After engaging in the readings of both Adam Pertman in
“Adoption Nation” and Kim Park Nelson in “Baby Selling”, It became very evident
that changes in transnational adoption are still being made and the progress
toward ethical, legal, and successful adoptions internationally is still
ongoing. As a naïve college student, I have always understood my world as very
much modern, ethical, and improved from eras such as the “baby scoop” that
occurred in the 1970’s and had many unethical issues attached with it. It was
very compelling to me from both these readings that transnational adoptions are
still being modified today to ensure the best interest for all parties
involved, and avoid illicit activities. These changes only starting to take
place in the 1990’s with the formation of the Hague convention, taking place in
the Netherland in 1993 (Pertman, 85).
Even though this treaty was established in 1993, there are still illicit
activities taking place today, with under the table adoptions and bribing.
These statistics shocked me and helped raise my awareness about transnational
adoption and its only recent improvements and steady progress toward
betterment.
In Kim Park Nelson’s article, there was a great sense of
negativity toward transnational adoption. An argument that Park Nelson makes
about primarily white adoptive parents and their ability to adopt
transnationally because of their hierarchical status, is that their push for
transnational adoption is not for the benefit of a child in need of a loving
family, but for their own pleasure and improvement in seeking an exotic
commodity. She states that “parents as consumers are already conditioned to
want the authentically exotic, and what better way to meet this desire than to
adopt an authentically exotic child?” (Park Nelson, 94) Thus, by adopting from
a foreign country, the adoptive family can enrich their knowledge and
understanding of foreign cultures. This, I believe however, is untrue. There
are many cases of individuals who do adopt for the reason, but the majority of
adoptive families are infertile or are looking to help orphan children of other
nations. The desire to create a family with a loving and accepting environment
for a child far outweighs the desires for these individuals to enrich
themselves culturally by adopting transnationally.
GRADED REPLY
ReplyDeleteAly-
I like the ending of your last statement a lot. My feeling is that Park generalizes a lot of adoptive parents into a category, without really putting a disclaimer that this wasn't necessarily the norm. She may believe that it is the norm however, from her perspective, so it provides an opportunity to think that things are different from what we have experienced. The people I know that have adopted transnationally did so because they longed for a child, and the process did not work for them in the United States. I think in order to fight racist stereotypes and racism overall, it is healthy for families to adopt babies from other races. Unfortunately, Park is arguing that whites are always the ones with the privilege to do that.
The book I read for the book review is the story of a gay man who adopted transnationally, and it is so hard for me to agree with Park Nelson on these points because of his aching simply just to be a father, and the constraints he had adopting domestically.
I also agree that there are some who exploit the fact that they have a child of a different ethnicity, I just don't think it can be generalized across the population.
Graded Reply #5
ReplyDeleteAly-
I think we both agree that the article by Park Nelson is very radical. I just wanted to further the quote you have from Nelson, when she states that these parents’ ideals are met when they travel to foreign countries and have the opportunity to shop for other exotic items. I believe that Nelson has taken the idea of transnational adoption a bit too far. Maybe there are some adoptive parents that adopt foreign children for this reason, but I don’t think the majority of transnational adoptive parents thought in the manner Nelson describes. If a perspective parent was thinking in this manner than they were thinking in a selfish terms.
Also, how does a baby from a foreign country bring culture in to the adoptive parents’ house? They don’t! When these children arrive in the US at the age of 2 months, or even 2 years, they are assimilated in the American culture. At these young ages, they know little to nothing about the country they come from. Therefore, in order to keep the ‘exotic’ culture alive in the adoptive parents’ homes, it takes hard work and research to learn and encompass the culture into daily life.
Overall, I agree with your key points and think that transnational adoption should not be used to ‘spice –up’ the life of adoptive parents. Rather, transnational adoption should be about creating a stable and safe environment for a child.
Thanks for the great post!
Jen G.