When my husband and I began the adoption process, we had no idea how controversial it would become. There are many stories being written these days harshly critiquing Christians who adopt children. <\/p>\n
Before we look at one of those stories, a quick aside. When we went through adoption training a few weeks ago, one of our instructors suggested that we not watch any Lifetime<\/em> moves during the process. Why? Well, here\u2019s a synopsis of a Lifetime<\/em> channel offering from last year, titled Adopting Terror<\/a> (subtle!):<\/p>\n Tim and Cheryl Broadbent are excited to finally adopt Mona, a beautiful baby girl. But when the baby\u2019s biological father starts stalking them, their world turns upside down: through intimidation, manipulation, and violence, he is determined to take his daughter back.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I think our adoption trainers should also suggest not reading the comments on New York Times<\/em> articles about adoption. Seriously, they\u2019re awful<\/a>!<\/p>\n What set off the recent adoption-critical trend was Kathryn Joyce\u2019s book \u201cThe Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption\u201d and concurrent Mother Jones<\/em> article headlined (also subtly) \u201cOrphan Fever: The Evangelical Movement\u2019s Adoption Obsession<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Like Lifetime<\/em> screenwriters, Joyce focuses on the negatives about adoption. Which, of course, has a place. <\/p>\n Now that we\u2019ve been navigating this process for a few years, we are much more aware of just how incredibly difficult adoption is. (We\u2019re in the domestic program, but we\u2019ve gotten to know people who adopt internationally as well.) Sometimes the stories about all the things that can go wrong (from all directions) consume me. When trying to help take care of children whose birth families are unable to do so, lots of problems can arise. The very existence of adoptive families also creates incentives for corruption. And the desire of adoptive families for children can lead to pressures and shortcuts. But in the same way that Lifetime<\/em> movies aren\u2019t a reflection of the vast majority of adoption stories, Joyce has been criticized (see below) for focusing on a few dramatic examples of problems at the expense of the larger story.<\/p>\n Anyway, it\u2019s in this context that this New York Times<\/em> article \u201cEager to Adopt, Evangelicals Find Perils Abroad<\/a>\u201d was published. In a tweet just after his story ran, the author of the Times<\/em> piece wrote<\/a> of Joyce\u2019s writing on the matter \u201cGood summary of the issues from @kathrynajoyce: The Problem With the Christian Adoption Movement http:\/\/huff.to\/1aR3aZn.\u201d <\/p>\n I actually was notified of the story because another reporter didn\u2019t like the tweet<\/a> announcing this particular story. Note the scare quotes:<\/p>\n My take on Christian \u201corphan\u201d movement: Eager to Adopt, Evangelicals Find Perils Abroad http:\/\/nyti.ms\/19tIhFUa<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I tried to put the best construction on the scare quotes, noting that a minor part of the story is how sometimes the corruption of international adoptions includes questions as to whether the children being adopted are actually orphans (You might remember some discussion about whether the infant Madonna adopted from a Malawi orphanage was actually an orphan, etc., etc.). But I agree that the scare quotes are unnecessary and unhelpful.<\/p>\n The article begins with the story of a Montana family with eight children, four adopted. We learn a little bit about their Christian motivation (e.g. \u201cinspired by compassion and a biblical mandate to aid \u201cwidows and orphans\u201d) and we\u2019re told:<\/p>\n She and her husband, and the Journey Church where he is lead pastor, are part of a fast-growing evangelical Christian movement that promotes adoption as a religious and moral calling. Its supporters say a surge in adoptions by Christians has offered hope and middle-class lives to thousands of parentless or abandoned children from abroad and, increasingly, to foster children in the United States as well. Hundreds of churches have established \u201corphan ministries\u201d that send aid abroad and help prospective parents raise the tens of thousands of dollars needed to adopt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In order to describe the movement as \u201cfast-growing\u201d and \u201cevangelical,\u201d we need some numbers and religion data, right? Well, later we learn:<\/p>\n The presence of evangelical Christians is especially evident in international adoptions, which have declined over all as more countries restrict or ban them because of scandals or politics. In 2012, some 8,668 adoptees entered the United States, down from a peak of 22,991 in 2004.<\/p>\n Though no one collects data on the religions of adopting parents, couples encouraged by the new Christian movement account for \u201ca significant and growing minority of international adoptions,\u201d in the words of Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a research group.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So by \u201cfast-growing\u201d we mean that the number of adoptees entering the U.S. have plummeted in the last eight years? How is that \u201cgrowing\u201d much less \u201cfast-growing\u201d? And we have no data on the religions of adopting parents, period. OK, then! How, exactly, is the \u201cpresence of evangelical Christians \u2026 especially evident\u201d? I am asking as I have no idea what the answer is.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m not entirely sure we\u2019ve got a good handle on Christians adopting domestically vs. internationally. Many agencies offer both programs \u2014 and they are dramatically different programs \u2014 and many churches offer support for both international and domestic adoption \u2026 and other care programs such as foster or interim care. How do we know precisely how many evangelicals (as opposed to Catholics or Lutherans or what not) are involved in which programs?<\/p>\n But let\u2019s get back to the <\/p>\n But the movement has also revived debate about ethical practices in international adoptions, with fears that some parents and churches, in their zeal, have na\u00efvely entered terrain long filled with pitfalls, especially in countries susceptible to corruption. These include the risk of falsified documents for children who have relatives able to care for them, middlemen out to profit and perhaps bribe officials, and even the willingness of poor parents to send a child to a promised land without understanding the permanence of adoption.<\/p>\n In March, sending shudders through adoption agencies and would-be parents, the State Department issued an alert about Congo. It warned that several children whose adoptions had already been approved by the Congolese government had been \u201ctaken from orphanages by a birth parent or relative,\u201d indicating that those children were not orphans eligible for American adoption in the first place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Drama! It goes on in that vein. And I have no doubt that the horrors of the Lifetime movies and<\/em> the Joyce book are true. I really don\u2019t. I have enough friends who have gone through absolute heartbreak as they navigated this process and discovered corruption (or just really sticky and difficult situations that we humans find ourselves in) to know that this is true. But I\u2019d like to know a lot more about what percentage of these 8,668 adoptions last year were at risk of corruption (much less proven to be). I might also wonder why a group that only constitutes, according to this story, a \u201cminority\u201d of families involved in international adoption is bearing the brunt of the blame for any and all problems encountered.<\/p>\n The story does a fine job of noting recent Christian efforts to help children who have lost family via disease, starvation or warfare. But it might also be nice to have a bit more historical perspective. Adoption is not held as an ideal by all religions and some have a much longer history with it than others.<\/p>\n The story ends on a somewhat bright note about one boy\u2019s adoption but the scare stories dominate, of course. I\u2019m not entirely sure that\u2019s the healthiest or most balanced approach to take and when dealing with the unlikeliest culture war story of the year, and more data and substantiation might be helpful.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t quite have the heart to critique earlier fawning coverage of Joyce\u2019s book but you might appreciate this earlier NPR interview of Joyce by Terry Gross<\/a> and various critiques of Joyce\u2019s work from evangelicals (here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n And if you\u2019d like a break from all the negativity and scare stories, here\u2019s a nice adoption-related photo shoot of a family\u2019s first day together<\/a>. <\/p>\nLifetime movie script<\/del> story:<\/p>\n