I lived on the red-earthed roads of Uganda for almost seven years. It’s so much different to live in a place than to visit it.
Over time, you get to see the complexities of issues that others only have distorted, rosy snapshots of. Short term missions trips would see smiling faces of children in orphanages who would sing and dance for them.
But over time I would see something different. Gradually, the veneer wore off and the true underbelly of the place began to be exposed. Things were not always as they appeared.
I’m not necessarily completely proud of this fact now that I’ve lived more and done more research, but I used to run a children’s home in Uganda. It was something I’d precariously fallen into after my work with sex-workers, war-affected women, and sex-trafficked women resulted in the reality that little girls were being used in child prostitution and were left unprotected. Our job was to keep them safe.
We spent months conducting research on their families. Some of them had mothers who willingly handed them over to us in an effort to shelter them, others had been abandoned, and were living alone or were in situations of abuse.
Over time, we would come to realize that some of the stories we’d been told had been fabricated. Some girls had parents who just wanted their children in our home so they could get an education. Others, couldn’t feed them and felt they’d be better off with us. Some of the girls were in dangerous situations, yes, but many were just a result of broken family systems and poverty.
I found myself in a mess I never meant to be in, all because I was trying to help. Don’t get me wrong, we did do some great work.
We did the best we could.
Our home was unlike other orphanages. It was a small group of us, and it was a family. We had mama’s and aunties who loved them. Relatives visited with frequency. We often took the girls on trips to the pool and supported their dreams of music and sports. We counseled them, we cried with them, we took them to the hospital, we held them through their trauma, we ran after them when they ran away. They had running water and their own beds with mosquito nets, they had pretty dresses for church, and toys, school fees, and tutoring. And most of all, they were safe.
It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, being responsible for so many, and it was constantly emotionally draining even while being rewarding. Naively I thought they were “better off” with us because they had warm beds and full bellies. (And true, some would have died without our care)
But we were not their mothers.
We also cared for child mothers, ran job creation programs for women in the community, some their mothers, so they could keep their kids. We believed in family preservation, but didn’t put as much effort towards this as we should have.
After many years of going through severe burnout, and doing more research on orphanages, I realized that what we were doing was unsustainable, and maybe even more harmful to the girls. We were also at our wits end physically, emotionally, and financially. Even though we were legally registered and did everything by the book, we were facing severe, mounting pressure from the government to shut down in an overall orphanage closing they were conducting.
We gradually had to reunify girls with safe families, with foster homes, and with other orgs who had more mother/father family models of care. It was an excruciatingly difficult process I still have nightmares about. It was far from perfect, but we hoped the girls would be better off than in an institution, no matter how “homey” we’d tried to make it.
I did a lot of great work in Uganda, I believe. Most of all, I really tried to love well. But I don’t think this was my best work.
But if you’re running an orphanage, this isn’t meant to bring any kind of condemnation, instead this is a loving call to look at our models and reevaluate them. God sees our hearts, He knows our intentions are good.
But what does this have to do with international adoption and adoption ethics or even missions for that matter?
This is a subject with lots of emotions around it, so I want to be sensitive to that fact. We are talking about kids after all. So let’s be kind to one another. There is grace where we’ve made mistakes unwittingly. But now, it’s time to be responsible.
If you missed my Facebook Live video this past week with author of Okayest Mom, Natalie Gwyn (an adoptive mama of 4 children from Ethiopia) go check it out now!
Unfortunately, like most of the Evangelical Christian world, when it comes to adoption, we’ve jumped in with our hearts instead of our heads, without really doing our research. We’ve become “white saviors” without assessing if what we’re doing is the best approach.
The orphan issue is a huge crisis, and it is a sad reality for many children. But equally true is the fact that at least 80% of children living in orphanages have at least 1 living parent.
This means there are other factors leading to parents relinquishing their children. Things like poverty, and a desire for their children to be educated, things like war, and famine, and even corruption.
The darker side of this issue was recently explored by CNN in their article, Kids for Sale, which followed the stories of several children who had loving parents who were “made orphans” because their parents were told they were being taken to give them an education, without understanding they were actually being adopted. The adoptive families in America had no idea until much later that their children had families who wanted them. The orphanage and the adoption agency were the ones were profited from a market that’s been created by well-meaning adoptive communities.
“We also found a link between international adoption and the proliferation of orphanages that are so often visited as part of mission trips. It was clear from websites and blogs that many mission trips to Uganda were started or funded by people connected to international adoption. For many people, a mission trip is the first chapter in their adoption story, and vice versa. Both feed the demand for children to be in orphanages to be adopted and/or visited.” -Mark Riley
Our emotional response without doing our homework or having accountability, has proliferated corruption and alienated families. This is horrifying, tragic, and sadly happening more and more.
And missions has contributed to this.
It’s becoming more and more common for missionaries to adopt from the countries they visit or live in. Sometimes that is very necessary. Sometimes it shouldn’t be the first choice. Many missionaries open or start orphanages without much expertise or evaluation. But the other choices are much more difficult. Tracing families, providing parenting education and jobs, takes much more work than bringing a child into your home, especially one you’ve set your heart on.
In fact, what’s currently happening at the border with immigrant children being separated from their parents is a great reminder why the U.S. doesn’t have orphanages anymore (NBC News)
“This is one of the most significant traumas that a child can experience,” said Nim Tottenham, who studies child brain development at Columbia University.“ Once a country has the means, they abandon institutional care because it is known that this is not a great way for children to grow up. The long-term effects include anxiety and depression, impulse control and attention deficit disorder.” (NBC News)
But unfortunately the government of Uganda does not have a foster care system set up, nor is it necessarily cultural to care for a stranger’s child you are unrelated to. Thus, orphanages are rampant and the adoption machine continues to be fueled.
What if all the money we spent funneling into orphanages we spent pouring into communities to help them sustain their livelihoods, have dignity, and be able to care for their children the way they want to?
I don’t have all the answers, but I think we need to begin asking the questions.
Don’t get me wrong, there are real, total orphans, and there are situations of abuse, abandonment, disabilities, and medical issues that require adoption, but this should be our last and final resort.
Family preservation should be our first priority. (But that’s not as sexy to raise funds for)
I love the adoptive community, I have MANY friends who’ve adopted and I believe the Christian heart to love and father and mother children is really beautiful. I commend you for making that hard choice and the redemption it’s led to. But we do need to do our homework, we need to be wise, and we need to be extremely careful we are not doing more harm with our good intentions. I’ll tackle that in Part II.
Where have you seen adoption ethics fail? And do you have any resources to share on family preservation vs. orphanages?
Resources:
Tara Winkler TED Talk- Why We Need to End the Era of Orphanages
How (Not) to Start an Orphanage
Reunite Uganda
Abide Family Uganda
Child’s (i) Foundation
Lifesong for Orphans
Bring Love In- Ethiopia
Heartline Haiti
Out of Here Video
**Check out my FB live today at 11amPDT on my Author Page with Seth Barnes talking about Short Term Missions. I’ll be doing another FB Live on Orphan Care soon.
