vietnam adoption? would it help?

[stretchmark]

Hi, I am new to this forum. I am a mother to a beautiful daughter Kira, born 14 weeks early, currently 18 months. I have found out that my uterus is badly misshaped and has been the cause of my miscarriages and premature daughter. Adoption has been suggested to me and thought of on my own many times. I know I could probably get pregnant again and carry long enough to have a living child AND I am not sure if I am ready for miscarriages at this point. I am sure that I want another child within the next year. I recently came across some info on vietnam adoptions. I read that many of the children in Vietnam that are put up for adoption have two parents that just don't have enough money to keep them. I thought this was awful and couldn't bear the thought of that happening to me. Is it right to adopt their kids? I mean, is it helpful? I can stand the idea of adopting a child whose parents died or other circumstances but not this. Does anyone know anything about this? I am not sure if I can pick up my life and go over to Vietnam to aid in relief at this point and I want to know more about all this. In this country children are taken away from parents at probably more of an alarming rate than I care to know. How many are put up for adoption? What happens in this country? I am new to this whole thing so forgive me if I am a bit naieve. This just sort of turned my passions on and I want info.
Tiff in Taos

[Clarity]

You can probably find some web sites and mailing lists specifically about Vietnam that would be more helpful. My opinion is that even if you contributed charity to vietnamese orphanages...a home is still better thatn instituional life with a child. As far as most child being from two married parents, etc. I had not heard that, so I have no idea...Vietnam is not a country I've researched. Either Vietnam or Cambodia (perhaps both) have occasionally been shut down for periods by the State Dept. if they find too much fraud (child's parents on their paperwork not being the actual parents, or they suspect that, etc.) That worries me more...I want to know that the parents legitimately gave up the child...that there was no abduction or coercion involved. You could always choose to try to maintain contact with their living parents if they wanted, or sent pictures, or even visit every few years. That may not be possible...but some internationally adopted kids do track down distant relatives or home villages when they are older, or visit thier orphanages...sometimes as preteens, not just adults.

Keep reasearching! I think adoption, whether internationl or domestic, private or public, is a great way to build a family! The home study /INS approval process was not hard...I did it within about a month and a half...I started after Christmas, had visa by march, would have been ready to travel in may...but my ivf process was slower, and turned out to be successful. I started early, but somehow got very quick processing at INS and was very efficient at my paperwork...most people it takes longer. We were going to ukraine, but things may be different there now. If I started again today, I would probably be going to Guatemala.

[EFmom]

Hi morebabies,

I'm the mother of two girls who were adopted from China and I'm very active with a couple of local international adoption support groups. It is my understanding that there is currently a moratorium on adoptions from Vietnam. If you were already in the process, you could complete the adoption, but new applications aren't being processed. See http://www.adoptvietnam.org/adoption/mou.htm But things change all the time in international adoption. Contact a few agencies with VN programs and ask them.

As for the big question, "would it help?" I guess I'd ask, would it help who? People who are involved in adoption would counsel that if you are going into adoption with the primary motivation of "saving a child," you are in it for the wrong reason. The thinking is that this will always end up being communicated to the child, and the child will think you expect to be thought of as some sort of savior. Please understand that I'm not saying you are this way--it's just something to think about, and if you present yourself as having this primary motivation, some social workers might have a problem with that.

Adoption is quite complicated, international adoption perhaps even more so. Some social workers are very much against transracial adoptions. They see it as cultural genocide. I know that sounds harsh--it does to me, too. Others are more pragmatic, and realize that while the ideal for the child is to be parented by his/her birthfamily, the second best is to be parented by a family from the child's birth culture, and the third is to be internationally adopted into a good home. Sometimes options 1 and 2 are just not possible.

Nowadays, most people who adopt internationally are very committed to helping their children develop a cultural identity. We have joined our local Chinese community center and take language classes. We consider that we have become a Chinese-American family. It's a lot of work (also a lot of fun), but hopefully it will help our children be more comfortable in their own skin as they grow up.

Sadly, children from many countries are placed for adoption for a variety of reasons, but very, very few are true orphans. Most are abandoned by their birthfamilies for reasons of economics, substance abuse, marital status, remarriage where the new spouse won't accept the other's children, and a host of other reasons.

My feeling is that adoption does help the child in question. It may or may not help the "system" in the foreign country to better help care for the children who remain behind. Some people suggest that if you are really altruistic, you'd do better to just give the money you would spend on an IA to a foreign orphanage or charity. Maybe, but most of us adopt for more complex reasons.

One good place for starting to research IA is the Report on Intercountry Adoption http://www.iccadopt.org/ You might also try to find a local support group and start talking to some of the families. Adoption is a fabulous way to form a family. I thank God every day for the IF that lead me to my daughters. But, it's complicated and there are lots of issues to work through, both when you adoption and throughout your family's growth. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

[LoveBeads]

ITA with everything that EFMom said, especially about "would it help".

[stretchmark]

So I'll clarify what exactly I mean by Help. I want to adopt and I came across a page that told me a lot of the children in Vietnam come from two parent homes that are too poor to keep the children. It sort of struck me that a better thing to do than adopt their children would be to somehow provide aid to the country. I found a lot of info about releif workers and organizations teaching the people to farm in more sustainable ways and also people helping to reunite children and their parents. I guess I would feel bad knowingly adopting a child who had two loving parents that wanted to keep them as oppossed to adopting a child whos parents had died or something like that. By help, I think I was referring to "in the grand scheme of things". My friend who is moving to Burma this summer thinks that adopting a child who is in need of a good home is what it is all about. I know there are so many things to considder and can't possibly portray myself accurately in words on a discussion board. I really just wanted to put these thoughts out there and see what other people thought so I could see the range of ideas and see if any of them fit for me. Thanks for responding.
morebabies
I may have to change my name because I amy not have any more, we'll see

[EFmom]

The way I looked at it was that there are a whole lot of children in this world who do not have families who can care for them for whatever reason. We went to China to adopt, where the children were already living in social welfare homes, and where the parents are unknown. It is illegal to abandon a child in this country, so birth parents abandon children in secret. These children are not going to be reunited with their birth families. In this case, it made sense to me to adopt because I believe that 1) children are better off with loving families than they are in institutions and 2) in the case of China, the required orphanage donations ($) really do benefit children left behind. In addition, we choose to provide periodic financial support for our daughter's social welfare homes.

Maybe, in terms of helping society in general, it would have been better to raise the $10-30K that an international adoption will cost and donate it directly to a charitable organization as you are suggesting. I think that's a very noble thing to do, if you are so moved. Depending on the country, that can be a very significant amount of money in the local economy, and it has the potential to do a lot of good things.

Having said that, it's not something we would do. We do support various charities, some international in scope. But I'd never have raised that kind of money once, let alone twice, for that purpose. We don't have that kind of spare cash kicking around, and we made some major sacrifices to save it. Does that make me selfish? Maybe. Personally, I haven't seen evidence that donating X number of dollars to a charity would actually result in children staying with their birth families, but that doesn't mean it's not out there. I'm sure you can't make good generalizations about it.

I wanted to parent children. I found children in need of parents. I think that our adoptions are good for both our kids and for ourselves. (There are also many loss issues to be faced in adoption--those need to be addressed as well.) In the process, I try to make life better for children who do not get adopted. No doubt that there is an element of selfishness in anyone's desire to parent, whether bio or adopted children.

I guess it boils down to your motivation. If you really want to adopt children, there are children who genuinely are in need of parents. If adopting from VN would make you uncomfortable because of the issues you outline, VN is not the only country that does IA, and not all children are placed for adoption because of poverty. If you think that IA is too selfish for you, then there are many worthy charities that would welcome your help.

But in the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's an either/or proposition. IA can and does help individual children. Orphanages, even relatively good ones, are not optimal for children. They generally have much higher mortality rates than would be expected, for example. In addition, in many countries, children raised in orphanages are social outcasts once they age out of the system. Poverty alleviation projects can also help families involved with them. I think your efforts would be well directed either way, but if you want to adopt, you shouldn't feel guilty about it.

[LoveBeads]

I had another thought for you. We contribute money to a family in need through Save the Children. The money doesn't necessarily go directly to the family, it goes to the community where the child lives to provide drinking water, education, etc.

It is a good financial way to help without worrying about separating the child from it's birthparents, if that is of concern to you. You also have the option of keeping in touch with the child through the organization.

There are many organizations that do this type of thing - just make sure that you check with BBB's charity guide to make sure it is a legitimate charity before you send money.

We have "adopted" three children this year in this way and it's been wonderful!

[steph]

T

i don't have any experience w/international adoption, but have had a great experience with a domestic agency.... if you want more info, please pm me...

[EmmaJean]

Have you seen the PBS show, "Daughter from Danang"? Check out your local listings for when it will be on again. It was very interesting and on this very subject. Here's a link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/daughter/

I just watched it last week; that's why your post caught my eye!

[EFmom]

I would take "Daughter from Danang" not exactly with a grain of salt, but maybe with half a grain. The normal adoption situations are never television fodder, only the more extreme ones.