, who was not the
family's regular worker but had spent 17 years with the child-welfare
systems of
New York and Connecticut, said, "People are complicated." Maybury is an
African-American woman with a nose stud much like Marie's, gold streaks in
her
hair and a taste for beaded-and-embroidered jeans. "Maybe some of these
people at D.C.F., they think it's cut-and-dried, but people who've seen some
of
the spice of life, been through some things, they know it's not that way.
Those kids are bonded. Maybe someone's going to say she's not parenting, but
look at that food, that looked pretty parenting to me. We can't just throw
people away. She's clean. She's showing up for her visits. She's playing
with
them. You've seen that house, it's spick-and-span."

During the visit, Anthony noticed something different about Marie in her
midriff-baring T-shirt. "Mommy," he asked as she gathered up the bowls, "you
got
another baby in your belly?"

She did, and soon learning this, the department decided it would petition
the court while the baby was still in the womb. Based on "predictive
neglect,"
it planned to claim her sixth child, permanently, the instant it was born.

Pictures of Marie's children decorate Annette Johnson's cubicle. Perched
atop one of the cubicle's partitions, above the piles of case reports on her
desk,
is a Peter Pan Happy Meal pirate ship, a gift from Antonio on a day Johnson
treated him to a McDonald's lunch. A miniature Ninja Turtle, a present from
Anthony, sits nearby, beside a figurine of a girl playing the fiddle, an
offering from another child Johnson watched over for a time.

Around her, the 30 or so staff cubicles and eight supervisors' offices form
a Stamford D.C.F. headquarters that looks nothing like it did when Ken
Mysogland,
D.C.F.'s Stamford-area director, started out as a social worker 17 years
ago. Back then, he recalls, the electricity was sketchy, the lighting bleak,
the
phones unreliable. Workers shared broken desks as each strained to deal with
caseloads of 50 or 60 at a time. Spurred by a 1989 lawsuit and 1991 federal
court consent decree, the department has gradually transformed itself. Its
budget has tripled in the last decade, and it appears close to working
itself
free of court-imposed goals and monitoring. At the Stamford office, all is
bright, all is functional; the staff members are each responsible for 15 to
20 cases, and though the work can be frantic, the social workers seem to
have at least a bit of time to weigh decisions about the families they
investigate
and oversee.

Most of these families live in hard-pressed sections of the city and its
surrounding towns, in a part of the state that lies beside Long Island Sound
and
is celebrated as "the gold coast."

When Johnson, who is black and in her mid-40's, first came to the department
two and a half years ago, she desperately hoped that she would never take a
child from its family forever. For the child, she explained, her thickly
braided hair falling in a spirited way over the collar of a pinstriped suit,
the
complete and final failure of a parent can be more traumatic than a parent's
death.

Before following her mother into social work in the early 1990's, Johnson
was a marketer for Procter & Gamble, making sure that the company's cleaning
products
were well placed on store shelves. Yet she had, in fact, seen plenty of what
Maybury called "the spice of life," and not only while doing social work
with
the homeless, substance abusers and mentally ill before joining D.C.F. Her
younger brother had been a drug trafficker's mule: he swallowed a
cocaine-filled
condom, the rubber tore open inside him and he died of the overdose. Six of
her cousins died because of addictions to heroin: from overdoses, from
AIDS.

Johnson's age and master's degree in social work make her an exception among
her Stamford colleagues; even her brief time in child welfare makes her
"senior
staff," she said, joking. Across the room, a 24-year-old with a year's
experience was getting ready to seize a newborn, whose enraged mother had
tested
positive for PCP when she checked into the hospital to deliver. "You want me
to get a car seat?" a colleague called out, helping the 24-year-old get
ready.
Child seats lie on file cabinets, beside desks, beneath stairs, waiting.

Turnover in the office is constant and quick. "I've seen someone leave a
Post-it on her computer, 'I quit,' and never come back," Ilia Morrows, a
29-year-old
who has spent four years with the department, said. It wasn't only the acute
awareness that a child could be killed if you made the wrong decision - and
that it could be you being named on the local TV news. It wasn't only
everyone's knowledge of the summer before last: three deaths - a 14-year-old
's suicide;
an infant's suffocation, possibly accidental but definitely suspicious; a
toddler's baking to death in the back of a car - two in families under the
watch
of the Stamford office, the third in a family that had just moved to
Stamford after being investigated and cleared by another D.C.F. office. It
wasn't
only the knowledge of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown, who had recently been
allowed to remain with her family by New York City's child-welfare system
and was
reportedly beaten to death by her stepfather. It was also the extreme
authority, the burden of holding it, of wielding it, the prerogative to
enter a family's
home and split it apart. "It's almost hard to comprehend that we have that
ability," Morrows said. "It's so huge."

The staff is made up of investigators and treatment workers, with
investigators handling the initial unannounced knock on the door after a
report of abuse
or neglect comes into the state's hot line. Investigators have up to 45 days
to decide whether to take a kid into D.C.F. custody, or to leave him at home
but compel the family to accept the department's long-term help, or to deem
a report unsubstantiated and let the case go. During this time they can
enter
the house again and again and interview school nurses and neighbors, anyone
who might know how well or terribly a child is being cared for. To take
control
of a child for longer than four days, the department needs a judge's
approval, but if a social worker senses that a child is at immediate risk, a
supervisor's
signature on a form known as a "96-hour hold" will let her walk away with
that boy, that girl or all the children in the house.

Johnson is in the treatment unit, which inherits cases from investigations
and focuses not only on the protracted evaluation of families but also on
guiding
and, ideally, strengthening them so that children don't have to be removed
or so that those who have been seized can be returned. ("Reunification," as
it is called, is the outcome for about half of the 3,000 children D.C.F.
takes into its care each year statewide.) A treatment worker might send an
abusive
father to group counseling for men who batter, a mother like Marie to a
hospital program for substance abusers, a child to individual therapy, all
with
private providers under contract with D.C.F. But to be part of the treatment
unit does not mean that you don't take kids. Morrows, who is now in
investigations,
told me that during her first year with D.C.F., in another office, she had a
treatment case with a family whose three children - an 11-year-old girl and
boys who were 9 and 8 - suddenly confided that their father, an alcoholic,
was coming home drunk, waking them and forcing them to kneel on rice or
punching
them in the stomach. If they doubled over from his blow, he commanded them
to stand bent that way for long periods until he allowed them to straighten.

"You can't do this, you can't take my babies!" Morrows remembered the mother
pleading, collapsed in agony on the floor, when Morrows tried to invoke a
96-hour
hold after the father refused to move out of the home and the mother would
not leave with the kids. "Do something!" the mother screamed at her husband.
Outside the apartment, neighbors gathered in the hallway of the run-down
complex - ominously, Morrows said, because D.C.F. is a known and not very
welcome
agency in the city's poor neighborhoods. Slightly built and self-restrained,
she waited. On her cellphone with her office, she was told that the police
were on their way. But now, amid the mother's sobbing, the kids told Morrows
they would not go, that everything they'd said was a lie. The police, when
at last they arrived, had to grab the children, lifting them in their arms.
Two of the kids clung to the frame of the front door with both hands as they
were carried out. The cops had to pry at their fingers, wrestle their bodies
through.

"I almost started giggling hysterically," Morrows said, describing how she
nearly broke down. "I really wanted to sit on the floor with Mom and cry."
Then
she recalled her feelings hours later, in the aftermath of what had been her
first removal: "I was shocked at what my job is, at the career choice that
I had made. I went home thinking, How do I have this power? In this state,
in this country, the government can come in and take your kids. Tell you you
're
unfit to take care of your kids. It was earth-shattering to me. It rocks you
to your core."

Johnson, in her work with Marie and her boys, longed to turn away from this
power. Talking about Marie, she didn't begin with the present, with the
clean
drug tests; she began, emphatically, with the past, focusing on the crack
addiction of Marie's mother. From that, as Johnson told it, anarchy had
taken
hold of Marie's life: the first child at 13; the group home; charges for
robbery; time spent incarcerated; marriage to a drug dealer; the dealer's
fathering
Antonio and Anthony before being deported to the Dominican Republic; the
birth of Christopher, whose father was a drug addict (three men had fathered
Marie's
first four boys); the marijuana in Christopher's system when he was born;
the addict's trying to rob Marie in front of the children, wielding a gun,
beating
her.

Johnson wasn't yet with the department at the time of this assault, but she
knows the case record deeply and, at her desk in the spring, recounted the
history
to me in quiet tones of pain and near-helplessness. Above her head, Antonio'
s pirate ship sailed off toward the horizon, while Anthony's Ninja Turtle
gazed
down on her like a minute talisman the child had given to his protector to
ensure that she do well on his behalf. In October 2003, a few weeks after
the
assault by Christopher's father, Marie's oldest son, Joseph, then 13, ran
away from home and was gone for three days. "He alleges," the case record
states,
"that mother hits and punches him in the face. . .that mother has kept him
home from school to watch younger children and clean house while she goes
somewhere."
Then, in December 2004, Marie had Diomedes, by yet another man, and the
newborn, six weeks premature and weighing three and a half pounds, had
cocaine
running through his body and brain. Soon the case was Johnson's, and it wasn
't long before she was praying over a prospect, T.P.R., she could hardly
bear
to contemplate. "I asked God to enlighten me," she said. "I asked God for
help."

Parens patriae is the legal principle, about four centuries old, that lies
behind cases like Marie's. It lies behind the child-welfare investigations
into
the families of three and a half million children in the United States in
2004 (the last year for which statistics are available). Each year around
300,000
children are temporarily removed and 65,000 to 70,000 of those children are
ultimately taken from their parents forever, according to the
Department of Health and Human Services.
Parens patriae is the doctrine that empowers government institutions to
venture into the intimate realm of child-rearing and effectively deputizes
social
workers like Annette Johnson and Ilia Morrows to knock on the doors of
family homes and gain entry. Translated from Latin, parens patriae means
"parent
of the country"; it entrusted the king of England to be the "general
guardian," in the words of the 18th-century legal scholar William
Blackstone, "of
all infants, idiots and lunatics," of all who were helpless.

In colonial America, when parents viewed their children, far more than they
may now, as economic assets, as laborers essential to the family's survival,
parens patriae played out differently than it does today. Offspring were a
family's property, and public authorities kept their distance, according to
Brenda G. McGowan, professor of social work at
Columbia University.
The primary exceptions were orphans and the children of paupers, who were
often put in almshouses until they turned 8 or 9. Then they were old enough
to
be indentured.

Not until the mid-19th century did American society begin to see itself as
responsible, in any modern sense and on any vast scale, for rescuing
desperate
children. Compelled by the destitution of New York City's thousands of
street kids, Charles Loring Brace, a Methodist minister, founded the
Children's
Aid Society in 1853, proclaiming, "The great duty is to get these children
of unhappy fortune utterly out of their surroundings and to send them away
to
kind Christian homes in the country." He and his staff knocked on the doors
of shacks and tenement rooms, persuading impoverished parents to sign their
children over to the society and loading them, along with children from
orphanages, onto the nation's new trains, headed West. A few days later, in
distant
towns, where farmland was plentiful and labor was scarce, the children
climbed down from the locomotive cars to be lined up on the stages of
meeting halls.
Farmers squeezed muscles and prodded teeth before agreeing to take them on
as members of their families.

By the program's end in 1929, more than 100,000 children had ridden toward
new homes. Members of the Catholic clergy saw Brace's system as a way to
snatch
the Catholic children of the urban poor and convert them to the
Protestantism of the hinterlands. Other critics made comparisons to the
slave trade. But
Brace, with his vision of saving the young by settling them in redemptive
homes, is credited as a kind of founder of foster care.

It is the story of a lone 9-year-old girl, though, that stands as the
symbolic beginning of work like Johnson and Morrows's. Mary Ellen Wilson
"stood washing
dishes, struggling with a frying pan about as heavy as herself," wrote the
missionary who discovered her in a Manhattan tenement in 1873. "Across the
table
lay a brutal whip of twisted leather strands, and the child's meager arms
and legs bore many marks of its use." The girl's neighbors had told the
missionary
about the way she was kept locked in an inner room and was never seen
outside - the neighbors didn't know how to help, and neither did the
missionary once
she talked her way past the girl's caretaker (whom the girl called Mamma but
who was not her natural mother) at the apartment's door and had a glimpse
of the waif. The missionary was "tempted to apply to the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," she wrote, but she "lacked courage to do
what
seemed absurd." The absurd was her only resort, though, and at last she went
to the society's president in New York and persuaded him to take the case.
He sent an agent, posing as a census taker, to gain access to the apartment
and gather evidence on the girl's condition. Mary Ellen's caretaker was sent
to prison after a highly publicized trial in 1874; the New York Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was started that same year; and
similar
organizations - privately run but heeded by the police and the courts -
quickly sprang up around the country.

Beginning in the late 19th century, driven partly by a growing middle class
that could afford to see children as innocents in need of protection rather
than as miniature members of the work force and spurred, too, by a
multiplying - and, to many, frightening - immigrant population that seemed
in dire need
of socialization, the American public intervened more and more in the way
the nation's children were raised. Government agencies replaced the private
organizations
in the early 20th century. And since the 1960's, according to Martin
Guggenheim, a professor at
New York University
School of Law, the exercise of authority by those agencies to enter the
sphere of child-rearing - and to sever children from their parents - has
surged,
propelled by public-health campaigns against child abuse, by media attention
to the relatively rare horrific deaths of children from maltreatment in the
home and by a quest for swift conclusions, for "permanency," as
child-welfare workers call it. Prevailing developmental theory urges that
children of parents
like Marie should not be allowed to languish long in temporary care while
their mothers (the fathers are often secondary figures, at best) try to
redeem
themselves and reclaim their kids. So while the goal known as "family
preservation" generates a steady supply of newly designed programs, and
while the
field of child social work is in constant search for a panacea to keep
families together, present policy thinking also reflects a conflicting idea:
kids
should be channeled efficiently toward adoption.

At the level of policy, the emphasis on speed has been influenced not only
by developmental theory but also, as Guggenheim sees it, by a confluence of
left-
and right-wing agendas - by children's rights advocates, who tend to view
the interests of the child in opposition to those of the parents, and by
fiscal
conservatives reluctant to spend money on lengthy efforts to help underclass
women sort out their lives. In 1997, Congress passed the Adoption and Safe
Families Act, which links federal money to states' efforts to move children
toward adoption after they have been in temporary care for 15 of any 22
months.
Across the country, between 1997 and 2003 (the most recent year for which
statistics are available), adoptions through child-welfare agencies
increased
by more than 60 percent. The legislation honors the current wisdom that
establishing new stability is more beneficial for the child than struggling
for
years, with uncertain results, to preserve the bond with the parent he has
known. But one inherent effect is that in the domain of American child
welfare,
the doctrine of parens patriae is more powerful than it has ever been.

For two years before Diomedes's birth in December 2004, D.C.F. investigated
and chronicled the chaos of Marie's life with her sons, but it monitored
more
than intervened, and eight months before Diomedes was born it closed the
case, partly because Marie had compliantly gone to be evaluated by a
substance-abuse
program, which determined that she didn't need treatment, and partly because
her household could sometimes seem, to visiting D.C.F. staff members, to be
tranquil, with one report noting Antonio doing his homework and, at his
mother's direction, obediently pouring orange juice for his younger brother
Anthony.

Premature and positive for cocaine, Diomedes spent his first month in the
hospital, and the department was ready to take all of Marie's kids until she
got
herself clean. But Marie's mother, who shed her crack addiction years
earlier, volunteered to move into Marie's house and care for the five boys
while
her daughter underwent treatment. At the time, D.C.F. knew nothing about the
mother's history; records of her having deserted her own children were
buried
within old files kept by the child-welfare system of New York City, where
Marie grew up. And D.C.F. always tried to find relatives to parent the kids
it
would otherwise have to put in foster homes, so the children's lives could
remain as steady and familiar as possible.

"It was Monday, April 11, at 2:15," Johnson said, remembering the precise
moment in 2005 when, about four months after stepping in as caretaker, Marie
's
mother walked into the D.C.F. office with Antonio and Anthony, Christopher
and Diomedes. She had apparently given up on Marie's oldest, Joseph, a week
or so earlier, placing him at a local shelter called Kids in Crisis. Now -
with Marie having just relapsed in an outpatient program, falling back into
using cocaine and having disappeared - she announced to Johnson that the
remaining four were too much to handle, that she was finished. "I begged
her,"
Johnson recounted, "please don't do this, don't do this to these children,
you don't know what this will do to them." Marie's mother kissed the boys,
turned
and walked out of their lives.

"Even now," Johnson said, "I feel a little tremor over the grandmother
bringing them here, a strange office building, and leaving them. I was in
shock."
Then she described Antonio's reaction. Seven years old at the time, he
seemed to understand exactly the magnitude of what had just happened. "He
just stared
out the window. 'Do you want to eat?' 'No.' 'Do you want to play with
something?' 'No.' I took him to stay at Kids in Crisis, hoping that seeing
his brother
there would help. He put a Venetian-blind cord around his neck and jumped
off a chair. He spent months on the child psych ward in Yale New Haven
Hospital
he was so depressed."

Diomedes was taken to one foster home, Anthony and Christopher, then 5 and
2, to another. Licensed foster homes are in such short supply, and space
within
them is so scarce, that the siblings couldn't be kept together. On the
afternoon that Marie's mother abandoned the boys to D.C.F., the Stamford
office's
"matcher" worked her phone. Right away, whenever the office takes custody of
a child, the matcher calls her list of local foster homes, and then her list
of less local ones, an hour or more away, to see if any might be willing to
take another kid, even if there isn't quite enough room, let alone enough
energy.
On that afternoon, she could find only a Spanish-speaking foster mother for
Anthony and Christopher, who don't speak Spanish. In the woman's home, over
the next weeks, Anthony repeatedly beat his head against the walls until his
nose bled. He drove a hole in a wall with his shoulder. The foster mother
threw water in his face to purge him of demons. Johnson begged the matcher
to somehow conjure a new placement.

Meanwhile, Marie seemed to purge something in herself. She fought to get
control of her addiction. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me,"
she
told me - the realization that she could lose her children permanently,
though at that point no move toward T.P.R. had been taken. "I woke up." She
worked
her way through a five-week inpatient program. Anthony and Christopher were
moved to a better foster home. Johnson took all the boys on special outings
- to a children's museum, to the fantasy-land restaurant Chuck E. Cheese's -
to make sure they had a constant in their lives. She grew to adore them. She
drove up to New Haven twice a week to visit Antonio in the hospital where he
was being treated for depression and to take him for haircuts or clothes
shopping.
She had faith that the family could eventually be put back together. Marie
graduated to outpatient sessions. "Mother," Johnson wrote in a report after
overseeing a weekly visit in July 2005, "was appropriate with children and
appeared bonded and showed affection."

Then, in October, Johnson; two of her supervisors; Stamford's director, Ken
Mysogland; a D.C.F. lawyer; a clinical social worker; and a
behavioral-health
specialist met for a formal review of the case, to reckon with its history
for the first time in a completely comprehensive way. Johnson heard that the
others didn't share her hope. (Like her, they had come to cherish the kids,
Mysogland greeting Christopher with great fanfare as "Handsome!" whenever
the
boy was in the office.) They saw four kids who were acutely fragile, with
fissures running through their psyches, and a mother who was too broken to
ever
help them heal. "Too high risk, with the emotional instability of the boys,"
Mysogland told me when I asked why, given that Marie had by October been
testing
clean for several months, they hadn't envisioned returning the boys to her
eventually and providing a period of extensive support to assist her as a
mother.
"We can load up on services if Mom is capable of meeting her kids' needs."
He didn't see her as potentially capable, despite the nascent signs of
change.
He weighed the history of substance abuse and violent men, not only
Christopher's father but also Diomedes's father, who had once cut Marie's
phone cord
with a kitchen knife when she demanded that he leave her house. Mysogland
also dwelled on his sense that Marie could not cope with the special needs
of
her children, like Antonio's A.D.H.D., and on his "surmise" that she
suffered from mental illness (though, as she would later ask me, "If I had
mental
illness, don't you think you would have seen me break down by now, after all
they're putting me through?"). The pressure of the boys in her home, he
reasoned,
would only add to the odds that she would falter, wounding them again. At
the meeting, Johnson heard that the department would hire an outside
evaluator
to confirm their assessment; her superiors believed termination was likely.
She began praying - "to help me understand why we're doing this."

The anguish and incredulity returned quickly to Johnson's voice as she
remembered: "I was like, but she's doing what we asked her to do. The urine'
s come
back clean, the hair test has come back clean." Yet her prayers were, more
or less, answered. Slowly she learned to think less about Marie's keeping
away
from drugs than about signs that her life would remain dangerously anarchic.
Johnson focused on a car accident in August 2005 that left Marie's leg in
a cast - Marie told her that a New York bus had hit her stationary car, but
in October, Johnson learned from city records that witnesses had seen Marie
driving fast and erratically before running into the bus with her vehicle.
And Johnson focused on domestic violence. In December, her face bruised,
Marie
told Johnson that she had been mugged and pistol-whipped in the Bronx, but
Johnson later found out from the Bronx district attorney's office that Marie
's
boyfriend, Diomedes's father - who had recently served several months in
prison for kicking a police officer during an arrest on other charges, which
were
eventually dropped - had been picked up for beating Marie on the street.
This same man was also the father of the unborn child Marie was now
carrying.

Johnson concentrated on Marie's recklessness, her men, her lies. What if the
boys were in the next car that crashed? What if the violence of Marie's
lovers
turned against her children? Johnson made her peace with the opinion of her
superiors, an opinion affirmed by the outside evaluator. Acceptance was made
far easier by the fact that Antonio, who was by then out of the hospital,
Anthony and Diomedes would probably each be adopted into his current foster
home
and that Christopher would go to a paternal uncle, a retired policeman. "I'm
100 percent now," she told me, and compared the oldest and youngest of the
boys. Joseph had been uncontrollable while living at Kids in Crisis. He had
gotten so drunk that he passed out on the lawn in front of his school. He
had
smashed up the shelter's kitchen, been placed in a detention center and
then, in October, after being driven by Johnson to an interview at a
residential
facility, had asked her to buy him a strawberry milkshake at McDonald's. He
fled from the restaurant and has been missing ever since. Johnson imagined
his life now as utterly lost, and said, "His mother made him the boy that he
is." She envisioned Diomedes's life as full of promise - starting with the
promise of adoption.

The four boys would be separated. All of the potential adoptive parents
seemed agreeable to keeping them in contact with one another and, perhaps,
with
Marie, though there would be no legal guarantee that she could ever see them
or even talk with them by phone. "I feel this is in the best interests of
the children - T.P.R.," Johnson told me, busy drafting the petition to the
court. She had come a long way from her ardent hope of never having to tear
a child permanently from its family. And she added, "I think of my role now
as saving children's lives, not just helping families." The distinction was
not subtle. She had, in this way, reconciled herself to the extreme
authority of her work.

I believe in the golden rule," said Martin Guggenheim - the N.Y.U. law
professor, who represented hundreds of kids in juvenile-delinquency,
child-protection
and T.P.R. cases as a legal-services attorney - when I described Marie's
situation. "Test this case against what we would want for our own families."
He
spoke about race and class and suggested that we substitute someone
influential for Marie and painkillers for cocaine. "If we imagine it was
substances
that important people use, we can't imagine that we would be taking those
children."

Nationally, two-thirds of child removals are cases of neglect. (Marie's case
falls into this category.) Neglect - not battering, not sexual molestation.
The preponderance of neglect cases dates back to the child-welfare work of
the late 19th century, Guggenheim said, with its compulsion to rescue
children
from the alien and impoverished ways of their immigrant families. Objective
delineations of neglect are difficult to draw, and poor and minority parents
are left particularly vulnerable to agency excesses and misjudgments. A
court-appointed lawyer may be assigned when an agency moves to take custody
or
terminate rights, but this can hardly make up for a parent's lack of
wherewithal. "When should the state exercise its awesome power in severing
parental
ties?" Guggenheim asked. "Only when we are absolutely certain. Because
history tells us that the exercise of that awesome power will be carried out
against
the least privileged of our society."

The Stamford D.C.F. office - with its profusion of stuffed ducks and donkeys
and bears sitting above desks - doesn't look much like a center of awesome
and menacing state power. And it didn't sound like one on a recent morning
as Johnson talked about a 16-year-old girl who had been abandoned by her
mother
at 5 and whom Johnson had helped to rescue from alcoholism. "I'm happy to
say," Johnson told me, "that my girl is getting ready to graduate, and I'm
getting
ready to get some money to buy her a prom dress." The department invests in
the education of the kids it oversees; it will pay for college or graduate
school until a client turns 23, and it will pay for rites of passage like
senior proms. Amanda Nowak, who sits in the cubicle next to Johnson's, spoke
about a teenager, a talented painter, she had coaxed from homelessness;
Nowak would soon be taking her into Manhattan to visit art schools.

And most everyone seemed self-aware when it came to their authority and
eager to avoid abusing it. Nowak had just given up a string of Saturdays,
working
successfully to return three children to a cocaine-abusing mother who
appeared to have turned her life around. Mysogland, the agency's director,
told stories
about growing up as one of three biological children of parents who adopted
eight others. There was the boy who had been abused and who would booby-trap
his bedroom in the Mysoglands' house to keep himself safe. There were the
pair of brothers who had lived in 26 foster homes. The younger one had been
born
addicted to heroin and brain-damaged. Mysogland, whose pale shaved head
accentuates his energy and earnestness, remembered that the older one had
jumped
over and over from a therapist's couch into Mysogland's mother's arms: an
exercise to develop the beginnings of trust. "But I've learned not to apply
my
family too much in informing my decisions," he said. "This is the most
intrusive work. Imagine telling a mother, 'You're never ever seeing your
kids again.'
Every morning when I turn on the light in this office, I have to put my
personal stuff aside. I have to say, Adoption may have been great for my
siblings,
but it may not be the right decision always."

Self-awareness seemed to permeate department thinking about race and class
as well. One morning, Connecticut's D.C.F. commissioner, Darlene Dunbar,
spoke
to the Stamford staff about "disproportionality and disparate outcomes." Of
the 6,300 kids currently in the department's custody, approximately 24
percent
are black, almost twice the percentage of black minors in the state's
population, and 35 percent are Hispanic, more that three times the
percentage in
the populace. (Nationally, black children are similarly overrepresented.
Hispanics are less so, though they are taken into state care at higher rates
than
whites.) These numbers, perhaps, represent social and economic forces beyond
any child-welfare department's control. But another set of Connecticut
figures,
comparing the rates at which white, black and Hispanic families are
investigated with the rates at which their kids are taken, at least
temporarily, by
D.C.F., are more alarming. Investigated white families are broken apart
least often, then black families, then Hispanic - at twice the rate for
whites.

No one tried to hide the problem, though no one was sure how to solve it.
"When a family presents as more articulate and can gather resources easier,"
Mysogland
wrote me in an e-mail message after we talked about these numbers, "whether
those resources are family or finances or provision of services, that
changes
the overall level of risk or the perceived level of risk. Families that
obtain aggressive legal counsel can influence the way the department wants
to proceed
with a case and the overall outcome of our interventions. We may examine the
information a little closer if the family is high profile or wealthy, given
that we know they will most likely vigorously oppose the department's
decision. We see this in our work, and it would be unethical and dishonest
for us
to say these issues are not true. We try to give everybody the right types
of services. But the statistics tell us we have more work to do."

Still, behind the thoughtfulness and candor that pervaded the office, and
despite everyone's best intentions, something disconcerting hovered around
the
work: a hint of hubris that had the potential, perhaps, to be as destructive
as any abusive boyfriend, as any drug. This force felt all but inevitable;
Mysogland only happened to be the one to give it voice, as he declared that
he had no doubts about the department's decision in Marie's case. He readily
acknowledged that the Adoption and Safe Families Act drove the department
toward faster resolutions, created a momentum toward T.P.R. and adoptions
and
increased the impact of D.C.F. on families. On balance, all this was a good
thing, as he saw it; the law took into account "a child's sense of time,"
the
mantra of developmental psychology that is cited frequently in the
child-welfare field, stressing a child's urgent need for clarity, for
security, for
finality, even at the brutal cost of sacrificing his hope of returning to
his original family. When Mysogland discussed Marie's family, though, any
talk
of the influence of legislation was beside the point. The statistics about
Hispanics in the system were equally irrelevant. On the subject of Marie's
boys,
his speech was often plain and tough. "Those kids are damaged," he told me.
"Not broken bones, but broken brain parts." Marie was simply not - and would
not be - fit to mother them. When I asked about the unborn baby, Mysogland's
tone was even more definite. He emphasized a newborn's extreme
vulnerability,
then stated, "Some people just should not be parents."

After I'd spent many weeks with the department, I learned that the foster
mother who plans to adopt Diomedes is a D.C.F. attorney in another part of
the
state. Mysogland didn't see this as a conflict of interest; in his eyes, her
work with the department made her only more attractive as an adoptive
parent,
because of her familiarity with the damage that kids taken into D.C.F. care
have suffered. But while this made a kind of sense, it was hard not to think
of Martin Guggenheim's vision and of a hyperbolic-sounding phrase he had
used, "social engineering." It was hard not to consider that a highly
privileged
woman was being substituted for a terribly flawed but fiercely determined
mother.

And it was hard not to think back to Marie's picnic visit, when Anthony had
spoken words that seemed scripted, though there was almost no way they could
have been. He may simply have been cued by all that was in the air. "She
shares," he proclaimed, as Marie served chicken, rice and peas to me as well
as
to her boys. "If that was your mommy, you would be lucky."

"Come here, white boy," Marie said to Christopher, in one of the visiting
rooms late in May, seven weeks after I first met her. "Come here, gringo."
She
wrapped her fair-skinned, blond 3-year-old in a hug.

"I want to be gringo," 6-year-old Anthony complained, his dark brown eyes
and light brown face looming dejectedly over the puzzle he and Marie had
been
working on.

"You can't be gringo," she said.

"I'm gringo," he insisted.

She pulled him into a hug too. "Why you want to be gringo? You want to be
you."

Then, at the end of the visit, Antonio, Anthony's older brother, broke down.
A half-hour earlier he asked for a cellphone, and Marie said she would try
to buy him one, but Johnson took her aside and told her that Antonio, at 8,
was too young, that it wasn't appropriate. Now the boy was sobbing, saying
that a friend of his had one, and Marie told him: "You remember what Grandma
said? If somebody's got something on their head, you going to stick
something
on your head? Don't worry about what somebody got. Think about what you got.
Mommy's here. You gonna see me every visit."

But the concept of "Mommy" was about to become more complicated than it
already was. Though the court hearings on termination were many months away,
the
department felt that it needed to tell at least the two older boys about the
prospect of their being adopted, to avoid the chance of their hearing about
it inadvertently from their foster parents or, in an outburst, from Marie.
The telling began that afternoon with Anthony, when Johnson delivered him
back
to the home of the foster mother who planned to adopt him. A teenage girl,
the foster mother's niece, let them into the little blue clapboard house,
its
front yard surrounded by a chain-link fence, and Johnson followed Anthony
upstairs to his room. She sat on the bed, he on the stained, once white
carpet
with a toy or two. She asked if he loved his foster mother.

"Pretty much," he said, and added, "I like her very much."

Listening, I recalled Marie's raspy voice during another of our
conversations in her kitchen, with the kids' photographs on the refrigerator
door: "What's
best for my kids? To come home with their mom. No other place is going to be
home." Diomedes, she went on, "is a baby. He does not know me. Real is what
real is. But my other kids, they're used to Mom doing things with them.
O.K., where they're at, they're safe, I have no doubts. But what is the best
thing?
I'm here, I'm Mom. I need to see them, but they need me more than I could
ever need them," she said, as if she knew that in the all but omnipotent
judgment
of the department her own need carried no weight. "My mom walked out on us
behind drugs. I'm going to fight this until the end."

One way to fight was to flee: by late June, Marie would tell Johnson that
she had moved to New York and planned to deliver her baby there, so D.C.F.
couldn't
take it. All the department would be able to do was alert New York's
child-welfare agency and hope it would open a case on Marie and the unborn
child.
Marie told Johnson that she would continue visiting her boys, but she missed
her chances during the first two weeks of July and seemed, to the
department,
to be on the verge of vanishing.

But now in the bedroom of Anthony's foster home, Johnson said to him, "This
is going to be your new home." Her voice was thin, a notch higher than
usual,
yet firm. Her face looked drained; her long, animated braids of hair could
not bring it to life.

"Until my mom gets better?"

"Getting better" was the euphemism the department used with the children, to
avoid spelling out the drug use, the domestic violence.

"Well, maybe your mom's not getting better like she's supposed to." Johnson
tried to keep the talk focused on his foster mother: "She'll be the one that
's
going to take care of you, just like she's doing now."

He opened the splintered door of his closet, revealing the mound of toys
crammed haphazardly within. "Do you want to see my Batman clothes?" he asked
her.

"Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"That means she's going to be the ruler of me. But how come I can't stay
with my mom if she gets better?"

"Because I've got to make a plan for you."

He took a bucket of Legos out of the closet.

"Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"I don't understand."

Johnson paused, pulling her thoughts together as Anthony spilled the yellow
and red pieces on the floor. "Remember one time we talked about going back?
Right now we're not talking about that anymore. This is the place that you'
ll stay."

"But when my mom gets better?"

"I'm not sure she's going to get better. She's been trying and trying and
trying."

Anthony didn't reply. He turned over the bucket and the last of the pieces
plummeted out. "Could you make a cowboy?" he asked. A Lego horseman was
pictured
on the side of the container.

Though she was dressed somewhat formally, Johnson lowered herself to the
discolored carpet. She began to search for the pieces that would create his
cowboy.
"This could take some time," she said.

He seemed to consider those words. Perhaps the same language had been used
with him once about his mother's recovery and his return to her. And now he
was
being told new words - that his mother had, in the end, failed, that it was
not going to happen, ever. He seemed to wish for the old words, the old
reality
and, as he spoke, to dart backward in time to a point when the promise of
effort had been enough. "But you'll try?" he asked, his voice almost silent,
as if he were addressing a mother only he could see.

"I will."

Daniel Bergner, a contributing writer, is the author of "In the Land of
Magic Soldiers: A Story of White and Black in West Africa." His last article
for
the magazine was about a missionary family in Africa.

Miriam's Comments: This is a truthful and painful article and it raises
difficult ethical issues.

2006-05-25T09:54:00.000-04:00

Free online training - trauma, braine development, bonding/attachment
Presented by the Child Trauma Academy at http://www.childtraumaacademy.com/

This is a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the effects of trauma on
brain development and bonding/attachment. The course offers creative and
practical approaches to understanding and working with maltreated children.

Also see their main sitewww.childtrauma.org for more information about the
work of Bruce D. Perry, MD. PhD.who has been a pioneer in this area of
research and practice.

an adoption story from iraq

2006-05-18T18:15:00.000-04:00

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/glenn.beck/index.html

Click on this link and then on the story "War creates a Family" for a truly heart warming account of a soldier who adopted a young boy with cerebral palsy from Iraq.

2006-05-14T22:01:00.000-04:00

Romania's Orphanages, Continued - New York Times
The New York Times

May 14, 2006
Editorial

Romania's Orphanages, Continued

When Nicolae Ceausescu was Romania's dictator, he outlawed contraception,
the better to build the nation. Thousands of unwanted children were left to
die
in horrific giant orphanages. Once Communism ended, Romania began to
dismantle these orphanages. But many children continue to be placed in
smaller but
still hellish institutions.

According to a report released recently by Mental Disability Rights
International, a group based in the United States, Romania is still
warehousing disabled
children. Those who are providing care, though dedicated, are overwhelmed.
At an institution in Timisoara, one nurse and three other staff members were
giving round-the-clock care to 65 children. The staff could only keep up
with feeding the children and changing diapers. Children did not leave their
cribs
for years, and sometimes were tied down. They did not cry, because crying
did not bring a response. Instead, they sat silently. Investigators also
looked
at several adult psychiatric facilities that housed children in unspeakable
conditions, with teenagers confined to cribs and wearing diapers.

Incredibly, foreign donors like the United States Agency for International
Development, and especially the European Union, helped build this system,
providing
the money for 200 small new orphanages after Communism fell. Romania should
have been taking children out of institutions and placing them with adoptive
or foster families, with services like special schools and therapy. Parents
of disabled children should also have the services they need to be able to
care for their children at home.

Today, Romania acknowledges having 31,000 institutionalized children, and
the real figure may be higher. A new law bans the placement of babies in
institutions
unless they are severely disabled. But children are classified as "severely
disabled" when their problems are greater than social services can handle,
even if their handicaps are minor. There are some good community programs,
but they are small and limited.

Romania's prime minister has announced the creation of a task force to
evaluate institutions for disabled children. This must be only a first step;
it is
time for Romania to bury this relic of its Communist past once and for all.

Miriam's Comments

There is a history, in Eastern Europe, of classifying children as disabled
for political reasons. This has allowed families who cannot care for their
children, to place them in institutions while the government explains the
phenomonon as resulting from disability - not poverty. And healthy
children, placed in terrible environments with no care or stimulation, do
become disabled eventually. Countries often are concerned about what others
will think if their children are placed for adoption with foreign families.
They would prefer to keep children in institutions rather than have them
leave the country. Everyone worries about the possibility of black market
adoptions and often, adoptions are prevented because of this concern. So
children become the victims of countries' pride.

Fw: :

2006-05-14T20:51:00.000-04:00

Romania's Orphans Face Widespread Abuse, Group Says - New York Times
The New York Times

May 10, 2006

Romania's Orphans Face Widespread Abuse, Group Says
By
CRAIG S. SMITH

Children tied to cribs and chairs, often cold, underfed and smeared with
their own feces:
Romania
has tried over the last decade to erase those images of its orphanages seen
around the world.

But thousands of children in government-run institutions are still living in
conditions that are little changed from a decade ago, investigators for
Mental
Disability Rights International found.

Writing in a report to be released today, just days before the
European Union
issues its final assessment on whether Romania has met human rights and
other membership standards, researchers described an eerie silence in a ward
where
65 abandoned children were housed, because "children who do not receive
attention when they cry learn to stop crying."

In an adult psychiatric hospital, investigators found some children wrapped
head to toe in sheets used as full-body restraints. When the staff agreed to
remove the sheet on a 17-year-old girl, the report states, "her skin came
off with the sheet, leaving a raw open wound beneath it."

"It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen in 13 years of doing this
work," said Eric Rosenthal, executive director of Mental Disability Rights
International,
a Washington-based group, and the co-author of the report.

Mr. Rosenthal's group is urging the European Union to insist that Romania
take immediate action to end the abuse before next year, when the country
hopes
to join the union.

The strategy has worked before. In September 2005, as Turkey began formal
talks to join the European Union, Mental Disability Rights International
released
a report on the use of electroshock therapy without
anesthesia
in Turkish psychiatric hospitals. Turkey has since ended the practice at its
main psychiatric hospital in Istanbul and is addressing other problems
raised
in the report.

Simona Pella, an official at Romania's National Authority for the Protection
of Children's Rights, said she had not yet seen the report, but disputed its
findings.

"We are talking about a report made by a nongovernmental organization, and
it's their opinion," Ms. Pella said by telephone from Bucharest. "They are
not
talking about facts in all of Romania, just about some cases in two
counties."

While the number of children in the country's orphanages has dropped to
about 30,000 from 170,000 in the early 1990's, many children, particularly
those
with mental or physical disabilities, have simply been moved into less
visible, though equally appalling, institutions, including adult psychiatric
hospitals,
Mental Disability Rights International found.

"Romania was rushing to show that it had decreased its orphanage population,
but it left children with disabilities behind," Mr. Rosenthal said in New
York
on Monday. He said there was no way to estimate how many children were
living in the conditions described in the report.

Romania's orphanages are a legacy of Nicolae Ceausescu's rule. He banned
birth control and left under-financed state institutions to care for the
wave of
abandoned children that followed. After he was assassinated in 1989, as
Communist rule ended, the horrors of the system were exposed to the world.

Much has improved since then. Foreign aid organizations rushed in, and
European and American advisers worked with Romania's new government to help
put abandoned
children up for adoption or place them in foster homes. In January 2005,
intending to bring the country in line with European Union practices,
Romania
passed a law that prohibited placing children under 3 in institutions unless
they were "severely disabled." The law also blocked foreign adoptions in the
hope of cutting down on child trafficking.

But, according to the report, about 9,000 babies are deserted in Romania
every year, one of the highest rates in Europe. The country's foster care
and adoption
programs strain to keep up with the number of children who need their help.

As a result, abandoned children with even mild disabilities and some with
none at all are being kept in maternity wards or other hospital-associated
institutions
until they are old enough to be moved to an orphanage or other institution.
In February, investigators for the group found 65 infants, some without any
disability, being cared for by three people at a "nutritional recuperation
center" in the western city of Timisoara.

The children were confined to their cribs most of the time, the report
states. Some of the older ones rocked back and forth, banging their heads or
"making
the rhythmic sounds from dislocated jaws common in children left lying down
for extended periods," the report said.

Karen Green McGowan, a registered nurse who assessed many of the children
cited in the report, said the early neglect led to disabilities later on,
making
it likely that many otherwise normal children would end up institutionalized
for life.

"What they're doing there, in my opinion, is manufacturing disability," Ms.
Green McGowan said. "By the time they're in their teens, these kids are
being
moved into institutions."

Ms. Pella, the government official, said that her figures showed that 5,000
children are abandoned each year but that half are eventually reunited with
their families. Foster care and adoption programs handle the rest, she said.
Only those who require medical care stay in the hospital or are
institutionalized,
she said.

But the report documents several cases of older children, some kept in
permanent restraints, in adult facilities, including the St. Pantelimon
adult psychiatric
hospital in the eastern city of Braila.

"We found 46 children in Braila, one near death, that looked like they were
from Auschwitz, just skin and bones," Mr. Rosenthal said.

They found bed ridden teenagers "so emaciated that they looked like they
were 3 or 4 years old," their limbs atrophied and contorted from disuse.

Instead of giving the children attention, the report states, the hospital
staff tied them down.

After Mental Disability Rights International and a Romanian organization
notified the government of the situation, the children were moved to two
smaller
institutions for children, the report stated. But the more disabled of them
remained isolated, without even a bathroom for toilet training. All of them,
up to the age of 17, use diapers.

A Question of Resilience

2006-05-01T07:50:00.000-04:00

The New York Times

April 30, 2006
A Question of Resilience
By EMILY BAZELON

In the spring of 1993, when I was an intern at The New Haven Advocate, a local weekly, I met two girls named La'Tanya and Tichelle. La'Tanya was 13, Tichelle was 11 and, along with their two younger sisters, they had recently returned from a year in foster care to live with their mother, Jean. (I have used middle names to protect the family's privacy.) I was supposed to spend an hour or two with them and write an article for the paper about families that reunite. But I liked the girls, and I decided I needed to interview them again — the joy of being an intern, after all, is that no one really cares when you finish your article. The next time I showed up, about a week later, a worried-looking woman was talking to the girls. She was a prosecutor who was about to try Jean's boyfriend, Earl Osborn, for sexually abusing La'Tanya and Tichelle over several years and their 7-year-old sister, Charnelle, for a shorter period. The girls were her chief witnesses.

At the trial that May in a courtroom in New Haven, La'Tanya testified that Osborn started touching her when she was in kindergarten. She told her mother, and Jean put him out of the house. But somehow, though he wasn't violent, she couldn't make him stay out. She would later say that this was the greatest mistake of her life, but in court, she said as little as possible.

During the next five years, Jean warned Osborn to keep away from her daughters. He didn't. When La'Tanya and Tichelle were about 10 and 8, Jean testified, she put a lock on the door of their bedroom. Osborn broke the lock three times. Jean would find him lying on top of the girls, rubbing against them and putting his hands down their pajamas, or next to them masturbating. She gave her daughters a stick to sleep with. But she never banished him from their home.

In June 1991, after being tipped off that there might be a problem at home, a school social worker pulled La'Tanya out of her sixth-grade graduation party and asked if anyone was bothering her. La'Tanya shook her head no and then started to cry, and to talk. Jean lost custody of La'Tanya, Tichelle, Charnelle and their youngest sister, Chanté. That's when the girls lived in foster care, first with a family and then for several months with their grandmother. Osborn was arrested. In May 1993, on the strength of La'Tanya and Tichelle's testimony, a jury in New Haven convicted him of nine charges of sexual assault. Osborn was sentenced to 85 years in prison. The jury foreman was Jon Butler, a history professor, who is dean of the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. "The verdict hinged overwhelmingly on the credibility of the girls," he told me recently. "They were so good because they weren't so good. They weren't acting, this wasn't contrived, what happened had been deeply disturbing to them. They conveyed this with the kind of precision that made it completely believable."

During the summer after the trial, I spent time with the girls, taking them to the playground and the pool. I wrote about them for The Advocate. Then I left, as interns do. I did stay in touch with La'Tanya and Tichelle, because I was worried about them and because I admired them. They took care of each other, and they were resourceful. "They're very appealing kids, and I don't think anyone expected that, considering what they've been up against," Cecilia Wiederhold, the prosecutor, said in my Advocate article.

As the girls grew up, they kept exceeding my expectations. Study after study has shown that sexually-abused children — especially those who grow up in the sort of low-income, messy surroundings that the girls did — are more likely to develop a raft of emotional and health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts. As adults, they are more likely to be unemployed, homeless, addicted to drugs or alcohol and alone. Now, at ages 26 and 24 respectively, La'Tanya and Tichelle are none of those things. La'Tanya works as a certified nursing assistant at St. Raphael's Hospital. She has her own apartment in a small town on the Connecticut shore. She is raising her two sons, who are 10 and 5. Tichelle is a computer operator for the city of Bridgeport. She lives with her 1-year-old son in the same apartment complex as La'Tanya. Both sisters graduated from high school and have their own cars.

By middle-class standards, these accomplishments seem modest. But financial independence and stability are rare and hard-won for anyone in the poor black New Haven neighborhood where the sisters grew up. Jean raised her children on welfare and never learned to drive. La'Tanya and Tichelle's fathers have been almost entirely absent. On the blocks of row houses and vacant lots where they were raised, teenage mothers far outnumber married ones.

Over the years, I've wondered what accounts for their relative success. Were La'Tanya and Tichelle different, and if so, why? Weren't their lives supposed to have fallen into chaos? How is it that some children show a certain resilience after experiencing a trauma and others do not?

The everyday meaning of the word "resilience" extends to anything that bounces back. Estée Lauder makes Resilience Lift Eye Crème and Hanes makes Resilience Pantyhose. But in psychology, resilience has a specific meaning. It's the word for springing back from serious adversity, like abuse, war or natural disasters. You exhibit resilience (as opposed to plain competence) if you cope with terrible misfortune and live a relatively successful life as defined by mental health, success in school or at work or solid relationships. In studies of the long-term effects of physical and sexual child abuse, 20 to 40 percent of victims show few signs of behavioral or mental-health problems. And many of them don't appear damaged later in life. As Ann Masten, a resilience researcher, has written, resilient children have the benefit of "ordinary magic." When it comes to abuse victims, though, this finding is rarely trumpeted, for fear that saying abuse isn't always inevitably harmful is tantamount to saying it's not always bad.

Over the last several decades, a small group of researchers has tried to understand how a minority of maltreated children exceed expectations. The grandfather of resilience theory is Norman Garmezy, who by the 1960's had begun asking why some children of schizophrenics fared better than others. In the 1970's, Ann Masten joined Garmezy at the University of Minnesota, and the two, along with others, started a project spanning more than two decades. They looked at a child's personality, among other things, imagining resilience as a function of temperament, will or intelligence. While children of average intelligence or above were more likely to exhibit resilience, the researchers noted that good relationships with adults can exert an effect that is as powerful, if not more, in mitigating the effects of adversity.

In recent years, biological science has proposed a new paradigm. The latest research shows that resilience can best be understood as an interplay between particular genes and environment — GxE, in the lingo of the field. Researchers are discovering that a particular variation of a gene can help promote resilience in the people who have it, acting as a buffer against the ruinous effects of adversity. In the absence of an adverse environment, however, the gene doesn't express itself in this way. It drops out of the psychological picture. "We now have well-replicated findings showing that genes play a major role in influencing people's responses to adverse environments," says Sir Michael Rutter, a leading British psychiatrist and longtime resilience expert. "But the genes don't do anything much on their own."

Rutter opened a GxE research center because he was frustrated that most psychiatric studies tracked the effects either of genes or of environment rather than looking at them in tandem. Despite a few initial successes, like the discovery of the gene that causes Down syndrome, most searches for genes that fully explain psychiatric outcomes — "the alcoholism gene," "the schizophrenic gene" — have failed. Meanwhile, in the field of medicine, it's increasingly common to consider external factors when studying the effects of genes. "With heart disease and cancer, genetic researchers have always known to include factors like smoking and exercise," says Terrie Moffitt, who is on the faculty of Rutter's research center at the Institute of Psychiatry in London and of the University of Wisconsin. "We wanted to do the same thing for the study of behavior."

The breakthrough moment for GxE came in 2003, when Moffitt and her husband and co-investigator, Avshalom Caspi, published a paper in Science that discussed the relationship between the gene, 5-HTT, and childhood maltreatment in causing depression. Scientists have determined that 5-HTT is critical for the regulation of serotonin to the brain. Proper regulation of serotonin helps promote well-being and protects against depression in response to trauma or stress. In humans, each 5-HTT gene has two alleles, and each allele occurs in either a short or a long version. Scientists are still figuring out how the short allele affects serotonin delivery, but it seems that people with at least one short 5-HTT allele are more prone to depression. And since depression is associated with unemployment, struggling relationships, poor health and substance abuse, the short allele could contribute to a life going awry.

About one-third of the white population have two copies of the protective long allele. About one-half have one long allele and one short one. And about 17 percent have two short alleles. (African-Americans are less likely to have a short allele; Asians are more likely.) In their 2003 study, Caspi and Moffitt looked at 847 New Zealand adults and found a link between having at least one short 5-HTT allele and elevated rates of depression for people who had been mistreated as children or experienced several "life stresses" — defined as major setbacks with jobs, housing, relationships, health and money. Having two short alleles made it highly likely that people who had been mistreated or exposed to unhinging stress would suffer depression. One short allele posed a moderate risk of depression in these circumstances. Two long alleles, on the other hand, gave their carriers a good chance of bouncing back under negative circumstances. In other words, as a group, children with two risky alleles lost out badly when their environments failed them, children with one risky allele were at some risk and children with good resilience alleles often carried a shield. The risky variation of the gene doesn't confer vulnerability, though, if an individual who carries it never experiences abuse or serious stress — in other words, it's not a "depression gene" in any general sense. It seems that only under dire circumstances — abuse, the strife of war, chronic stress — is the gene triggered. Eventually scientists hope to understand more about other genes that most likely play a role like 5-HTT's.

Researchers who study humans cannot, of course, run controlled experiments by randomly assigning some children to abusive homes. But primatologists can. At a laboratory in rural Maryland, run by the National Institutes of Health, Stephen Suomi studies 500 rhesus monkeys. Each year, Suomi divides newborn monkeys into several groups. One group live with their mothers, much as they would in the wild (except for the indoor pens and the daily rations). Another group, created to mimic the experience of a neglected or abused child, never see their mothers, spending two weeks in an incubator and then moving into a small group of peers.

Rhesus monkeys share with humans about 96 percent of their genes — including the long and short variations of 5-HTT. Using DNA samples, Suomi is able to track which of his monkeys have which allele. In an ongoing study, Suomi has found that motherless, peer-raised monkeys who have a copy of the short 5-HTT allele are more likely to experience fear, panic and aggression (accompanied by low levels of serotonin acid in spinal fluid) when a strange monkey in a cage is placed next to them. Motherless, peer-raised monkeys with two long alleles, on the other hand, are more likely to take the presence of the stranger in stride, as mother-raised monkeys do. (Only a tiny number of monkeys have two copies of the short allele, so they're not studied.) "How you grow up affects your hormonal output and the structure and function of the brain," Suomi says. "And these effects are tempered by the kind of gene the monkeys carry. So it's a true interaction."

In Suomi's lab, there's a room filled with large cages of 2- and 3-year-olds — adolescents approaching adulthood, in monkey years. "Go in quickly and quietly," Suomi tells me and then follows me through the door. Some of the monkeys stay in the middle of the cage, eyeing us without seeming preoccupied. Another group races to the back and huddles together in the farthest corner, their small fingers wrapping around one another's fur. They twitter and turn their faces away in distress.

The middle-of-the-cage monkeys were raised by their mothers. The freaked-out ones at the back raised one another. After a few minutes, some of the peer-raised monkeys begin to dart forward. After a few more minutes, they settle in with the mother-raised group. But others never move from the back of the cage. According to Suomi, you could approach the cage a hundred times and each time see the same result. And each time, the peer-raised monkeys would race to the back, and then a few would mirror human resilience by coming forward. And they would generally be the monkeys with two long 5-HTT alleles. The good version of the gene.

Suomi's peer-raised monkeys are deprived of their mothers and other adult monkeys. Abused children, by contrast, don't just live with other children. They may have in their lives grandparents, aunts, teachers, maybe an adult they know from church or a volunteer from a Big Brother or Big Sister program. And they are much more likely than other children to name one of these adults as the person on whom they most rely.

Caspi and Moffitt's research was important in showing a link between genes and an abusive environment, but they didn't explore the effect of mitigating factors in the abused children's lives. Joan Kaufman, a Yale psychiatry professor, has taken the next step by doing so. In a paper this month in the journal Biological Psychiatry, Kaufman reported on 196 children between the ages of 5 and 15, 109 of them removed from their homes in Connecticut because of reports of physical or sexual abuse or neglect. This group was compared with a second nonabused group with the same racial composition — about 28 percent white, 24 percent Hispanic, 28 percent African-American and 20 percent biracial — and the same income of $25,000 or less. (Physical and sexual abuse are more prevalent among poor families, though abuse happens at all economic levels. Studies like Caspi and Moffitt's, which include families of varied income, show that the resilience findings apply to middle- and upper-class kids as well as poor ones.)

Kaufman gave all 196 children a questionnaire about their moods, which measure mental health. She also used DNA tests to check their 5-HTT alleles. Kaufman's abused children with two short 5-HTT alleles had a higher mean score for depression than the abused children with two long alleles and the nonabused children, no matter what their alleles. (In Kaufman's study, which was smaller than Caspi and Moffitt's, the moderate risk of depression posed by one short allele didn't show up, though that finding has been replicated by other researchers.)

In her recent paper and in earlier research, Kaufman also built on the work of psychologists who have measured the quality of abused children's relationships to adults, asking the children to name the person they most often "talk to about personal things, count on to buy the things they need, share good news with, get together with to have fun and go to if they need advice." The mean depression score for abused children with two short alleles who rarely saw the adults they named was off the charts. If the children with two short alleles saw the adults they counted on daily or almost daily, their depression scores were very close to the scores of the children with two long protective alleles — and within reach of the children who had not been abused. (The children with the protective version of the gene were far less affected by a lack of contact with their primary adult.) "Good support ameliorates the effect of abuse and of the high-risk genotype," Kaufman says. While he notes that Kaufman's research is preliminary, Dennis Charney, a psychiatry and neuroscience professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, says that the study used "solid methodology and yielded very interesting findings."

La'Tanya and Tichelle had relatively good support. When the state removed the girls and their sisters from their home, their grandmother took them in. "She did everything for us," La'Tanya remembers. Later, a half-sister who is 10 years older than La'Tanya began picking her up on weekends. "I spent a lot of time with her," La'Tanya says. "We'd rent movies, go places, do a lot of things together."

Having "good support" isn't just a question of good luck. Researchers have found that children who are resilient are skillful at creating beneficial relationships with adults, and those relationships in turn contribute to the children's resilience. La'Tanya and Tichelle were both good at forging these bonds. When I left New Haven in 1994, they wrote me. I moved back a few years later, and Tichelle called regularly, came to my office to meet me for lunch, asked me to stop by her house on the weekends. La'Tanya soon started calling, too. Sometimes the sisters were behind on their bills and, always with embarrassment, asked me for money. But more often they called, and still call, to check in, to ask after my kids or tell me about theirs. They let me know that I matter to them, and that has made them matter more to me.

In the last year or so, I've become more aware that La'Tanya and Tichelle are quite different and that the darkness of childhood seems to have left a more indelible mark on the older sister. La'Tanya and her sister were both molested. And they lived with their mother, who was remote — I don't think I ever saw Jean hug her daughters in the months surrounding the trial. But La'Tanya shouldered more of a burden than Tichelle did. As the oldest, La'Tanya often had to look after her sisters — make them dinner, put them to sleep. "La'Tanya raised us," Tichelle says. "She's more like a mom than a sister." La'Tanya wrote in her diary last year, "Ever since I can remember I've taken on more than any one person should have to."

In March 1994, when they were 14 and 12, the girls sent me letters. Tichelle wrote: "My grades are excellent. I got all A's and two B+'s. In school I am a cheerleader we cheer every Tuesday and Thursday. I am still in double dutch it's very fun." La'Tanya also reported her good grades. But mostly she described the heaviness of her world. "A lot of people have been getting killed," she wrote. "A house almost got burned down and nobody ever goes outside."A year later, La'Tanya ran away from home. She moved in with her 17-year-old boyfriend and decided to have a baby. The thread that runs through these decisions is her anger and disappointment with Jean. "I had a baby to be loved by someone," La'Tanya says. "When all the mess fell out, my mother didn't do anything about it. That's what made me think she didn't love us."

Tichelle, by contrast, forgave her mother and relies on her. "That's my mom, and I'm not going to let anyone take her away." On the day Tichelle went into labor last spring, the father of her baby was arrested for selling drugs. She called her mother, and after the birth Jean slept at the hospital with her daughter and grandson. Jean takes care of the baby every day while Tichelle is at work, as she has done for her other grandchildren.

Before her baby was born, Tichelle landed a permanent position in her office after impressing her boss as a temp. "I'm 23, and I know what I want for myself," she told me last year. La'Tanya, meanwhile, was struggling with crying spells and panic attacks. After a recurrent nightmare about Osborn, she would wake up and compulsively check and recheck the locks in her apartment. She couldn't stop thinking about Osborn's gun — "a black shotgun with a light brown barrel."

There are a lot of reasons that La'Tanya has had a harder time than her sister, not least of them that she was abused for a longer period of time. But reading all the GxE research made me wonder whether she was also more genetically vulnerable. I asked the girls if they'd be willing to be tested, and they agreed — they said they were curious. Last month, La'Tanya, Tichelle and Charnelle (who had been abused by Osborn for a shorter period when she was 3) sent cheek swabs with their DNA to a lab run by a Colorado-based company called NeuroMark, which tests for the 5-HTT alleles.

The study of resilience is nearly 50 years old. Yet its contribution to our understanding of the effects of child abuse has gained little traction beyond a small subset of academics. Historically, the study of resilience inadvertently collided with the movement to treat child abuse as a national cause for alarm. In the 1950's, experts like Alfred Kinsey minimized the damage of sexual abuse. The fright described by children who'd had sexual contact with adults was "nearer the level that children will show when they see insects [or] spiders," Kinsey wrote, as Joseph E. Davis, a sociologist, recounts in his recent book, "Accounts of Innocence." Until the mid 1970's, standard psychology textbooks also played down the effects of abuse and put the incidence of incest at one in a million.

By the beginning of the next decade, the textbooks were being rewritten. Led by Judith Lewis Herman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Harvard, feminists shredded the myth that sexual abuse is rare and does little significant harm. They argued that even a brief, single incident of abuse could and often did scar victims for life. In 1980, Herman helped win an official psychiatric diagnosis for post-traumatic stress disorder, as a response to trauma that causes people to "dissociate," or fragment, by alternately feeling numb and reliving the event. According to its clinical definition, PTSD can strike a victim of rape or child abuse as easily as a combat veteran. The orthodoxy that abuse necessarily causes trauma grew and still remains entrenched. It has extensive institutional support — $29 million a year in government financing goes to a national "traumatic stress" center and 44 hospitals and community-based programs around the nation. "The problem in our country isn't that we overidentify trauma," said Ellen Gerrity, associate director for the national center. "It's that we underidentify it."

All along, a few experts have raised doubts about equating childhood sexual experience with trauma and about the assumption that abuse destroys victims' lives. But they got little attention — until an academic brush fire over terminology exploded into a public war. In 1998, Bruce Rind, Robert Bauserman and Philip Tromovitch published an article in Psychological Bulletin, a journal of the American Psychological Association, analyzing 59 studies of the long-term effects of sexual abuse and adult-child sexual contact on college students. "At the time, the starting hypothesis in the field was that child sexual abuse, broadly defined, was extremely harmful in all cases," Rind says. "Our idea was to take this very strong statement and to be statistically and methodologically rigorous about testing it."

The Rind paper found only a marginal difference between the psychological well-being of college students who'd been "sexually abused" and those who hadn't. But there was a catch: Some of the studies being analyzed defined sexual abuse broadly to include exhibitionism and consensual contact between teenagers and adults. When abuse was limited to lack of consent, force or incest, its deleterious effects were more pronounced. So Rind and his co-authors recommended narrowing the definition of abuse.

Conservatives condemned the Rind paper, and Congress denounced it. The uproar virtually derailed the hope of opening child sex studies to rigorous inquiry. "There had been an underestimation of the extent to which children can recover from sexual abuse," says David Finkelhor, a sociologist who directs the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire and who has found that pre-existing depression may make children vulnerable to sexual abuse and may help account for the problems some suffer afterward. "But that article started a trend in the opposite direction," he says — by discouraging investigations of the differences between harmful sexual abuse and other sexual contact.

Still, in trying to understand why some children are not scarred for life, resilience research brightens a picture that is often painted in black. And the promise of GxE brings with it new excitement — and grant money. Caspi and Moffitt, whose article about 5-HTT received widespread praise, didn't bother to try to get government money when they began collecting DNA data in 1998. Now they receive $500,000 a year in N.I.M.H. and U.K. government grants. Other researchers have similar support for GxE work.

If GxE pans out as the enthusiasts hope, it could change not just our understanding of the effects of abuse but also our treatment of it. Neurobiological research on mice and rats has begun to look at the effect that the 5-HTT gene has on the brain at the molecular level. Eventually, a designer drug might succeed in mimicking precisely what the long-allele variation of 5-HTT does to foster resilience. "A magic drug down the line — yes, that's the whole point of understanding the neurological mechanisms," Joan Kaufman says.

Other experts, however, are skeptical. Whatever an abused child's genes, they argue, she still needs the ingredients that promote resilience — adults she can trust, the reinforcements that make her believe in herself. "It's nice to know what's going on in the body," says Suniya Luthar, a psychology professor at Columbia University's Teachers College. "But what's the real promise here? We already know what people need to be resilient. From the standpoint of intervention, I'd rather see money go toward things that are more likely to make real change," like developing effective interventions. Luthar also worries about genetic profiling. "Are we going to think about genetic engineering" to weed out the high-risk variation of a gene? she asks.

Kaufman, too, warns that finding out which variation of 5-HTT you carry is not like getting a diagnosis. The short allele increases vulnerability across a large group rather than exposing any one person who has it. Other genes, as well as relationships, contribute. "Think about it as one factor on a scale," Kaufman says. "It can tip the scale toward depression or away from it. But other factors can tip the scale, more powerfully, in the opposite direction."

Still, the test results for La'Tanya, Tichelle and their younger sister Charnelle are intriguing. As it turns out, Tichelle carries only the protective version of the gene (two long alleles). So does Charnelle, who at 20 is thriving, with a steady job at a nursing home and an apartment she shares with a boyfriend whom her family likes.

La'Tanya, though, carries one copy of the short 5-HTT allele, putting her in the group of abused children who are at moderate risk of depression. Perhaps her genes help account for the times she has gone to the hospital because she's so anxious she can't breathe and the days she can't stop crying or get out of bed.

Yet, as Kaufman says, La'Tanya's genes don't doom her to unhappiness. She has good days too. Last year she signed up with a home-health-aide agency and was frustrated — and broke — because she was getting only scattered hours of work. She wanted a hospital job. But that required a state recertification. I gave her $700 for the four-week course she needed.

At the graduation ceremony last spring, two dozen students ate pizza next to the hospital beds and dummy patient they'd practiced on. "I got a 93 on the final," La'Tanya told me twice. She was wearing a pink turtleneck sweater, pressed jeans and high-heeled black boots. She'd taken out her lip piercing because the teacher said it might put off potential employers. "Now I just need to take the licensing test," she said to a friend. "When we leave from here I'm going over to sign up." She did. She passed. She got the hospital job she wanted. Keeping it hasn't been easy, especially because her younger son has been acting up in school. But she is doing it.

Next month, NeuroMark will begin selling the 5-HTT test to people whose doctors request it. The results won't solve the riddle of which survivors of abuse fare better than others. But they may provide a clue. "I think for me it helps explain things," La'Tanya said. "I feel a little better that there is a reason, another reason, for my life being hard. And I understand that what I'm able to do for myself and my kids, even with this, is good. It's good."

Emily Bazelon is a senior editor at Slate and a recent Soros Media Justice Fellow.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Post-Adoption Depression

2006-04-28T19:39:00.000-04:00

Originally posted on www.nytimes.com

April 25, 2006

After the Adoption, a New Child and the Blues
By LAURIE TARKAN

When Dr. Michele Zembow, 45 and single, adopted a 15-month-old girl, Kaydi, from China five years ago, the two fell in love instantly. Dr. Zembow had taken three months off work to ease the transition. "I thought it would be like a vacation, this wonderful time with the baby," she said. Instead, she felt overwhelmed by the round-the-clock demands of the baby. She experienced anxiousness, had bouts of weepiness and felt somewhat isolated and lost. At times, she found herself yelling and short-tempered with Kaydi, whom she adored. "I had an anxious type of depression said Dr. Zembow, a psychologist in Maplewood, N.J. "I felt like I had this romanticized, idealized version of what it would be like that was not at all true."

Dr. Zembow had no one to turn to. She spent many of her days taking her daughter to the park for relief, social contact and a change of scenery. Many adoptive parents feel delirious with happiness when bringing home their child. Yet for some, this joy can be short-lived and dissolve into what experts call post-adoption depression. For some, it is simply a low mood, for
others a full-fledged plunge into despair. But most suffer secretly because of the shame and guilt of not being entirely happy over something they had chosen and, in many cases, worked so hard to get.

Post-adoption depression is recognized among adoption professionals, butthere is no research on the syndrome. It is not adequately addressed by many adoption agencies, say experts, and is not widely understood by the public, including those who embark on adoption. "It's like where postpartum depression was 10 to 15 years ago," said Pamela Kruger, a co-editor of "A Love Like No Other" a new collection of essays by adoptive parents. "Parents can be blindsided by it, they're expecting it to be this joyous moment and not expecting to have these feelings," Ms. Kruger said.

Like postpartum depression, post-adoption depression can be difficult for women to acknowledge even to themselves, and even more difficult to admit to friends and family members. Karen Foli, co-author, with her husband, Dr. John Thompson, of "The Post-Adoption Blues," said of the parents they interviewed for the book, "They chose to be a parent of adoption, they've wanted it for so long, and they're dumbfounded and feel tremendous guilt and shame admitting they have anything less than positive feelings."

And unlike new mothers who suffer from postpartum depression, they cannot explain their symptoms by a drop in estrogen levels. Society tends to put adoptive parents on a pedestal,
making it even harder for them to admit ambivalence or depressed feelings. Experts say it is not clear how common post-adoption depression is. "I don't get the sense that it's prevalent, but it's out there," said Adam Pertman, author of Adoption Nation and executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a nonprofit organization.

No research has been done on the problem. But in a 1999 survey sent out by Harriet McCarthy to subscribers to an online listserve for parents in the Eastern European Adoption Coalition, 77 percent of those who reported post-adoption depression said their symptoms lasted from two months to more than a year. Seventy percent felt that the depression had interfered with the transition and bonding with their new children. Only 8 of the 94 people who reported post-adoption depression said they had been advised by their agencies that the syndrome even existed.

According to psychologists who work with adoptive parents, the stress of being a new parent, sleep deprivation and a lack of support may put women at risk. And some adoptive mothers may be saddened if they do not "feel love at first sight" or immediately bond with a child.

Mary and Claude Knobler had two children of their own. But they decided to adopt Nati, a 5-year-old Ethiopian boy whose mother was infected with the virus. Nati arrived with a large personality, vibrant and affectionate, and though her husband and children embraced him right away, Ms. Knoblersaid she could not. "I thought of myself as a person who could love all children," she said. "The love for this child did not come the moment we picked him up at the
airport, and that was upsetting to me."She said she felt sad, confused and overwhelmed, and began to grieve the loss of her family as she knew it."We wanted to help this child, but in accepting a fully formed person into your life, you're changing what you know," she said. Her sadness and grief eventually faded as she grew to love her new son.

Ms. Foli, who adopted a girl from India, experienced similar feelings. "The idea of being a loving supportive mom was an important part of myself," she said. "When it just didn't come about with my daughter, I was devastated." She said she was depressed for a year, and in that time did not interact as well with her daughter as she had hoped.

On the other hand, some parents are saddened if an adopted child does not immediately bond with them, a phenomenon that is more likely to occur in older children who have lived in orphanages or who have been through the foster care system. Some parents who have biological children may mourn the loss of their existing family and become distressed that the demands of the new child take time from the others. If infertility or miscarriages preceded the adoption, a woman may still dwell on her lost pregnancy or inability to have a biological child. And some parents endure a long process to adopt a child, filled with anxiety, delays and other obstacles.

Mark Lerner, a psychologist and president of the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, said that with so much of their focus on acquiring the child, parents were less likely to concentrate on what life would look like once the child came home. "When they do ultimately get through all the hurdles of acquiring the baby, they find themselves dealing with things they didn't anticipate," Dr. Lerner said. Adopting an older child, some experts say, can be more difficult if the child has developmental and behavioral problems and the parents are inexperienced at dealing with such challenges. "It can be very stressful," Dr. Lerner said, adding that parents are not usually prepared for how difficult it can be. "A statement I hear over and over from parents is, 'I didn't sign up for this.' "

Some adoption agencies are beginning to address the issue of post-adoption depression by offering more services to parents after they adopt. "The good agencies are trying so hard to cover the bases," said Ms. McCarthy, "but if somebody hands you a piece of paper that said to be aware of post-adoption depression, the first thing you think is, 'I'm not going to get that,' and
you toss it," she said. Some parents are reluctant to show any signs of unraveling in front of
agency counselors who conduct post-placement visits, and often the depression begins months after the adoption, when connections to the agency have been lost.

A number of medical groups have cropped up with a specific focus on the medical and psychological needs of adopted children and their families, and there are a growing number of psychologists who focus on adoption. Experts recommend that adoptive parents find someone to talk to, perhaps joining one of many online groups for adoptive parents. "Support groups have
made a huge difference to thousands of adoptive parents' lives," Ms. McCarthy said.

Experts recommend that parents who are experiencing signs of depression or anger see a physician or a psychologist to discuss treatments like antidepressants and talk therapy. But in many cases, it may be enough simply to get more help and more support.

Dr. Zembow said that when she hired a nanny about 10 weeks after she brought Kaydi home, her depression lifted. "She was my savior," Dr. Zembow said.

copyright New York Times

The Legacy of Operation Babylift

2006-04-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

By
Allison Martin

The Legacy of Operation Babylift

Lift Off

An immense cargo plane shuddered into the sky over Saigon. Inside the cabin,
frightened toddlers and older children were strapped in with seat belts along the hard aluminum benches on each side of the aircraft. Down the center of the plane ran a row of 2-foot square cardboard boxes, each containing a precious cargo of two or three babies. A long strap stretched over the row of boxes securing them in place. Agency workers, Air Force personnel and volunteer parent escorts shook off their own fatigue and fear to scurry about trying to quiet the crying. Another flight of Operation Babylift had lifted off. Its cargo of orphan children had now left war torn Vietnam on their way to new lives
in a distant country.

The Call for A Babylift

Two years after the United States signed a cease-fire with Vietnam, South Vietnam was crumbling under assault from the North Vietnamese troops. On March 30, 1975 South Vietnam's second largest city, Da Nang, was captured. By mid-April, Saigon was under attack from all three sides. Although several thousand American government officials and private citizens remained in Saigon, most of the other embassies were closed and their citizens had fled the country.

As North Vietnamese troops spread through South Vietnam, desperate, frightened people were pouring out of the country. Planeloads of refugees left Tan Son Nhut airport with greater frequency as soldiers closed in on Saigon. On April 27 alone, over 7,000 South Vietnamese refugees were flown out. When shelling rendered the airport inoperable, the signal (Bing Crosby's "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" played on Armed forces radio) was given for final
evacuation by helicopter. Streets were mobbed with panicked Vietnamese people anxious
to escape. During the last days of the withdrawal (April 29 - 30), more than 1,300 American and 5,500 Vietnamese people were flown out by helicopter from Saigon. Another 60,000 South Vietnamese people were rescued from rafts, fishing boats and cargo ships. All told, 132,000 southeast Asian refugees emigrated to the United States by the end of 1975.

In the final month before the fall of Saigon, the situation was deteriorating rapidly. Cherie Clark, the Friends of Children of Viet Nam (FCVN) representative in Vietnam, recalls that, "The country was collapsing around us, we had no idea what to expect at all. Provinces were falling like dominos and [Catholic and Buddhist] Sisters were running by boat and road to Saigon with the children they had found [who] were abandoned... [There was] virtually no money in the country. Milk was impossible to find, as was medicine. People were running by the plane loads out of the country. We could only think of survival..."

Humanitarian groups working with orphans in Vietnam were advocating that the American government undertake an emergency evacuation. With South Vietnam's reluctant agreement, President Gerald Ford announced on April 3 that Operation Babylift would fly some of the estimated 70,000 orphans out of Vietnam with $2 million from a special foreign aid children's fund. Thirty flights were planned to evacuate the babies and children.

Vieni familyWith the start of Operation Babylift the number of children from Vietnam adopted in the United States and elsewhere rose dramatically. On April 3rd, a combination of private and military transport planes began to fly more children out of Vietnam as part of the Babylift. Numbers vary but it appears that at least 2,000 children were flow to the United States and
approximately 1,300 children were flown to Canada, Europe and Australia. Service organizations coordinating flights including Holt, Friends of Children of Viet Nam (FCVN), Friends For All Children (FFAC), Catholic Relief Service, International Social Services, International Orphans, and the Pearl S. Buck Foundation. In addition to the 4-7 day series of official flights, smaller flights on chartered or loaned planes continued throughout the month.

Tragedy Strikes

Tragically, one of the first official government flights of Operation Babylift was struck down by disaster. A C-5A Galaxy plane - at that time the largest airplane in the world - departed with more than 300 children and accompanying adults. 40 miles out of Saigon and 23,000 feet up in the air, an explosion blow off the rear doors of the giant craft. The flight controls were
crippled and decompression filled the plane with fog and a whirlwind of debris. Few could get to oxygen masks as the overcrowded transport aircraft had been prepared for 100 children, rather than the 300 passengers who had ultimately been loaded aboard.

In what has been called "a remarkable demonstration of flying skill," the US Air Force pilots were able to turn the plane back toward Saigon. The damaged plane crash landed 2 miles from Tan Son Nhut airport. It skidded about 1000 feet, bouncing up again for about half a mile, and then hit a dike and broke into several pieces upon final impact. Parts of the plane burned nearby, coated with oil from the crash. Rescue helicopters arriving quickly from Saigon were unable to land in the water of the surrounding rice paddies. The crew members, nurses, and volunteers (some of them wounded themselves) waded through the mud carrying the children to the helicopters hovering nearby. They had to shield the wounded with their bodies as winds from the helicopter rotors tossed the aircraft debris and smoke though the air.

Sadly, in what was one of the worst aircraft disasters in history at the time, more than half of the children and adults aboard the craft died. Almost everyone in the bottom cargo compartment was killed - the majority were children who were 2 years of age and younger. Seven FFAC adoption volunteers were killed in the crash, along with service members. Many of the 170 or so survivors were injured. Among those who survived unscathed was a baby (Melody) who was
profiled in the press because of her subsequent adoption by actor Yul Brynner.

Little Time to Mourn : The Flights Continue

Many people in the United States viewed the Galaxy crash as another in a long series of tragic events surrounding the ill-fated war in Vietnam. At Tan Son Nhut airport, there was no time to mourn, for the fall of Saigon was near. A Pan American Airways Boeing 747 chartered by Holt International that day carried 409 children and 60 escorts, apparently the largest planeload of the Babylift. Reports vary, but it appears that 1200 children were evacuated in the 24 hours following the Galaxy crash, including 40 of the surviving children.

LeAnn Thieman accompanies babies to the plane.Getting the children to the airport was quite a feat given the growing panic in the streets. For the air crews, agency personnel and parent volunteers who accompanied the children though, boarding the planes was just the beginning. LeAnn Thieman, who was on one of these planes as a volunteer parent escort for 100 babies, describes the scene after take off in her inspirational book, "This Must be My Brother":
"The commotion of loading and transporting babies had not allowed (us) time to feed them. Now all ninety were awake and crying simultaneously... We discovered we could feed all three babies in a box at the same time by placing them each on their side and propping their bottle on the shoulder of their box-mate. Some sucked the formula down in only minutes, while others needed more help.
I cradled a baby girl on my folded legs and coaxed her to drink while using my left hand to feed another baby in the box. The nipple fell from the mouth of the baby on my lap. Clearly she was too weak to suckle. Using both hands, I milked formula from the nipple to drop into he mouth...."

Upon Arrival...

The children were airlifted to countries where many people preferred to forget the traumas of the Vietnam War. Yet these children received a tremendous welcome. For example, Ian Harvey in a 1983 study of adoptions from Vietnam in Australia, reported that, "Once the news of the impending evacuation of Vietnamese children became known in Australia there was a rush of adoption applications". In New South Wales where 14 children were available for open adoption, an astonishing 4,000 applications were mailed out in response to telephone inquiries and 600 were returned. In the United States, volunteers for adoption groups reported that the phone rang off the hook for days with calls from perspective parents.

Miriam Vieni, a US social worker and adoptive parent, remembers: "That morning (of the crash), many of the mothers from our FCVN adoptive parents support group gathered at my house. I made coffee and they brought cake and cookies, and we had what amounted to a wake. Suddenly the phone began to ring and people were asking about adopting babies. A Newsday reporter had written an article about the Vietnamese babies and for some reason he gave
my phone number and my address as the phone and address of the FCVN agency. Not only did the phone not stop ringing, but people began coming to the door."

"The people who called and came, had this fantasy that there were all these Vietnamese babies just waiting for people to pick them, and they had suddenly gotten this great idea that it would be nice to have one of these cute Asian babies. The fact was that the babies had already been assigned to families and were just waiting for processing. The "Baby Lift" was a way of removing them from a dangerous situation without the usual processing, but they actually went to the families who had been approved and were waiting."

Pat and Dave Palmer, adoptive parents from Iowa, were processing their paperwork at the time. Pat describes the commotion around the placement: "When we applied to adopt a second Vietnamese baby, we had to really hurry the application along due to the uncertain political situation of early 1975. Our homestudy was completed and on its way to [our agency] FCVN in Denver just as the Babylift was getting underway. At that time it was impossible to reach the agency by phone because the agency's lines were jammed with calls from people who suddenly decided they'd like to adopt a Vietnamese orphan due to all the Babylift publicity. I had to send a telegram to notify FCVN that our approved homestudy was in the mail and that we would adopt a boy or a girl. James was offered to us after he arrived in the US on the Babylift. He was about a year old and the dearest little boy. He has added so much to our family."

Controversy

However, the adoption of these children was also accompanied by controversy. There was a rather publicized debate as to whether the children were "better off" in the United States or in the country of their birth. Some of this was true concern, some was perhaps unacknowledged racism, and some was a reflection of emotions related to the war. Criticism and hostility came from both ends of the American political spectrum.

"Charges were made that removing children from their homeland and depriving them of their birth culture was American Cultural Imperialism. Some people insisted that the Vietnamese could have cared for the children had they been left in Vietnam. There were people opposed to transracial adoption. On the other hand, there were discussions on TV as to why people weren't adopting African American waiting children in the U.S.," Miriam Vieni explains.

One of the biggest controversies surrounding the Babylift was the circumstances in which some of the relinquishments occurred. Documentation for many of the children was one of the casualties of the war and its aftermath: concerns were raised over lost or inaccurate paperwork. In several cases, birth parents or other relatives who immigrated to the United States requested custody of children already placed. A widely reported class action lawsuit in California, which contended the children were "taken from South Vietnam against the wills of their parents," resulted in delays in citizenship approval for some families.

In 1976, the Des Moines Register reported that, "A year after they arrived by the planeload from embattled South Vietnam, hundreds of "Operation Babylift" children remain under a murky legal status in this country. And, more important, the Americans who took the young refugees into their homes still are uncertain about whether the children are really theirs to keep and rear."

James & Robert PalmerHowever, despite the turmoil surrounding some adoptions, many others were unimpeded. Pat Palmer recalls that, "Although we didn't receive any papers for James until about six months after he joined our family, we had no doubt that he had been in an orphanage for some time before being placed on the Babylift. James was slightly malnourished, had scabies, was very weak and yet could walk by holding on to furniture, and loved nothing better than to be held. We did not have any problems legally adopting him, nor did we have any difficulties when we applied to have him naturalized along with our older Vietnamese son, Rob."

Not all of the children adopted during this time were babies and toddlers. Many were older, most likely even older than the ages given. Some of these older children had significant issues related to the relinquishment, attachment, and emotional reaction to the overwhelming events of loss and change. Additionally, according to Ian Harvey in Australia, "Most of the 'airlift' children were suffering from some illness, trauma, malnutrition or other deprivation on their arrival..." Some of the babies were ultimately too weak and sick to survive.

The Babylift : Looking Back

Over time, most adoptees appear to have successfully integrated into their families and into their new countries. The 1983 Australian study reported that in New South Wales over 90% of families who adopted Vietnamese children felt that the adoption was "successful" or "very successful" for themselves, the family, and the child. Parents of children over 4 years old reported more behavioral difficulties. The study concludes, however, that while many of
the adopted children were originally described by pediatricians as 'emotionally deprived', by the second or third year after adoption, most "had become stable in health, secure within their families, and exhibited behavior acceptable for a child of that age."

The babies and children who were brought over on Operation Babylift are now in their mid 20's and 30's. From e-mail traffic to Vietnam adoption support groups it appears that many adoptees continue to wonder about their past lives before the airlift.

James Palmer, who was adopted as a baby is now a secondary teacher for the Minneapolis School District. He describes his mixed feelings, "Really the Vietnam War is not a part of my life. And yet, it probably had more impact on my life than almost anything else." Although he is content about his Asian heritage, James wonders about his birthparents, "I really want to know what they looked like, what their personality was. I picked up a lot from
my mom and dad, but some traits are just genetic. Sometimes I get emotional about it."

Cherie Clark, currently the director of the International Mission of Hope in Vietnam, is writing a book which will address some of the questions she receives about the Babylift. She corresponds with a number of adoptees and, in some cases, has provided assistance in tracing documentation, orphanages, towns, even friends or relatives. "I have a huge number of children that I have
placed over the years who are adults that I write back and forth to," Cherie Clark says. "One message I try to convey is that if you made it to the point that you were adopted then someone cared along the way very much about you. The lives of these children are so fragile that if someone doesn't really care then there is simply no way that they could have survived... Each child is different and some simply just need more to survive. But they all need care and love
to make it to some point in their life no matter who they are adopted from or through. Sometimes this is all that I have to give to some of the older children - the sense they were cared for and loved."

The Babylift : Looking Forward

During the time of Operation Baby Lift, more than 2,000 babies and children were flown out by military and private planes to be adopted by families in the United States. It is astonishing that more children were adopted in the United States from Vietnam during this short, dramatic interval than the total for the past 24 years.

In the 15 years following Vietnam's unification, only 44 Vietnamese children were adopted by Americans. However, adopitons did resume over time. the United States reopened diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995: the number of adoptions from Vietnam to the United States doubled that year. Adoptions continued to increase each year, doubling again in 1998, when 603 children were adopted from Vietnam in the United States.

Conclusion

The people involved in the Babylift, almost 25 years ago, responded from their hearts to the babies and young children who were casualties of the finale of the Vietnam War. Many of these people responded in exceptional ways - religious workers who took great risks to bring children to the centers for evacuation; the parents who made a commitment to adopt these children; the birth parents who trusted their children to an uncertain fate; and finally the agencies
and volunteers who worked around the clock on adoption papers. Together they facilitated a new beginning for adoptees and adoptive families - a generation that we are blessed to have with us today.

© Copyright 2000 Allison Martin

The Legacy of Operation Babylift was published in Adoption Today, Volume 2,
Number 4 March 2000. Reprints are available at http://www.adoptinfo.net

Allison Martin, M.P.A., is the President of national support group
Families with Children from Vietnam
and manages the
Adopt Vietnam,
website. She and her husband have three children; their youngest was adopted
from Vietnam in 1997. A great collection of eyewitness articles from
parents,
professionals and adoptees can be found on
Adopt Vietnam's Babylift section.

Holidays observed by US Embassy and Guatemala

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Many times families who are adopting from Guatemala wish to know holidays
that the US Embassy observes and that Guatemala observes......below are upcoming holidays in Guatemala. (The US Embassy closes on all the Guatemalan holidays).

Monday, May 1 - Guatemalan Labor Day
Monday, May 29 - Memorial Day (our holiday)
Friday, June 30 - Army Day (Guatemalan)
Tuesday, July 4 - Independence Day (our holiday)
Tuesday, Aug 15 - Feast of the Assumption (Guatemalan)
Monday, Sept 4 - Labor Day (our holiday)
Friday, Sept. 15 - Independence Day (Guatemalan)
Monday, Oct. 9 - Columbus Day (our holiday)
Friday, Oct, 20 - Revolution Day (Guatemalan)
Wed., Nov. 1 - All Saints Day (Guatemalan)
Fri, Nov. 10 - Veteran's Day (our holiday)
Thurs., Nov. 23 - Thanksgiving Day (our holiday)
Sun, Dec. 24 - Christmas Eve
Mon, Dec. 25 - Christmas Day (both)
Sun., Dec. 31 - New Year's Eve

White Parents - Black Children

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by Miriam Vieni

Reprinted with permission. For more information, contact
Miriam Vieni, New York Home Study Service, 515 Oxford Street, Westbury, NY 11590, (516) 333-4999 or at miriamvieni@optonline.net

Many years ago, I wrote an article which appeared in Social Work, defending transracial adoption as a solution for homeless black children. I was writing in response to an article by a black sociologist who was highly critical of the practice of placing black children with white adoptive parents.

I still believe that a black child, placed with loving white adoptive parents, is better off than he or she would be in an institution or a foster home, even if the foster parents are black. I also believe that the potential success of a foster home must be judged on an individual basis rather than on the basis of race alone.

However, our family has been through several changes since I wrote that article and in addition, I have a good deal more contact with white couples in the N.Y. metropolitan area who have either already adopted black children, or who are contemplating such an adoption. I must admit that I do now have some concerns about the capacity of a large number of these adoptive parents to help their children learn to deal effectively with the problems that will most probably arise as a result of being black in America. There is no doubt in my mind that the white parents of black children whom I have met, very much love their children and will therefore be able to help them develop a basic sense of worth and identity. They will guide their children toward the fulfullment of their individual potentialities.

The problem is that this is not enough. The family must act as the primary agent of socialization, helping its members to absorb the surrounding culture and providing role models so that children can learn to behave in socially constructive ways. Helping a black child to become a complete human being is a very difficult job because our society (1) arbitrarily defines certain individuals as black (2) segregates such individuals into a separate caste and (3) makes unreasonable and often conflicting demands on them. It becomes the function of the parents to make the basic racial insanity of white society explicit to the black child so that he does not internalize destructive values.

One of the issues which seems to cause tremendous difficulty for white adoptive parents is the definition of their children as black. Social agencies, which prefer to place light skinned or "interracial" children with white couples, often add to the problem. White adoptive parents, often, have not begun to think actively about racial issues or determine what their feelings about race are, until the black child is already in their home and the world outside the home has started to send confusing, unpleasant or absolutely negative messages into the home. Because, like other white Americans, adoptive parents perceive the races as separate entities and identify themsleves as being white, they are quick to capitalize on whatever white ancestry their black child may have, and to emphasize the child's "white" characteristics as a link between the child and themselves. I have heard parents say that their black children have been mistaken by others as their biological children or that the child is not "just" black because one of his parents or grandparents was white. They miss the point that most black people in America have white ancestry, that here, there is no such thing as a "pure" black child, that if you look at a large number of black people, you will see many with features or characteristics that can be recognized as Caucasian. But always, to white Americans, it is the bit of BLACK ancestry that defines an indiviual and their actions toward him, and feelings about him will be influenced by their perceptions of him. A majority of white Americans are so concious of race, that dark skin, in and of itself, often causes them to define an individual as "black" whether or not he actually has any African ancestry.

This complicated and confusing reality is what we will have to help our black children understand. They need to know that people's negative responses to them are not caused by something inside them, but by the sickness and fear inside the people who are responding negatively. They also need to learn that it is irrational to first define a person according to his race or skin color and then, only later, to perceive his uniqueness and become aware of his personal characteristics.

Another issue which seems to worry a lot of transracially adopting parents is where they should live. Many opt for an "integrated" neighborhood where, they believe, their interracial family will "fit in" comfortably. Because they identify themselves as white and often have white children as well as black children, they try very hard to find an area with a "good racial balance." Just like most other white Americans, they mean a neighborhood where there are an equal number of black and white families, preferably, more white families than black families to "approximate the natural racial percentages in America." They worry about racial balance in the schools their children attend and are concerned if they believe "the races are polarized." They pride themselves on living in a community "where there are many kinds of people living in harmony." All of it is a beautiful dream, the dream of naive white Americans who have not had to deal with the realities of being black in America.

Black people know the reality for the nightmare it really is. Ther know that if more than a few of them move into an area, white people begin to flee. They know that it is close to impossible to maintain a racial balance in schools because once the percentage of black children rises above 20 or 25 percent, white people take their children out of the schools and the percentage of black children rockets to 90 percent as a result. They know that if white people see a large number of black children in a school, then they are sure that the school must, by definition, be bad; that if there is a large percentage of black people living in a neighborhood it is considered by white people to be undesirable. They know that economic and political forces cause the deterioration of neighborhoods, not their black inhabitants, and that they have to fight every inch of the way to keep their neighborhoods safe and the quality of education in their schools high because white society tends to "dump" its problem population into areas where large numbers of black people live.

Some white parents of black children choose to remain in all white communities. Often the choice is dictated by economic pressures or is made because of family ties or other deep roots in the community. But sometimes, the choice is motivated by fear of living in racially integrated communities or reluctance to take on the problems involved in living in such neighborhoods. We do not yet have the results of research to tell us how the lives of adopted black children are affected by such choices on the part of their parents. We can only guess that black children, growing up isolated from other black people, may feel alienated from them because they have not learned the typical modes of verbal and non-verbal communication, and the implicit system of values and knowledge communicated among black people. While white America will define these individuals as black and the will be expected by both blacks and whites to function comfortably within black groups, they will not have the techniques to help them do so. Adoptive parents, who have been hearing about the importance of "black identity", often try to expose their children to Black History or teach them about "black culture." The children may then KNOW ABOUT black people but they will not KNOW black people unless they have daily contact with them. Many parents, who normally would have no contact with black adults, try to seek out black friends or find black playmates with their chidlren. There is, of course, an artificiality to these contrived situations, but they are honest attempts on the part of adoptive parents to handle the problem of their children's isolation.

I believe that the most positive situation for the adopted black child occurs when the adoption is an outgrowth of the parents' awareness of the reality and implications of race relations and when the adoptive parents have struggled with their own internal attitudes BEFORE the child comes into the home. I certainly would not expect anyone to have completely resolved the problems. Parents of black children function under unbelievable pressure from society and from within themselves. They have to develop a clear and consistent philosophy concerning black/white relations in the U.S., separate from their feelings about their adopted black children. I strongly suspect that part of this new philosophy is relinquishment of the strong identification with whites. It is not that one no longer recognizes that he or she is white but rather, that this racial definition is no longer of prime importance. This is a new way for most white adoptive parents of perceiving people. If they have white children, their attitudes must extend to thtem. There is a corollary to this which may seem contradictory. One must be committed to help in whatever way is possible, in the struggle of black people to attain their rightful place in America. Racism in our society is not only a personal problem--it is institutional. Our own adopted black children will never be completely safe and secure, nor will our adopted or biological white children, until all of the people in our country can look forward to a life of dignity.

Welcome

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Our purpose is to help prospective adoptive parents navigate the myriad paths of the adoption and home study process.