In Part I I talked about some of the issues surrounding ethical adoption, now I’d like to talk about how we can do it better. Please know, my heart is NEVER to bring condemnation, because we all need grace and I am a huge proponent of self-compassion, but as we enter this adoption landscape I want us to have all the tools to do it well. Many of us who are missionaries/global workers are adopting children from our host countries and it’s important we understand all the dynamics. I am not an expert, but I am a learner. Please be sure to add your other resources in the comments. In this article we are focusing mainly on international adoption. If you are a prospective adoptive parent, thank you for your commitment to this process, and to loving well.
Adoption arises out of brokenness.
Broken family systems, poverty, death, these are the origins of most adoptions. Adoption isn’t the first choice for families in crisis or for children. There is a tearing involved, there is trauma involved and for some this trauma will never be fully erased.
“Adoption can be beautiful. But adoption can also be messy. Adoption is full of pain–and full of healing. Adoption is necessary because of the world’s brokenness. What loss had our children endured to bring them to us? They were being grafted into a new family tree because of the loss of their first family. My children will never quite heal. They will never stop hurting. Their first parents are lost to them. This loss can never be erased. But it can be remembered, redeemed, and entwined with the beauty of what God is growing.” -Natalie Gwyn, Okayest Mom–
Adoption can be beautifully redemptive, but there is a long road to doing it well. If you’ve chosen to embark on this road, you’ve chosen a more painful path because you want to make space for more love, and you want to make the world better for a child and this should be applauded.
“An ethical adoption is about the people who benefit from adoption not getting involved in deciding who will be adopted.” -Claudia Chapman
Family Preservation
I think one of the major issues we want to keep in front of us, is that wherever possible, we should strive for family preservation. What this means is, there are situations of poverty and hardship that often lead mothers and fathers to give their children up for adoption or do not allow them to care for them the way they want. As we discussed earlier, there are also situations where families are taken advantage of and lose their children to corrupt systems. We want to be sure rather that these families are helped with sustainable income generation, or even school fees for their children, rather than having to choose the option of relinquishing them. We need to choose orphan care that keeps families together wherever possible. This might mean we put our money in a different place.
Doing our Homework
It is essential in the process of adoption that we do our homework. We cannot simply rely on the fact that we are being told the truth in every situation. Natalie Gwyn, who I did a FB live with, went so far as to hire her own investigator which I think is a brilliant idea. This can be an essential part of ensuring you are adopting ethically. You may want to hire a translator to speak with birth parents (if alive) you will want to check orphanage records to ensure they haven’t been doctored or falsified and that all living relatives have been listed, researched, and spoken to and that the information you’ve been given is accurate.The prospective adoptive parents must not emotionally blackmail a mother into relinquishing her child with promises of ‘a better life’. Adoption agencies (or their representatives) must not offer money or other incentives to encourage relinquishments. We’re also including ‘strings-attached’ maternal care, outreach / sponsorship programs that are only available to families with relinquished children, religious pressure and and all other slightly more subtle ways of making people think that relinquishing their children would be the right thing to do. When possible, you want to speak to your children about their life and make sure their story matches what you’ve been given.
Not letting our emotions run away with us
If you’ve been longing for a child for some time, it’s understandable how easy it would be to overlook certain issues in your desire to have the child you’ve been waiting for. You’ve worked so hard and prayed and sacrificed so much to get to this point. You may even be desperate. And when we are desperate we can often make excuses or compromise or overlook when we are on the precipice of having a dream fulfilled.We get attached to children and sometimes that overrides our ability to do what is actually best for them or to recognize that we might not be that “best.” And yet at the end of the day, you want to ensure this adoption is actually in the best interests of your prospective child. Not that someone has said it is, or you assume it is, but that it actually is. Sometimes we have this notion that children would be “better off” in America because of all we have.
Working with Reputable Agencies
Choosing a good agency that has an excellent track record is one of your first steps in ensuring your adoption will be ethical. Check around with friends and ask for recommendations, ask to speak with other adoptive parents, ask your hard questions, research the laws in the country you want to adopt from. A good agency should be able to answer them. Jen Hatmaker has written an incredible series on adoption ethics and I’ve listed some of her ideas below because they are worth repeating:
Here are some red flags when it comes to choosing your agency partner:
- When you ask questions, do you feel shut down, disrespected, bullied, or discouraged? If you are discouraged from talking to other families, researching, asking difficult questions, or investigating, RUN!
- Does correspondence lean too heavily on emotional propaganda and “rescue” rhetoric, as opposed to professionalism and an obvious commitment to best practices?
- An agency that offers something different than other agencies
- An agency that only does infant adoptions or promises lots of babies
- An agency that offers the same thing for much less money or in less time
- An agency that claims to have special connections or processes in country
- If you hear the word “expedited,” run for the hills. That is not a thing. That is corruption!
Here are some great red flags for agencies in terms of in-country partners (other red flags of agencies here)
- Seeing the same situation in lots of kids’ paperwork (e.g. all the kids are abandoned or all the kids have parents’ deceased; or the same police officer signed off on the abandonment recognition, or the same hospital worker or social worker, etc. is involved in all the cases.)
- An orphanage partner who wants money off the books
- An orphanage partner who can provide much more than anyone else
- In-country staff or partners who prevent international staff from accessing or communicating with any relevant parties
- Not experiencing the same challenges as other agencies (unless the reasons are obvious)
Together, we can go through this process with beauty, redemption, and integrity.
How have you walked through the process of an ethical adoption? Do you have any resources to share?
Resources:
