Four Feet More

Many of you have seen the news that Sandra Bullock adopted an African American baby boy, and is going to proceed with the adoption as a single mother.  To this I say, "You GO girl!"  However, from other people I am hearing far different words.  Words like, "Why did she adopt an African American child instead of a white one?"

This is a bit of a sore spot with me, and I'll tell you why.  When we adopted our kids, I was asked on more than one occasion why I chose to adopt from Russia instead of adopting an American child in need of a home.  While I know this is slightly different from Bullock's case, it is similar in that other people cast judgment on the children that we chose to adopt.  It shows an ignorance about adoption that I thought I would take a moment to address here.

When I was asked why we adopted from Russia instead of America I always responded that we felt the international adoption process better suited our needs.  We would not have to wait to be chosen by a birthmother to adopt her child, and once the adoption was final, it would be FINAL.  In California, a birthmother can change her mind and take back her child up to 90 days after the adoption.  Then there was the sticky case where a birthfather didn't realize he had a child until the boy, which had been adopted by another family, was around 10 years old (the particulars of the case escape me at the moment).  Because he was the biological father and had not given his consent to the adoption, he had the right to take back that child.  These were risks that our family simply didn't want to take. 

Those are reasons I usually site when asked why we didn't adopt from America.  However, this is how I really want to answer: A child in need of a family is a child in need of a family.  Period.  It doesn't matter where that child is from, they are still entitled to a loving home.

I feel the same way about the comments made regarding the transracial nature of Bullock's adoption.  Is her son any less deserving of a loving mother because he is African American?  It may be true that culturally and emotionally, it would be better for him to be placed in an African American family.  He might feel more secure because his skin is not a different color from his family members, and he may feel a greater connection to the African American community.  However, the sad reality is, there are many more African American children in need of homes than there are African American families waiting to adopt them.   

The same is true of Russia.  There are hundreds of thousands of children in orphanages across the country, but adoption by Russian families is still relatively uncommon.  This trend has changed in recent years, when The Russian government began offering financial incentives to Russian families to adopt, but the fact remains that the majority of children in Russian orphanages will not be adopted.

Another reality is that the majority of children available for domestic adoption are not the white, newborn babies that many people think of when they begin considering adoption.  They are older children in the foster care system.  They are babies born to incarcerated or drug addicted mothers.  They are biracial children and sibling groups.  Don't beleive me?  Go here and check out the photo listings for your state.

Now, I'm not saying that children on the photo listings are not entitled to a loving family, because I firmly believe that they are.  My point is that adoption is not about bringing the youngest, most-like-you child you can find into your family.  It is about bringing a child to LOVE into your family.  And all children deserve to be loved, whether they are African American or white, babies or pre-teens, Russian, Chinese, Ethiopian, or born right here in the U.S. of A.   The race, age and nationality of a child are irrelevant in that child's right to a loving family. 

For those of you out there who have not added to your family through adoption, please remember that it is not all like the movie "Juno" (which I loved, BTW).  The faces of adopted children are as varied and diverse as the families who adopt them.  And that is a beautiful thing.

As a side note to Sandra Bullock, when someone says to you, "Wow.  Your child is so dark.  Does (he) look like (his) father?"  You can respond as I did when presented with this question about Vika a while back: "Nope (he) looks like (his) mother!"  It's fun to see the confusion wash over peoples faces.  ;)

By now, I'm sure many of you have heard about the Tennessee woman who sent her adopted son, Artyem, alone on a plane back to Russia.  As a parent of two children adopted from Russia, I feel compelled to comment on the situation.  From the title of this post, you can probably tell how I feel about this woman's actions.  For those of you who have not adopted children from traumatic backgrounds, there are some important things, which I believe the media is missing, that you need to understand.

First of all, many (if not all) of the children living in orphanages in Russia have experienced abandonment from the people on whom they most depended.  In my kids' case, it was their Russian Mama.  Some, like Eamon, were only abandoned once and at a very young age.  Others, like Vika, were taken back and abandoned by their parent multiple times before finally being placed for adoption (for clarification purposes, Vika and Eamon have the same Russian Mama, but their experiences with her were very different).  When a child loses the care of a parent at a very young age, it can cause them to become distrustful of adults and learn that there is nobody on whom they can depend except themselves.  This lesson serves them well in an orphanage setting; however, it doesn't work so well when they join a family.  If you add neglect and abuse by caregivers into the mix,  you wind up with a very confused child who is distrustful of any adult who tries to take care of him or her.

In Russia, there are many, many orphanages, and they are very crowded.  The last estimate I read was that there are over 700,000 children living in Russian orphanages today.  These kids are regarded as second-class citizens and many Russians believe there is something wrong with them (either something that made their birth-parents not want them or "bad blood" passed on from irresponsible parents).  There are not a lot of Russian families vying to adopt these children.  In fact, once they leave the Baby Home and move into a Child's Home (around the age of 3 or 4), their chances of being placed in a loving family drop dramatically.  In an orphanage, the children live with multiple caregivers who are inconsistent, both in their presence and they way they relate to the children.  My kids have told me stories of being hit with shoes and being locked in dark closets as punishment.  And I believe they were at one of the better orphanages in Russia.

Kids who are adopted often have a hard time adjusting, especially if they are adopted by a family from another country.  When we brought our kids home, they had to leave everything they knew behind.  They flew for hours in a plane to a far away place with strangers who spoke a language they did not understand (we were only allowed to visit them 4 times before the adoption was finalized).  Things sounded and smelled different, the food was different, and they no longer had a bunch of children around them all the time (I've heard the experience described as "being abducted by aliens").  They had to adjust to all these changes, in addition to learning how to be part of a family.

I'm sure it was the same for Artyem.  He was even older when he was adopted, and we don't know what kind of situation he lived in with his birth family or how he was treated at the orphanage.  What is clear is that he had difficulty attaching to his new mom.  He'd only been home for 6 months, and attachment can take a year or longer to occur.  Plus, it seems that his adoptive mother did not ask for help from either her agency or social worker.  She had not taken him in for counseling, and as of January, she reported that everything was fine.  I find myself confused at how all this could happen.  Did the boy say he was going to kill her?  Maybe.  Heck, Eamon has said that to me when he's angry!   Did he play with matches and threaten to burn down the house?  Maybe.  My kids have done and said some pretty scary things too.  Was this mother educated about the many ways attachment disorder can manifest itself, and was she prepared to deal with those issues?  Certainly not.

There are support groups out there for people who have adopted older children who come from traumatic backgrounds.  There are groups specifically designed for people who adopt from Russia and Eastern Europe.  There are plenty of places to seek advice and counseling.  It seems to me that this "mother" gave up on her son too quickly.  I'm not sure what her expectations were, but I've heard many pre-adoptive parents talk about how they just know they will instantly connect with their child and that there will be love between them from the first meeting. They have this fairy tale idea of what it will be like to bring this child into their new home, and many even think the child will be grateful to be adopted by them.  I always cringe when I hear such statements because I know that the prospective parent is most likely in for a huge disappointment.  They are not thinking about this adoption from their future child's perspective and are not considering how what was done to the child in the past will affect how he/she views their future. 

Torry Hansen clearly did not have reasonable expectations for her child, or for herself as a mother.  Would she have treated a biological child so callously?  The fact that she would send a 7 year old child alone on a plane, with him most likely not knowing what would happen when he arrived back in Russia is horrendous.  I can't imagine how scared he must have been or what was going through his head.  I can't understand why she didn't seek to disrupt the adoption in America and try to have him placed in a family better prepared to deal with his needs. It's almost as if she viewed him as damaged goods and wanted to return him to the store!  Her actions only added to the abuse, neglect and abandonment that Artyem has already suffered in his short life.  And she made his attachment to a future family even more difficult.  I hope Torry Hansen is prosecuted to the full extent of the law and that her planned adoption from the Republic of Georgia (yes, she was planning to adopt another child!) is dropped as quickly as she dropped her responsibilities towards her son.

I had another post scheduled for today, but after reading the news this morning, I decided to bring this to your attention instead.

Generally, I try to keep politics away from this blog, but as someone who's suffered a miscarriage, this scares the bejeezus out of me!


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01abortion.html

While I can understand a bit of what prompted such legislation, I think they are going about it all wrong.  During my time working in neonatology, I saw quite  few cases that horrified me.  One was very much like the case mentioned here, where a pregnant, teenage couple, in an effort to abort their fetus, took a bunch of drugs and then the boyfriend kicked the girlfriend repeatedly in the stomach.  Their efforts did not being about the desired results, and the baby was born prematurely, with severe problems.  I'm not sure what happened to the child after she left the NICU.  Were these kids wrong in their actions?  Absolutely!  But do they deserve life in prison because of it?  I don't believe so.  Instead, shouldn't we examine a system that makes some people so desperate that they feel the only way out is to endure the pain of a brutal beating, thereby causing the death of their unborn child?  What social programs are in place to help these girls obtain legal abortions (which are still allowed in the Utah bill)?  Or perhaps support them while they put their baby up for adoption?  As Christine said (a blogger I was recently introduced to by Michelle), are there programs to financially assist these teenage girls who chose to be mothers to their babies while they finish high school and college?  It just seems that there is a greater issue that is being overlooked while people focus on the act of obtaining abortions through non-medical means.

However, putting the issue of intentional abortions and social programs aside, there is something else in this bill which is even more alarming.  A woman who suffers a miscarriage due to "reckless behavior" can also be punished by life in prison.  The thing that scares me so much about this is, who determines what constitutes "reckless behavior?" (and I admit, I haven't seen the entire bill to read line-by-line)  The examples given are drinking alcohol and driving recklessly while pregnant.  But what about me?  I ate at a sushi bar while pregnant.  Sure, I didn't consume anything raw, but maybe some of those California Rolls touched a bit of sashimi and that resulted in my miscarriage.  Is that reckless behavior?  And even if it was reckless, was my intent to satisfy my craving for sushi or to harm my unborn child?  I think every woman who has suffered a miscarriage ought to think about this issue very carefully.  Most of you reading this blog were devastated by the loss and went on to either conceive or adopt another child.  I'm sure all of us questioned what we may have done that caused us to lose our child.  Many of you, like me, may have even had people tell you why you were to blame for the loss of your child (in my case, I was "too stressed" about having a healthy pregnancy).  It seems that lawmakers in Utah, while they may have good intentions, are completely missing the mark with this one.

What are your thoughts?  (and if any of you are tempted to leave inflammatory or disrespectful comments, I warn you in advance, they will be deleted).

My mom has a subscription to People Magazine, and when she's done reading an issue, she usually sends it my way. We've got a stack of them set aside for "bathroom reading" (which used to freak out one of my co-workers from Stanford), and the other day, a recent issue started an interesting discussion in our house.

Vika went into the bathroom, and a minute later she yelled from behind the closed door, "Mama! Ask me anything about the Obamas. Like how many kids they have...what they wear.... anything!" After a moment of wondering what could have prompted this Obama trivia session, I replied that I would be happy to discuss the First Family with her when she was done "doing her business." She answered that she was already done, so I opened the bathroom door to see her sitting down, reading a People with the Obamas on the cover. Ahhh... So that's what started the whole thing. Only now, she didn't want to discuss the Obamas. She had turned the page to find a picture of the "pregnant man."

Which, as an aside, kind of bugs me. I mean, he wasn't born a man! He's a woman becoming a man. Furthermore, if you felt so strongly that you were meant to be a man, and were going through a sex change to make this happen, wouldn't the whole maternal, I-want-to-be-pregnant thing go along with your former status as a female? I just don't get it. It seems like some way for this person to get an awful lot of publicity, and I hope he has plans to step down from the spotlight and give his child a chance to grow up without people treating her like she's part of some freak show.

But I digress. Vika was looking at pictures of the pregnant man and becoming very confused. How could a man have a baby in his tummy, she asked. I told her that he had been a woman who felt that she was born the wrong way and was having doctors help her become a man. At this point, Vika emphatically stated, "Well I know I was born the right way!" But then she got quiet and her little brow furrowed. "I hope Tyson was born the right way," she said after a moment. I went on to explain that people being born the "wrong way" was very rare. Most people who are born girls are supposed to be girls, and most people who are born boys are supposed to be boys. With a nod, she put the People away, smiled and exclaimed, "I sure can learn some stuff from magazines!"

Oh, brother.

On the way home from school today, Vika and Eamon had an interesting discussion about today's election.

Vika: Mama, today in class we had an election, and I voted for Barack Obama.
Me: Really? Who won the election?
V: Obama, baby! Only 2 people voted for McCain.
Eamon: We voted in my class too!
M: Oh yeah? Who did you vote for?
E: McCain.
M: Really? How come you voted for McCain?
E: I kinda like him!
V: EAMON! If McCain wins, there's gonna be more wars, and people are gonna DIE!
E: But Vika, Allie (a girl in his class) said that if McCain isn't President, he's gonna start a war with Russia!

At this point, Vika began crying loudly at the idea of us going to war with Russia, and political talks pretty much broke down. In an effort to smooth things over, Eamon changed the subject to what we would be having for dinner. It didn't work, so I assured her that if McCain did not become President, then he could not start a war with Russia. That seemed to help a bit, but Vika still cried quietly, and when we arrived home, she got out of the car with red-rimmed eyes and a runny nose.

It's interesting to see what kids pick up about world events at such a young age (even if some of the information is incorrect).

*** Update ***
Vika is feeling significantly better since seeing an analysis on CNN which basically shows that it could be impossible for John McCain to win. Eamon's a bit bummed, but he's taking the predicted loss in stride.

Anyone who watches The Daily Show on a regular basis knows that Fareed Zakaria RULES. This guy knows his stuff. I like the way he often cuts to the chase, stating issues clearly, without the sensationalism or spin you see many journalists and pundits using to get their points across.

Today, Zakaria talked to Wolf Blitzer about his view of Sarah Palin. I'd say he hit the nail right on the head with this one. What do you think?

To see the article that accompanies this video, click here.

I don't post much about my political views on this blog because I figure you aren't really here to read about that. However, whether you are for McCain or Obama, you must agree that the political debates in our country should focus on the issues that are really important to the American people, like healthcare, the economy and the war in Iraq. Not whether Obama's "Lipstick on a Pig" comment was directed towards Palin or whether McCain cheated on his first wife.

The debate hosted by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos during the primaries was ridiculous. They didn't hit any of the really important issues until the last 10-15 minutes of the debate, instead choosing to focus on controversies that really had nothing to do with the candidates' plans for the country. I was actually a bit embarrassed that people in other countries were watching that debate and would get the idea that the American People really are that shallow.

Recently, I received an e-mail from Freepress offering Americans a chance to rate the debates. The idea is that the public will join together to hold the media accountable for what questions they present to the candidates. If you would like to see more focus on the real issues, rather than manufactured controversies, please click here to sign up. And if you do sign up, please blog about your experience. I would love to hear what you thought.

Overheard in our house yesterday:

Vika (to no one in particular): "You know who I want for President? Murah Ok Bonoka."

I think she means Barack Obama. But I'm not sure.