The Child Catchers, Review and Interview with the award winning author, Kathryn Joyce by Mark Riley

The release of Kathryn Joyce’s excellent book couldn’t be better timed.   Using James 1:27, “Visit Widows and Orphans”, as a spiritual mandate the US adoption movement seems to have a one-way ticket to ‘orphan saviour heaven’ but routinely ignore the real issues and unethical, even criminal, practices of the orphan care movement. Kathryn, through excellent investigative journalism and eyewitness accounts, has managed to capture perfectly what is really going on and exposes where the whole ‘orphan care’ movement is going wrong.

Countries like Uganda, with developing child protection systems, are purposely being targeted by unethical agencies and adoption ‘middlemen’ in order to ensure there is a ready supply of children to meet the demand being generated from Pulpits across the US.  I see it everyday. US adoption agencies are establishing and funding orphanages in order to control the demand. This is completely contrary to the Children’s Act of Uganda and is making domestic welfare reforms for children without parental care eminently more difficult than they need to be.

The great irony is that adoption agencies promote orphanages as 'bad places' for children (which we agree they are) and yet they have a co-dependency relationship with orphanages which results in more children ending up in orphanages. In Uganda we have many orphanages funded and being established by adoption agencies which are now recruiting children - many of whom won't be adopted thus leaving, between them, 1000's of children in institutional care. Adoption agencies *need* orphanages in order to peddle their own message and promotion of International Adoption. Interestingly when International Adoption programmes close the number of orphanages being established decreases. Kathryn manages to communicate these paradoxes eloquently with sound research and facts.

 

I know that some in the ‘pro-adoption’ movement will dismiss some of the stories in ‘catchers’ as extreme and not representative of the ‘greater good’ of international adoption, but I challenge them, come to Uganda and see what we see everyday, come and speak with the growing number of birth families who realising the ‘actual’ consequences of international adoption, come and see the level of corruption in the economy being created around international adoption, come and see the growing number of institutionalised children as a result of international adoption and agency funded orphanages, come and see the shady ‘middlemen’ who a find children for well-intentioned US citizens. Come and see.

If James 1:27 is the mandate for the ‘orphan care’ movement then let me, just for a moment, climb into a pulpit and preach the rest of the verse “and to keep one self from being polluted by the world”. It seems that much of the orphan care movement is rooted in deception, lies, egos and criminality. People are misinterpreting the scriptures and doing far more damage than good.

For those of us on the ground this book offers us hope that the Evangelical Movement can mature rapidly and start taking concerns and issues with international adoption seriously and instigate the necessary reforms.

Its so important not to dismiss this book as many will try to do, claiming Kathryn is being negative, has an anti Christian or anti adoption agenda.  We live in the middle of an intercountry explosion in one of the fastest growing programmes in the world.  We know that unfortunately, the way that international works is "difficult country,  same problems".  Kathryn could be talking about Uganda in the many stories she shares and we hope that people will be open minded enough to read this important book and keep reminding themselves that this book is fact not fiction.

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Interview

On the eve of her highly anticipated book release we caught up with Kathryn Joyce the author of "The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption" in New York to ask her a few questions about her book.  We wanted to thank Kathryn for taking the time out of her busy schedule to answer our questions.

Could you tell us a little about yourself?

I’m a U.S. journalist living in New York City. I write a lot about religion, reproductive issues and women’s rights. My first book was Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, published in 2009, about a community of U.S. Christians that believes in having as many children as God gives them and adheres to rigid gender roles. My second book, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption, has just been published by PublicAffairs press.

Why did you decide to write this book?

I came to write about adoption for two reasons. The seed for this book came from my reporting for the first. In 2007, as I was reporting on Quiverfull families that already had numerous biological children—six, eight, 10 or more—I began noticing that many were beginning to adopt as well, and adopting multiple children at a rapid pace. I, like many people, associated adoption most with couples or individuals facing infertility, so I was surprised to see families that were evidently abundantly fertile turning to adoption as well. Though I didn’t know it at the time, my curiosity was leading me to a number of people involved in the Christian adoption movement that was just starting to get organized.

I was also motivated early on by my uneasiness with the way adoption and abortion politics were being linked, and how adoption was promoted as a quick solution to that very divisive debate in the U.S. Looking more into the ways that some anti-abortion groups in the U.S. promote adoption introduced me to a huge number of American “birthmothers” or first mothers or families of origin who felt they had been coerced to relinquish children for adoption, whether they were victims of forced adoption during the “Baby Scoop Era” in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, or women who face subtler forms of coercion today.

How long did it take you to write it and was it difficult to get people to share their experiences.

I started working on the first story that would lead to this book in 2008, investigating the experiences of U.S. women who relinquished for adoption. In 2009, as I was reporting, I found that there were more women eager to share their stories than I was able to speak to. When I found myself crying as I listened to these mothers explain what had been for them the defining loss in their lives—something many were still in mourning for decades later—I realized that the project was growing much larger than one article.

Originally, I thought the book would mostly concern domestic adoption issues, but as I dug in, it became evident that it was imperative to understand the international adoption realm. And when I began looking at that, I fell down the rabbit hole.

Getting to talk to people for this project was a mixed experience, as it is for most reporting projects. Some people—especially people who feel victimized by abusive adoption practices, and who feel that their stories have been repressed or silenced—were very eager to talk. Others were more reluctant, and of course some refused. Within the Christian adoption movement, there was some of both: movement leaders who ignored interview requests, and leaders who devoted a generous amount of time to talking with me, engaging in thorny debates and even soliciting my feedback.

What do you think the reaction of the evangelical movement will be to your book?

It’s hard to say what it will be in the long-term. I’ve had some encouraging feedback already from Christians deeply involved adoption reform or in children’s welfare and family preservation work in many different countries. Among the latter group, I’ve heard from some early readers who have come to recognize first-hand that the good intentions of the Christian adoption movement are leading to some serious systematic problems: children being wrongfully institutionalized so they can enter the adoption pipeline, Western money creating incentives for corruption, mothers and families being reduced to the source of a product in an industry driven by supply and demand.

In the past week, before the book was published, there were also a couple quite negative responses to the book by evangelicals who had not read it, including adoption agency affiliates. In essence, their response was one of dismissal: that sure there are some bad stories, but they’re rare, so it’s more important and fairer to focus on the positive. What strikes me in these responses is that, in the rush to defend agencies and the adoption movement as a cause, the experiences of yet another group of people badly harmed by abusive adoption practices go ignored. Unfortunately, that response is very familiar. Time and again, no matter how many stories of wrongful adoption practices pile up, some adoption advocates will dismiss them as the mistakes of a few bad apples that people shouldn’t dwell on. In my opinion, that dismissal is exactly how systematic abuses in the adoption system get ignored, year after year.

Your book outlines some heartbreaking situations but what one story were you particularly struck by?

There are a lot of heart-breaking stories, and while I was reporting and writing, I think whichever one I was working on at the time seemed most poignant to me. I come back time and again to the experiences of the U.S. mothers who relinquished for adoption, perhaps because it was their pain and the courage of their advocacy that opened the door to the entire project for me. 

Most people you interviewed or engaged with in the book seemed genuinely lovely, regardless of their viewpoint, but did you receive much negativity (or worse) during the research? 

Not a lot. I heard the argument I talked about above recited many times, and I think in many quarters there is a lot of defensiveness around any criticism of adoption, since it centers on such a primal and powerful set of relationships—the love among parents, children and families. But I did not encounter the intimidation, threats and worse that some adoption reform advocates have.

Adoption Agencies, quite rightly, get a rough ride in your book, but hey, offer us some hope here.. did you find an agency that was particularly helpful or progressive?

I did. In a few cases, I was heartened by the frank discussions I had with some adoption agency directors about the problems they’ve seen and the steps they’ve taken to address them. A few agencies that have really dedicated themselves to a progressive standard of informed consent helped me understand a basic and helpful frame for all adoption issues: that the problems begin when the birthmother (or, by extension, larger family) is made invisible.

One thing that bothers me is that when countries have an international adoption programme the number of children in institutional care goes up and yet adoption agencies use anti-institutionalistion of children as a reason to internationally adopt…..  SO the very thing they are against they also need (and have very unhealthy relationships with) to supply children! De-institutioanlisation and community based programmes will result in less children available for IA… so do you think agencies ‘really’ care about the damage of institutional care when they are essentially ‘in bed’ with orphanages? Have you come across this and what are your views?

Yes! I think that paradox is such an important part of the discussion. As a UNICEF staffer in Ethiopia explained to me, there’s a common pattern that whenever orphanages are established in a region, they will be filled. But when inter-country adoption is not a part of the equation, many of those same orphanages would close. The inter-dependency of the institutions is concerning, and has been something that U.S. government reviews have looked at a little, but should investigate more. I’m sure most agencies deplore the damage that institutions can do to children’s development, but until the framework shifts to actually prioritize family preservation and sustainable development, it seems like the problem will continue. That’s why I’m so glad to know of the work that Reunite is doing on the grassroots level to address this issue, as well as the larger deinstitutionalization programs happening in different countries.

Like me you seem to have a huge respect and fondness for ‘adoptees’, especially Koreans, am I right in saying that what the Koreans have done in terms of their advocacy for change etc offers us hope for other adoptees from other countries to make similar progress? 

I think there are a lot of incredible people doing really important reform work from all positions and perspectives on adoption, and that absolutely includes adoptees. One of the interesting things that is happening these days—and for at least the past decade—is the growing involvement of adult adoptees in the discussion. Too often, adoptees’ perspectives have been omitted, or adoptees are spoken for and are treated as perennial children—a sort of generic “orphan” who is still being advocated for by adoptive parents, and can’t speak for themselves. Korean adoptees are the oldest generations of inter-country adoptees to the U.S., since inter-country adoptions began there in significant numbers in the 1950s. So it follows that, now that some of those adoptees are in their 30s and 40s or older, many are leading the fight for various reforms in the U.S. and in South Korea. Here in the U.S., adult adoptees are networking their peers from diverse backgrounds around issues like adoptee citizenship rights and ethical reforms. And in South Korea, adoptee reformers have formed an historic coalition with groups of birth mothers as well as Korean single mothers who are taking the radical step of raising their own children despite overwhelming societal condemnation. Together, these groups have the potential to change the culture that pressures many women in this wealthy nation into relinquishing for adoption in the first place. It’s remarkable. 

Finally, what are hoping to achieve with the book?

I see this book as an important corrective to the dominant narrative about adoption, especially in the U.S.: that it is an unqualified good that justifies using whatever means are necessary. There are many times that adoption is a good and beautiful thing, but that is the story that we hear most of the time already. Adoption can also be a tragic thing and a deeply unjust thing. Those problems are broader than the current Christian adoption movement, but the movement’s relentless focus on adoption as rescue and the purest form of charity is pouring new energy into flawed old ideas, and creating new collateral damage every day. If people come away from reading with a broader understanding of how adoption connects to myriad other social issues—women’s rights, poor people’s rights, race and ethnicity, religion, different cultural understandings—and how those can’t be separated from the child intended to be saved, I’ll feel that the book has succeeded.

You can order the book from all good bookshops including Amazon here.

Guest Post: Internationally adopted adult voices series: "Retrieving what is lost 40 years late"

We are honoured to host another guest post by an internationally adopted adult from Korea.  We just wanted to thank Lauri Lee In-Jung Shore for writing this very moving and eloquent post in our on going internationally adopted adult voices series.  
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I went to my father's burial mound and performed a ritual with my brother, it made me feel his life and passing was intangible to me, but real all the same. When I went to the resting place of my mother's urn, I just felt heartbreaking loss, like nothing would ever be right.

The last time I saw either of them I was an infant, less than a year old, I was pre-verbal, and yet when I finally found family and learned they were both dead, I could not have been in deeper grief, I felt the biggest cheat of my life had been that I’d never meet the people whom I owed my whole DNA sequence, the thing that makes me essentially me. My parents are dead, and I never got to know them, never got to form memories of the kind that are supposed to last the years after their passing. It’s just a huge void.

The slap in the face was when I naïvely shared the tragedy of my parent’s passing on facebook and received the comment that expressed how pleased the reader was that I was hearing of my parent’s death, and was I on the phone right now being told about it? And basically how wonderful this was. I slotted that away as something to remember if I ever heard of the death of one of her parents, to tell her how pleased I was she got to hear about it, and that must have been wonderful to get that phone call. Yes, I really am that vindictive when it comes to an insult that deep. 

This just illustrates the attitudes many adoptees face when we talk about our families. Our original families are “othered” and distanced as secondary in our lives, not given the primacy they deserve. They are first parents, original parents, natural parents, just parents, and by all those definitions they are primary to our existence. We were connected in the most intimate way two people could ever be connected, despite our individualism we are coded by shared DNA, and when we were part and parcel with our mother in her womb we were part of her. We spent 9 months growing from her and as such bonded to her without a process of meeting, which every other encounter in life requires. 

This is an early photo of me and my Omma (mother).

I have her hairline, forehead and temples.

I have watched the most fascinating TED Talks video regarding the research on what babies learn in utero. They hear things in the womb, and when they are born know the cadence of the language of the people they are going to be born into, French newborns cry on a rising note, and German newborns cry on a falling note. They know the taste of the foods of the culture they will be born into from what their mother ate. An experiment that feed a test group of expectant mothers anise flavoured drink and a control group none, then tested the newborns for their reactions to the taste, the ones whose mothers weren’t feed the anise made a reaction that roughly corresponded with “Yuck!” as opposed to the infants whose mothers drank the anise drink. Another experiment showed that newborns know their mother’s voices, and another that they know her smell (not mentioned in this link). 

When a child is born, her/his mother is the secure anchor from which she/he can meet others, perhaps bond with them, perhaps not. She is also the anchor between life in the womb and the culture that they are born into.

But for some reason there is a belief that this child is blank slate, a thing that can be transplanted from her/his mother and given a substitute and be fooled into accepting this, thrown into another culture of other tastes and sounds and smells and expected to just accept.

It’s truly a testament to human resilience that so many can make that adjustment without manifesting too much trauma, but I doubt we should ever pathologise the child who won’t be fooled, who won’t accept the substitute, who finds the situation alienating. And yet we have terms like reactive attachment disorder.

We have adoptive parents who assert their primacy in the child’s life, and a society that goes along with this charade of primacy and relatedness. And as adoptees we are groomed to feel that we must go along with this charade to be “well adjusted”. 

And as a result adoptees (especially intercountry transracial adoptees) have found to have high rates of mental illness, high rates of addiction (a self soothing behaviour), and high rates of suicide.

I can accept that there are cases where children need to be raised by people other than their parents, and sometimes other than their extended family, but I cannot accept systems that don’t place this first as the preferred option and being entirely in the child’s best interest. I also cannot accept that given the jump in suboptimal outcomes between domestic and intercountry adoptees that taking children from their nascent culture and country is a remotely good idea. And yet intercountry adoption is sold to the gullible West as a beautiful thing. I cannot see it as true rescue if so many of us want to kill ourselves that our suicide rates are up there with the colonized indigenous people of North America and Oceania (see outcomes at bottom of page). And this is perhaps what we are, colonized and culturally genocided. For many of us to be adoptable, our identities were erased. The identities we were given did not fit us, our white names don’t fit our brown skins, our white families (in most cases) do not fit us, this ethnic culture we are moulded by does not fit our visual appearance. In my case I saw myself as generic Asian (and there is no such a thing!) because I had no clue what it was to be Korean. 

And yet as an adult reintroduced to my nascent culture, I just can’t get enough of the taste of Korean food. Something remembered. When I first returned to Korea, it was my first experience in a flood of Korean faces. I fit! I didn’t stand out, unless someone spoke to me, unless I needed to read a street sign, find  directions, and then I’m a clueless foreigner who looks like an idiot Korean. I don’t fit, anymore.

This is what it’s like being a “bridge between cultures” and getting the best of both worlds, as I’ve been told I am. 

As an infant, during a time where I fit in my family, in my culture, in my country, I was not an orphan, yes I did lose my mother during this time, but I still had my father. My well educated middle-class father had fallen on hard times as many Koreans had in this period, my family couldn’t afford the medical care that might have saved my mother from death to TB. My father had no intent in “giving me up”, but because my mother’s mother was angry at my father for my mother’s death, she used spite instead of the love she held for her daughter to refuse to let my aunts continue to care for me. A matriarchal rage triggered by grief only a mother could know, the death of her eldest. My father was forced to find a temporary care solution for me. Emphasis on the word temporary. 

My father visited me to make sure I was well cared for, bearing supplies for the orphanage. He was pleased to find I had a wet-nurse. The second visit he was denied access to me. The third time he came to retrieve me. I was gone. No justice. 

I still remember the faces of the elderly villagers who came out to see me when I returned to the village where I was born. Disbelief. They came to see the little girl who had vanished 40 years ago. They remembered.  

(The photo above is where my Aboji (father) and Oppa (brother) lived with my Aboji's second wife. I should have lived here too).

The father who was intangible in death buried high upon a hill, was very tangible to my older brother, he lived with his father’s double grief of lost wife and daughter, he lived with his own grief, he lived with my father’s drinking, something he was not known for prior to these events. I lived with my identity dysfunction, and my rage at the injustice of growing up in what I considered a crazy family, or more specifically, they weren’t my crazy family. I grew up with the mistruth that searching and finding my family was impossible.

Ironically for the first decade of my adoption I was probably the model adoptee, I was very bright and amenable, and thoroughly Stockholm syndromed into my adoptive family, until the logic of my unfitting undid me. If I wasn’t as clever, I may never have noticed, but who is really that dumb? That would take a Titanic of denial – and even those that have that kind of denial in themselves, this can crash and sink in later life, even as the orchestra plays on... 

It is a long struggle coming to terms with unfitting and the attempt at refitting an authentic to self identity. A struggle to try to become just a little Korean again – a struggle to get past the embarrassed state of looking Korean and being ignorant of culture, customs and cuisine in venturing into a Korean restaurant (many of us grew up in a cultural vacuum with disinterested adoptive parents) and explaining “I don’t speak Korean”, a struggle to say one’s first Korean words to a Korean (they still don’t want to part my mouth), these are the little things in life but they feel huge. I am defeatist, because I believe if I put the effort in to do this well, I will at most achieve a state of fake-Korean. 

I changed names to reclaim something that was lost, and then had subsequent panic that having no credible information I might have an orphanage invented name. To my relief I later find out my name fits in perfect pattern with my original family, my brother and my cousins in my generation on my father’s side, we all share the beginning of our name “In-” and my name is a perfect rhyme for my brother’s (my brother, whose face is a sweeter rounder wide-eyed and yet masculine version of my own).  Here is some small piece of me that I can fit in consonance and rhyme, but like the missing piece of the puzzle that has been battered and torn and repaired badly that won’t just click into place, my name has a Western start and end, appendages that won’t fit.

(The photo above is me with my Oppa (brother) and my Omma's (mothers) urn. The photo in the background is of my Aboji, Omma, Oppa as a boy, and my Omma's younger brother in the background. I am either in utero or not yet conceived).

I know, no matter how I dress myself in acts of Koreanness, that the suit that will never fit is becoming Korean of the mind, the true essence of culture, not hanbok, not kimchi, not arirang, but the mentality ingrained in how to approach life, and this is in discord with how I was raised in an entirely different cultural incubator.  I survived by a different set of social rules. 

If I am a bridge between cultures, it’s as much of a mess of motivations and functionality disaster as the Bridge On The River Kwai. 

I am an example of what is wrong with intercountry adoption. I had a loving family who assumed that they would be raising me, my adoption is fraudulent based on an orphanage abduction, my agency is the gatekeeper of my records whom I had to bypass to achieve reunion, my adoptive parents were naïve and inadequate, I am in discord with my adoptive culture and with my nascent culture, I no longer fit in either family, I make too much noise in forums with P/APs about all of this and hear all the patronizing pity (“I’ll pray for you”), some pause to listen, but some only until they find a reaffirmation of their choice, others I just hear hate coming from these homestudy-passed P/APs when pity doesn’t deter me from speaking about my adoption fraud, about coercion, supply and demand profiteering, adoption dissolutions, loss, grief, poor adoption outcomes (many adoptees find their APs such, it works both ways). And yet adoption is beautiful. A loving family with room in its heart is all it takes. 

Yes there are adoption outcomes where the adoptive parents are suitable and the children are raised with respect for original family and who are culturally exposed and who dodge being part of the negative statistics. But is the success of an adoption to be gauged on these things alone? What of the bigger picture? What of families who are told their child is just going for an overseas education and will return and have no knowledge that adoption is permanent? What of the mothers who are coerced or leveraged to relinquish, or the children who are simply stolen? What of baby farming? What of the market in children that drives all these injustices? 

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Desmond Tutu

When I hear younger adoptees speak in pain about their adoptions, some of them specifically fraudulent, some just part of the wider picture of social injustice, I know I can’t be silent, I can’t just choose emotional self-preservation, I need to say something about how wrong it is to keep repeating this generation after generation and calling it beautiful. That you don’t necessarily save a child when you adopt them, you certainly don’t save their family (as a buyer you may in fact be a perpetrator of their heartbreak and life long loss), you don’t save the country from where they were born and it doesn’t stop cycles of poverty in poor countries.  Saving children is about saving families, saving families is about enabling families to be independent and giving them skills as parents and providers, saving countries is about enabling its citizens so each successive generation can thrive. Taking their children does none of this.

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Lee In-Jung was born in South Korea in 1970. Her Aboji (father) was from North Korea and as a youth his family hastily relocated in the South during the Korean war, he lost his father who went to retrieve family assets when the border swung north and then closed south again. In-Jung’s Aboji was a student of Korean literature and a gifted calligrapher, he served as a sergeant in the Army since the American Forces promised him further education in the US, this was never forthcoming. He spent his later career in various middle management positions until hard times hit, he ended his days in a coal-mining town. In-Jung’s Omma (Mummy) was the eldest child of tenant farmers in a village in South Korea, where other family members are now landowners and successfully farm.  She had a difficult time conceiving In-Jung’s Oppa (older brother by 5 years) and In-Jung. She is fondly remembered for her cleverness with words and domestic skills. In-Jung’s aunt has told her she was her Omma’s favourite.

Lauri was adopted to the US in 1971 to a middle-class family. Mirroring her original family, her adoptive father lost his job and was forced to relocate. She grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand as result. Lauri’s Mum (adoptive mother) had difficulty adjusting to another culture. Lauri’s parents had a biological son a year older than her. He did not deal with having a “sister” who was “different” and particularly bright, he became a racist and bully to her during childhood. The family did not deal with this situation well. Although his wellbeing was favoured over Lauri’s, he committed suicide in his late teens. Lauri left home on this day. 

One of the casualties of Lauri Lee’s teen and adult turmoil was her formal education. She has some training in photography and building and construction, largely underutilized. She is married to a caring supportive husband who works as a geologist in the coal-mining industry. The shock of the Christchurch 2010 earthquake prompted urgent search for her original family, she found her family via YTN TV. They had searched since her disappearance. Lauri and her husband unfortunately don’t have children; life didn’t work out that way for them. They enjoy the outdoors, rock collecting, and kayaking together. Lauri also likes films, reading, writing, and calligraphy. 

Give a man a fish

It is a known fact that a lot of children end up in institutional care here in Uganda because of the extreme poverty of their families. Their families only think about the education and food their child/ren will receive, most don't realise their children are vulnerable to being chosen for international adoption and the damage that institutional care will do to their children.

 "Reunite" don't hand out money to the families on our project, that is fraught with problems (I learnt that early on!) and we don't want to create an unhealthy dependency on us. We think economic empowerment, where you give small loans or grants with regular support and advice from a business adviser is a good way to proceed.

Here is a photo of the amazing guy who now works for Reunite one day a week helping our families to ultimately help themselves.

The old Chinese proverb is very true   "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life". We think it's important that the families on our programme are given the opportunity to work their way out of poverty so that they can look after their children. 

We do find that once families get their children back, they are usually very motivated to earn enough money to care for them and are very grateful for the opportunity to start a business for themselves.

It was great to go along recently on a visit and witness how our economic empowerment officer works. Here he is teaching a mother on our programme how to do keep accounts.  This lady is setting up a second hand clothes business and with the small grant we have given her she has bought some clothes in Owino market to kickstart her business.  Reunite will have regular phone calls and visits with her while she establishes herself and learns about how to run a business efficiently. 

On Monday we will introduce him to two other families on our programme that he will start to work with.  Exciting times:)

When your adopted child grows up

Recently I was walking behind a Western mum as she walked with her arm wrapped tightly around her 9 year old adopted son.  I thought about how different the scene would probably be interpreted in 5 or 6 years time. Now, people probably assume that he is her adopted son, but when he is a teenager and then an adult, what will people think when they are seen out together alone?

Being a mother of a Ugandan child is a very different experience in Wales than it here in Uganda.  Here if you are with a black child, some might think he is a house boy, a sponsor boy, a boy out on a day trip from an orphanage, they don't always  automatically assume that he is your adopted son like they used to with us in Wales.  Irrespective of country, when your adopted child grows into a teenager and then an adult there is a huge difference in how people will judge your relationship.

When we lived in Wales and our son was younger, everyone assumed he was adopted (which is one of the reasons why transracial adoption and being so visibly adopted is so tough on the child).  Now that Caleb is a teenager, I know some people here have looked at us as if we are "together", wondering if I am some kind of cougar and that is really tough to handle for both of us.

My friend Mila who was adopted from Korea as a baby sums this up brilliantly in her new blog post.

"When I was a little girl, it was obvious that I was adopted, because I was most often seen and understood within the context of my White American family--whether out at a restaurant or in elementary school. People interacted with me with the understanding that I was the White couple's little Asian daughter.

But once I began to get out into the world, further away from the shelter of my White parents and eventually became an adult, there was no longer the context of my White family everywhere I went.
And even now, when seen with my parents or my brothers, as an adult, it is no longer obvious that I am adopted. I am mistaken as a girlfriend or wife when with my brothers or as a daughter-in-law when with my parents--or even completely ignored as unconnected to my parents, seen as a stranger that just happens to be standing unusually close at the checkout line or at the department store"

                                                                                                       you can read the entire article here.

The "Relatives Book"

We hadn't been living in Uganda long and I had been visiting this particular "orphanage" for a few months. I can't even remember how I discovered the "Relatives Book" that was  hidden under the counter in the reception area, but I can remember when I discovered it like it was yesterday! 

The Ugandans who were there were surprised at my shock at this discovery. Maybe they didn't know that most Westerners believe that "orphanages" are full of "orphans". 

Whatever it is, the truth is, 80% of the children in "orphanges" in Uganda have FAMILY.  Let's get them home!

Guest Blog Post: Internationally adopted adult series: "A non-transracial adoptee"

""You are an international adoptee, but you are not adopted transracially?” This is a common question I am often faced with and indeed it is true.

I am an Indian adoptee who was adopted into an Indian adoptive family…say what? Yes, an Indian adoptee adopted within the same race. Many times when I approach the adoption community, most adoptees do not believe that I am adopted. I am often questioned and sometimes I am told to “prove” that I am adopted once they find out that I am not transracially adopted.  I never imagined I would have to “prove” being adopted to anyone.  I was a fact of my life that I always knew about myself for as long as I can remember.

Oftentimes, within the adoption community, I am pushed to the side because I am told that as a non-transracial adoptee, I cannot relate because I was raised within the same race. Of course each adoptee’s struggle is different and one of my struggles is to feel accepted within the adoption community and to gain some acknowledgment and validation for my adoptee experience.

One aspect I can relate to among many transracial adoptees is the desire to want to learn about my country of birth and wanting to learn as much as I can about my life prior to adoption. I have always had a desire to learn about my roots, my adoption narrative, and to have a deep desire to connect with the country, India, which I left behind 25 years ago.  

Many adoptees claim how “lucky” I am to know the culture, language, and know so much about India. However, I find it necessary that people do not assumptions about my life and my experience".
 

 

Prema Malhotra is an adoptee from Mumbai, India and was adopted before the age of one.  She has two brothers, biological to her adoptive parents. She currently resides in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Prema is an undergraduate student with a major in Justice Studies and a minor in Social Work. She is currently an intern focusing on researching about post-adoption outcomes. Prema has actively researched on adoption since 2010 and has submitted an autoethnographic piece for publication describing her adoption journey.

Adopting Africa

For those of you who missed the recent film on CNN about international adoption in Uganda, it has now been uploaded to the CNN site. It is a 30 minute documentary posted in 3 parts. I am having a problem in embedding it successfully, so I have decided to post the three links to the CNN site as well.

The documentary was shot a year ago and since then the situation in international adoption here has reached an even more critical level in the depths people are willing to stoop.

 http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2013/03/15/wus-adopting-africa.cnn?iref=allsearch

 http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2013/03/15/wus-adopting-africa-pt2.cnn?iref=allsearch

 http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2013/03/15/wus-adopting-africa-pt3.cnn?iref=allsearch






 

Update on our first ever resettlement

This father inspires me and continues to inspire me every single time we visit him.

I will never forget the first day we first met him (photo below).  He had just come out of hospital having been involved in a horrific road accident. He was still limping and still had a bandage on his leg.  He looked like he had totally given up on life - he seemed full to the rim and overflowing with despair.  Due to the accident he couldn't earn a living as a builder anymore and all his confidence had disappeared. Hope had deserted him.

This was the moment that he saw his son for the first time in over 6 months and I remember how moving and how powerful it was. 

When we gently asked him what his plans were for his son, he looked embarrassed as he quietly looked up and asked if WE could look after him.  If I had agreed to adopt him at that very moment, I am quite sure he would have said "yes", but only at THAT moment.  I gently told him, no, that his son needed him and that our organization were going to help him get back up on his feet and that all would be well.  We encouraged him and told him that there was hope in his future and that we were going to help him and his son.  To see a short film that was made about how we resettled this little boy back with his father please see here.

Fast forward two years.  This is the same father confidently sitting in his barber salon/shop.

This father is totally inseparable from his son.  The love radiates from them both and their bond is deep and wide.  If I, any other adoptive parent or anyone involved in the business of international adoption had taken advantage of him at that VERY moment two years ago, if we had exploited him in his time of weakness, this wonderful father would have been cruelly denied the right and opportunity to parent his own child.

Yesterday, I visited his new business, a joint venture he has started with his sister - "With Jesus we can". They have pooled resources and they now have a shared barbers salon/cosmetic shop and a 2nd hand clothing store. Davins aunt is now caring for him in the week along with Davins older brother (who she has always cared for) and Davins dad comes to stay with them every weekend.  Davins dad is aiming to move permanently to this new area, he just needs to tie up some loose ends.  This is family in action, this is how it works here, but isn't that how it works everywhere, family helps you out.

I have never met his sister before, but she was really lovely and the family resemblance was uncanny.  Once again, I thought back to the time when we were thinking of adopting this little boy and that even if he hadn't had parents, that here was a young, vibrant and loving aunt, who should have been given the opportunity to parent her nephew. 

Yesterday we also visited Davins new school where his older brother and his cousins go.  The school had a lovely atmosphere and when we dropped in unannounced, it was lovely to find the head master with wellies and old clothes mucking in digging trenches, helping his school as it rapidly expands.   He was a lovely man, who evidently loves education and has high hopes for all the pupils in his school.  He told me that "we have a generation of people who us tear gas to communicate, but I want to raise a generation in my school who sit down,  talk through problems and solve them". He was really inspiring.

We had a amazing day with this lovely family.  It was wonderful meeting Davins brother for the first time (seen below), his aunt and some of his cousins.  After Easter we are going to visit again and take an economic empowerment officer along with us to see how he can help his business to grow and develop.