Comments on: Book Winner — and 2007 International Adoption Statistics

By: Mary Owlhaven

Mary Owlhaven — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 17:02:16 +0000

hmm… I just sent a question to my agency director about this. I heard that sometimes healthy living parents are forced to ‘abandon’ kids for adoption because they have no legal reason to relinquish. And as I stated, I thought that the legal reasons consisted of illness or incompetence…. oh, and a few cases of extreme abuse. But I’ll be interested to hear from my agency if there are more reasons than I was aware of. Thanks for writing.
Mary

By: ms. four

ms. four — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 08:31:33 +0000

Mary, you said: “I do understand, however, that a living birth parent is only allowed to relinquish a child in the case of life-threatening illness such as HIV, or occasionally if a parent is certified as mentally ill and incapable of providing care.”

This isn’t the case at all. I know many families whose kids have at least one healthy birth parent. Sometimes kids have two healthy birth parents.

Poverty is also one reason living birth parents can relinquish a child, and many times there are healthy, competent, capable living birth parents who are going through a particularly tough time financially.

By: Mary Owlhaven

Mary Owlhaven — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 21:42:14 +0000

I think you make some good points. I do understand, however, that a living birth parent is only allowed to relinquish a child in the case of life-threatening illness such as HIV, or occasionally if a parent is certified as mentally ill and incapable of providing care. I do think that in a better world extended family would be offered financial support to keep children. However, there are cases when families will feed nieces or nephews less than their ‘own’ children, or will beat them and treat them as servants. Sure they are living with family. But in many cases kids might be better loved or have better opportunities with adoptive families who love and want them, as opposed to living with aunts and uncles who care for them simply out of obligation. Every story is different, of course, but ideally every child should have a committed family.

By: ms. four

ms. four — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 20:14:53 +0000

My concern about the increase in adoptions from Ethiopia is that so many kids being adopted from there are not orphans. Many have one or sometimes two living birth parents who would gladly take care of them if they only had a few more birr.

I myself was mislead by all the talk about Ethiopian orphans. Yes, there are millions, but they are often not the kids who end up in western-run and -financed care centers. That’s disconcerting.

I also worry that rapid growth in any program can lead to corruption.

By: 4givenagain

4givenagain — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:02:10 +0000

Thanks, Mary, I logged on first thing this morning from work to see if you had drawn the winner yet! LOL Woohoo!