Internationally Adopting Parents: Angels or Devils?

Some see us internationally-adopting parents as noble creatures, Mother Theresas who nobly reach beyond their bloodlines to third-world children otherwise deprived of loving homes and families. Others see us as so blinded by the need to parent that we become unwitting child-traffickers, pawns of black markets that steal children from their rightful parents and then rob them of their own ethnic and cultural identities. Fly to Antigua, drop 30k, then fly home with a stolen child. Cool.

Both images are bullshit.

We're no more angelic than parents who choose to have children the old-fashioned way. True, in an over-populated planet where many Guatemalan kids don't reach age five, international adoption can be a globally responsible choice. But at the end of the day, parenting is parenting: We all lose sleep; spend our Saturdays ferrying our kids to birthday parties, play dates, and karate classes; worry whether they're writing their letters properly and getting enough exercise; and hurry them to get their shoes on when it's time to leave for school. We're just parents.

And we're not as demonic as many well-intentioned adoptee-rights activists believe. When it comes to the adoption process, we rely on the structures available. True, we have to scrutinize those structures to make sure they are fair and just, but we can't always guarantee that they are. So we proceed in good faith, slavishly meeting all the requirements of governments and private agencies in both the US and the country we're adopting from--knowing full well that we can have only moral certainty that those agencies are acting with a similar integrity. We do what we can.

And many of us would love to connect with our kid's biological families. If we could find them.

Given the moral extremes with which we're portrayed, you can't blame us for having a confused self-image. In a recent issue of Mother Jones, one mom confesses to wanting her own child so much that she simply ignored the heartrending injustices in the Guatemalan adoption system. When she and her husband later awakened to the moral complexities, they considered returning their daughter to her biological mother. At the time, one aggressive adoptee rights activist told her their adoption agency "should have...dissuaded us from transnational adoption, or led us to a program through which we could sponsor a child to remain with her family. But the truth is I don't think I would have listened--so absorbed was I in the force of my own wanting."

Huh? She should feel guilty for wanting to parent a child? The moral complexity of the adoption process should make her consider giving up her child?

Psychologists might say this poor woman has so internalized the negative perceptions of well-intended but misguided friends that her own natural instincts for caring have been short-circuited. While her confused self-image is understandable, the truth is this woman has nothing to apologize for.

Given the corruption of the international adoption processes these days, especially in countries like Guatemala, the question is: How do we connect our deepest and best desires with the deepest needs of our crazy, fragile world? We can remain aloof, allowing children either to die at an early age from malnutrition or scavenge the Guatamala City garbage dump. Or we can enter the flawed processes society makes available, navigating them as best we can, trying to correct them as we go along. And, perhaps, living with some moral ambiguity as a result.

We internationally-adopting parents are neither angels nor devils. But at the end of the day, we do what we can. We're just parents. Nothing more, or less.