The Orphan Myth

[Palimpsest]

Yes. The Child Catchers has been recommended here many times.  It is excellent.

One of our veteran posters at FJ was interviewed by Kathryn Joyce and is featured in the book.  She has posted about it in the past.

 

[Duggarite]

One of my work colleagues is adopted. She became adopted when her father treated her very very badly as a toddler. I do not know the details because I do not have a so close relationship to her to ask but she talks about "bad things" in general.  She was adopted by a nice normal family and grew up to be a great person and an awesome professional. 

I am very happy for her to get a great family to grow in and to be happy and I do think there are very crappy parents out there and that children should grow into loving and caring families. 

International adoption has always felt weird for me. I did not see how it was possible to have so many orphans, with both parents dead. Nor did I understand that poverty was a reason to give up children for adoption, we should be giving money to those families, not taking away their children. I understand that adoptive parents do think that they are doing something good for the child, but after watching the documentary I would not be able to go to other country in order to adopt a child.

[Toothfairy]

On Sunday, June 05, 2016 at 11:53 AM, Cleopatra7 said:

There is a reason why orphanages no longer exist in most Western countries, and this video hits on this. As messy as the foster care system is, being in a family unit is much healthier for children than being in an institution. I think fundegelicals like orphanages because they were traditionally run by religious organizations, and I get the impression that this is still the case in the Global South.

I don't think the Duggars and their ilk have any respect for families that aren't 100% like them. We don't even see the Duggars having much to do with their non-Gothard relations, so I doubt they care about the impact they are having on black and brown children from a foreign culture who practice the "wrong kind" of Christianity.

It's called group homes here in America. 

[Cleopatra7]

1 hour ago, Duggarite said:

One of my work colleagues is adopted. She became adopted when her father treated her very very badly as a toddler. I do not know the details because I do not have a so close relationship to her to ask but she talks about "bad things" in general.  She was adopted by a nice normal family and grew up to be a great person and an awesome professional. 

I am very happy for her to get a great family to grow in and to be happy and I do think there are very crappy parents out there and that children should grow into loving and caring families. 

International adoption has always felt weird for me. I did not see how it was possible to have so many orphans, with both parents dead. Nor did I understand that poverty was a reason to give up children for adoption, we should be giving money to those families, not taking away their children. I understand that adoptive parents do think that they are doing something good for the child, but after watching the documentary I would not be able to go to other country in order to adopt a child.

Part of the problem is that adoption in the Western sense (ie a child is completely severed from his or her bio family and assimilated into another) doesn't exist in the countries where these "orphans" come from. Parents are told that their children are going to the West for schooling and will eventually come back, not that they are relinquishing their parental rights. 

[Toothfairy]

International adoption wasn't about saving kids 20 years ago. White couples wanted white babies. After the baby scoop era the number of healthy white infants went down. So these white couples wanted a baby quick and fast. China became the hot spot. So did Guatemala and South Korea.  They could get a baby in less than a year. Unfortunately this led to children being stolen from their families. 

A lot of orphans(hate that word) aren't orphans. They're in an orphanage to stay alive. Their families are too poor to care for them. So families are promised the American dream for their child, not knowing its an adoption. Instead of spending 30-50k adoption agencies should use that money to help families stay together. 

20 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

Yes. The Child Catchers has been recommended here many times.  It is excellent.

One of our veteran posters at FJ was interviewed by Kathryn Joyce and is featured in the book.  She has posted about it in the past.

 

Read that book. Everything about the prolife movement and these adoption agencies make sense to me. Bethany christian services are horrible. 

On Sunday, June 05, 2016 at 6:46 PM, mango_fandango said:

This is what pisses me off about those anti-abortion people who say "Oh just adopt!" Siiiiiiiiigh. I wrote this on a FB thing about not having kids, in reply to someone who said "just adopt!" : "Adoption is not easy. I have relatives who did it and it is so damn hard. There is absolutely no certainty you'll get anyone, they can reject you for the slightest thing, it can take months or even years to get anywhere. And, a lot of the time, the kid isn't "unwanted", and the mother will be fighting every step of the way. 
I saw a documentary once and the majority of kids waiting to be adopted are older children. Many people want babies, and not older children with emotional baggage." 

Also, the book Girl, Missing by Sophie McKenzie is pretty good about this whole thing. Essentially, a girl called Lauren was adopted at three years old. She starts trying to search for her birth parents. She finds what could be her on a missing children site. Turns out she was kidnapped from America. Her adoptive parents thought they were helping someone out, and whilst they were originally considered guilty of conspiring in the whole thing they were declared innocent as they had no idea what was truly going on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl,_Missing

Because carrying a pregnancy and giving birth is so easy. Then placing your child for adoption who will call another set of parents mommy and daddy. 

Infant adoption cost 30-40k for a healthy white newborn. Black babies cost less because they aren't in demand. 

Foster care is low cost or free. But everytime I bring up foster care to a prolifer they come up with every excuse in the book. 

International adoption also cost a lot of money. Then there are shady adoption agencies stealing kids from families or keeping information from adoptive parents. 

So no adoption isn't easy. It's not like going to the grocery store. 

[Hisey]

On 6/5/2016 at 6:46 AM, alexandracabot said:

For those interested, JK Rowling, the "Harry Potter" author, actually has an entire charity devoted essentially to this, called Lumos. They shut down orphanages, retrain workers to be social workers, replace children with their families or with foster families, and funnel the money that would have gone into the orphanage into supporting the families, most of whom gave up their kids for economic reasons.

I was at an event where she spoke, and her line was, "There's no such thing as a good orphanage." Even a really beautiful institution with trained, caring staff is still an institution, and kids still suffer from all the consequences of institutionalization, especially young babies. 

Gotta be careful here. I've been to third world countries, and visited orphanages. Some of these chldren may technically "have parents" but these parents don't want to care for them, or mistreat them or have abandoned them. In Africa, many parnets have AIDs and abandon the children, and the oldest kid basically raises the youngers. They do so alone, picking through garbage or digging up plants in abandoned fields.

They do not have families that have homes with white picket fences.

Sometimes I wonder why people are so resistant to have minority children come to this country for adoption. It almost seems zenophobic. These kids live in conditions that are horrendous, many of them die, but because they have a distant uncle in the next village, we think they should "re-unite" with him. Having met some of these kids, I can assure you they'd prefer a home with running water, an education and three square a day. You can't underestimate the importance of this till you don't have it.

[hoipolloi]

6 minutes ago, Hisey said:

Sometimes I wonder why people are so resistant to have minority children come to this country for adoption. It almost seems zenophobic. These kids live in conditions that are horrendous, many of them die, but because they have a distant uncle in the next village, we think they should "re-unite" with him. Having met some of these kids, I can assure you they'd prefer a home with running water, an education and three square a day. You can't underestimate the importance of this till you don't have it.

Not sure anyone here is underestimating the importance of "running water, an education and three square a day." 

Rather, people are questioning the premises (true or false) under which minority children from other countries end up being "available" for adoption by US families. 

 

[Hisey]

2 hours ago, Duggarite said:

 

International adoption has always felt weird for me. I did not see how it was possible to have so many orphans, with both parents dead. Nor did I understand that poverty was a reason to give up children for adoption, we should be giving money to those families, not taking away their children. I understand that adoptive parents do think that they are doing something good for the child, but after watching the documentary I would not be able to go to other country in order to adopt a child.

If it feels weird to you, then you shouldn't do it. 

If you don't see how it's possible to have so many orphans, you should learn about AIDS and go to Africa. You could also educate yourself about the one-child policy in China, and perhaps visit a few orphanages.

I have photos I could attach of large rooms filled wall-to-wall with cribs. My daughter was in one of those cribs.

If you think it's better to leave a baby in those cribs, by all means do so. I am guessing you are donating money to re-unify families in poor countries instead. However, money wouldn't have helped my daughters. They were abandoned by their birth parents and there is no information about them. While there are no guarantees, both China and the US government confirmed their abandonment (though you can decide it's not true if you want).

Both my daughters came to us with very flat heads because their (loving but overworked) nannies were unable to pick them up enough.

Babies are babies, and children are children, whether they are Caucasian or Asian or black. I don't believe only white babies deserve the benefit of a healthy environment growing up, in whatever country that might be.

I've spoken to young people who were adopted at 14 from third-world countries. Their adoption was amazing to them, they were so happy to have a family. I'm glad their adoptive parents didn't find their adoption too "weird" to do. 

[Cleopatra7]

42 minutes ago, Hisey said:

Gotta be careful here. I've been to third world countries, and visited orphanages. Some of these chldren may technically "have parents" but these parents don't want to care for them, or mistreat them or have abandoned them. In Africa, many parnets have AIDs and abandon the children, and the oldest kid basically raises the youngers. They do so alone, picking through garbage or digging up plants in abandoned fields.

They do not have families that have homes with white picket fences.

Sometimes I wonder why people are so resistant to have minority children come to this country for adoption. It almost seems zenophobic. These kids live in conditions that are horrendous, many of them die, but because they have a distant uncle in the next village, we think they should "re-unite" with him. Having met some of these kids, I can assure you they'd prefer a home with running water, an education and three square a day. You can't underestimate the importance of this till you don't have it.

The problem is not with education or having three square meals a day, but human trafficking. The demand on the part of white fundegelicals for "orphans" is inadvertently causing children to be trafficked in unethical adoptions. The problems of the Global South aren't going to be solved by adopting all their children. Based on that logic one could argue that wealthy Norwegians should be allowed to take American children en masse because of our high rates of child poverty, poor public education system, and high teen pregnancy rates compared to Norway. The US may be the richest country in the world on paper, but there are pockets of poverty that are more akin to what one finds in the Global South: the "Black Belt" in the Deep South, the colonias on the US-Mexico border, Indian reservations, Appalachia, etc. If we aren't willing to hand over poor American children to well-heeled Europeans with no questions asked, then we shouldn't expect the same of people in the Global South.

[JesusCampSongs]

49 minutes ago, Hisey said:

Sometimes I wonder why people are so resistant to have minority children come to this country for adoption. It almost seems zenophobic. These kids live in conditions that are horrendous, many of them die, but because they have a distant uncle in the next village, we think they should "re-unite" with him. Having met some of these kids, I can assure you they'd prefer a home with running water, an education and three square a day. You can't underestimate the importance of this till you don't have it.

"intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries" is xenophobia (per the dictionary). 

Recognizing that the USA, for all of its electricity and indoor plumbing, has major issues with racism, and that importing foreign children of color into a country where they will be on the receiving end of said racism, with possibly fatal results, might not be the best of ideas, is realism. 

There is no transitive property of white privilege; I can't give an adopted child a pass on experiencing racism because s/he lives in my house and the government says s/he belongs to me. I can't reasonably expect that s/he'll never get shot by a vigilante like Trayvon Martin, or be gunned down without cause by law enforcement like Amadou Diallo, or be denied housing or passed up for jobs/promotions because of a too-ethnic name, or experience psychological damage by an untold number of microaggressive papercuts occurring on a daily basis. 

Which would you prefer: not having indoor plumbing or having to be a racial minority in a society as racist as the USA's? 

[Emme]

On 6/5/2016 at 11:53 AM, Cleopatra7 said:

There is a reason why orphanages no longer exist in most Western countries, and this video hits on this. As messy as the foster care system is, being in a family unit is much healthier for children than being in an institution. I think fundegelicals like orphanages because they were traditionally run by religious organizations, and I get the impression that this is still the case in the Global South.

 

There are actually still "institutions" in the US that are basically orphanages. They are bad. And yes, many orphanages are religiously affiliated outside the US. 

[Cleopatra7]

2 minutes ago, Emme said:

There are actually still "institutions" in the US that are basically orphanages. They are bad. And yes, many orphanages are religiously affiliated outside the US. 

Are these institutions still called "orphanages" or do they go by other names? Not snarking, I'm generally curious. How are group homes different than old school orphanages?

[Emme]

Just now, Cleopatra7 said:

Are these institutions still called "orphanages" or do they go by other names? Not snarking, I'm generally curious. How are group homes different than old school orphanages?

My understanding is that the modern day institutions (don't actually know what they are called, but know someone who parented a foster child from one), are a place to hold kids between foster placements/when figuring out where to put them, but can also be a more long-term setting. They sound rather cold and unfeeling from what the friend reported. That's not particularly helpful info, I don't know much other than I know that they exist and are not great. Group homes are smaller and ideally have staff that are trained in handling kids with trauma. I would hope a more therapeutic setting that also focuses on life skills stuff (because I know foster kids who age out often have knowledge gaps because they didn't have permanent placements). 

[kolga]

4 hours ago, JesusCampSongs said:

"I can't reasonably expect that s/he'll never get shot by a vigilante like Trayvon Martin,

Did you mean George Zimmerman? Trayvon Martin was the one who was shot by Zimmerman. Martin wasn't the vigilante.

[Mercer]

6 hours ago, Hisey said:

Having met some of these kids, I can assure you they'd prefer a home with running water, an education and three square a day. You can't underestimate the importance of this till you don't have it.

Adoption doesn't address the root of those problems, though. It removes one child from the situation while leaving other children and adults exactly where they were. Adoption is not a cure for systemic issues, or for economic inequality, and cannot be viewed as such. The underlying issues are still there, and just removing a handful of children to new homes won't fix it

That doesn't mean adoption is bad or shouldn't happen. Being raised in a family environment is crucial for healthy child development. For some children, their best/only shot at having that is through adoption, and in some cases that just isn't an option in their country of origin. (Though these children are often older and have special needs; the children in the greatest need do not tend to be the children in great demand by prospective adoptive parents.) I'm fully aware that sometimes international adoption really is the best viable option for a specific child, and shouldn't be dismissed just because it doesn't save the whole world.

Adoption is the solution to not having a family, though, not the solution to poverty.

[dianapavelovna]

The always excellent Kathryn Joyce was mentioned upthread, and, funnily enough, I just read her review of this book. NB that I have not read the book, but several bits Joyce described in the review stood out.

Quote

In one crushing account, a couple named Jiang and Xu had an over-quota second child in 2003: the daughter they’d been wanting for years. It was a time of harsh family planning enforcement in their area, when married women were required to have four annual pregnancy tests to ensure they didn’t become pregnant outside of family planning guidelines. If they did, local policy mandated abortion and sterilization. Local family planning officials operated under the threat of docked salaries for over-quota births and offered rewards to anonymous tipsters who informed on their neighbors.

When Jiang became pregnant, she hid it by eating little to avoid showing, using a non-pregnant friend’s urine at her mandatory pregnancy tests, and spending the last months of her pregnancy hidden at her mother’s home in another town. Jiang succeeded in giving birth, but when her daughter was nine months old, a group of seven men surrounded the house, forced their way inside and seized the child. The couple ended up in a standoff with the officials, pleading to pay any level of fine imposed and refusing to let the men take the baby from their arms. Ultimately, the officials prevailed. Years later, the couple would learn their daughter had been adopted internationally—a discovery that gave them some comfort, since they hadn’t been told anything about where she’d been taken, but which reopened old wounds and still left them with no contact beyond a few early letters from the adoptive parents.

 

Quote

Johnson writes of some bold parents who fought back in the face of government efforts to seize their adopted children. One family who’d invested in multiple surgeries to correct their adopted son’s cleft palate carried around a marked-up copy of the national adoption law—which made an exception for over-quota children with medical needs—and their son’s medical records to challenge any government officials who argued their adoption was illegal. Another single man, who’d adopted a daughter with his mother only to have the government take her away, later adopted again, and threatened local family planning officials that if they took another child from him, he’d kill them. (“I am a bachelor; without my daughter, I will have no family and nothing to lose,” he recounted to Johnson. “They know what I say is true and won’t dare come again.”)

What this indicated to Johnson is that, were it not for official government suppression of Chinese adoption traditions, “nearly all relinquished healthy daughters in the 1990s could have found families who wanted them in China, leaving few healthy children available for international adoption.”

More food for thought. I'm afraid I don't have any insightful commentary to offer. International adoption is a tricky issue with valid concerns raised from all perspectives.

[AuLait]

16 hours ago, Hisey said:

Gotta be careful here. I've been to third world countries, and visited orphanages. Some of these chldren may technically "have parents" but these parents don't want to care for them, or mistreat them or have abandoned them. In Africa, many parnets have AIDs and abandon the children, and the oldest kid basically raises the youngers. They do so alone, picking through garbage or digging up plants in abandoned fields.

They do not have families that have homes with white picket fences.

Sometimes I wonder why people are so resistant to have minority children come to this country for adoption. It almost seems zenophobic. These kids live in conditions that are horrendous, many of them die, but because they have a distant uncle in the next village, we think they should "re-unite" with him. Having met some of these kids, I can assure you they'd prefer a home with running water, an education and three square a day. You can't underestimate the importance of this till you don't have it.

Of course some children will need to be up for adoption because family can't/won't care for them. That is a given. No one is suggesting we force children (and adults) into living situations they do not want.

What I took from the video is that for those parents or relatives who DO want to keep their children but can't/won't due to financial, health, or education concerns monies are better put towards keeping those families together rather than putting the child in an institution and then that child being adopted internationally, maybe never to see their loved ones again. Keeping families together, when it's possible. It won't always be possible.

[alexandracabot]

On 6/6/2016 at 7:21 PM, Hisey said:

Gotta be careful here. I've been to third world countries, and visited orphanages. Some of these chldren may technically "have parents" but these parents don't want to care for them, or mistreat them or have abandoned them. In Africa, many parnets have AIDs and abandon the children, and the oldest kid basically raises the youngers. They do so alone, picking through garbage or digging up plants in abandoned fields.

They do not have families that have homes with white picket fences.

Sometimes I wonder why people are so resistant to have minority children come to this country for adoption. It almost seems zenophobic. These kids live in conditions that are horrendous, many of them die, but because they have a distant uncle in the next village, we think they should "re-unite" with him. Having met some of these kids, I can assure you they'd prefer a home with running water, an education and three square a day. You can't underestimate the importance of this till you don't have it.

Sorry, serious LOL that you have "visited third world countries" and "seen orphanages" and think that means that you somehow know the issues facing these children and countries better than a massive international foundation that's devoted to studying these problems and working alongside governments to fix them? They're basing this off of literal decades of research and very, very careful study, plus collaboration with people who actually, you know, LIVE in the countries that you apparently believe are cesspools of death and disease, and nothing more.

Lumos estimates that in Haiti, just as an example, 80% of children in orphanages have families — and that's after the earthquake. The vast majority of parents or relatives have "abandoned" their children because they can't afford it, not because they don't love them. Your Western view, which is maybe based on the reasons that Western children end up in the foster care system, does not line up with how children in developing countries end up in orphanages. It is mostly an economic cause or related to being unable to cope with a child's disability (which is also basically an economic issue), not because the children are unwanted or mistreated.

People aren't advocating for children to languish in garbage dumps as an alternative, they're advocating for money and resources to be used to return those children, with support, to their own families and communities — rather than shipping across the world or putting them in orphanages.

Obviously international adoption is preferable to death or illness or malnourishment. But just because a family is poorer than you think is acceptable, or lives differently than your Western standards, doesn't mean they don't deserve the opportunity to raise their own children or their direct relatives. That should be the first priority. 

 

[Inthemadhouse]

I have close family members moving to a group home next week. They are cute, loveable kids with no  serious mental/emotional/physical problems.  The issue is lack of foster homes available for three children of mixed genders and no available family to take them in. 

The place seems nice.  There are cottages that are set up like homes, with a house mother and a limited number of kids.  Each one has a dog and seems to be set up to provide as much of a homelike situation as possible.  The place has it's own school and doctors office. 

The goal is for the children to return to their mother, and they will stay in the group home until either that happens or it becomes clear that she can not have them back and an adoptive placement will be found.

It's not a home, but what else do you do with kids when there are no homes available? 

 

[Rubaiyat]

I have a lovely friend who sponsors several children through Compassion International.  I've only heard good things, although I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea of trading support for religious indoctrination.  I'm not suggesting CI does that, I'm saying I don't know and neither does my friend.  

Does anyone know anything more about them?  Is religious participation compulsory for support?  My friend, who has also adopted, likes to say "I don't want or need another woman's child, especially if $40 a month keeps them in her arms," or something to that effect.  This thread may be the last bit of prompting I need to find a couple things in my own monthly budget I don't need that could go toward keeping a much loved, and well cared-for child at home.  

What's the adage? No one can do everything, but everyone can do something?  This may need to be one of my somethings.  Thanks in advance for any info!!

[Toothfairy]

On Monday, June 06, 2016 at 8:00 PM, Cleopatra7 said:

The problem is not with education or having three square meals a day, but human trafficking. The demand on the part of white fundegelicals for "orphans" is inadvertently causing children to be trafficked in unethical adoptions. The problems of the Global South aren't going to be solved by adopting all their children. Based on that logic one could argue that wealthy Norwegians should be allowed to take American children en masse because of our high rates of child poverty, poor public education system, and high teen pregnancy rates compared to Norway. The US may be the richest country in the world on paper, but there are pockets of poverty that are more akin to what one finds in the Global South: the "Black Belt" in the Deep South, the colonias on the US-Mexico border, Indian reservations, Appalachia, etc. If we aren't willing to hand over poor American children to well-heeled Europeans with no questions asked, then we shouldn't expect the same of people in the Global South.

 Love your post! 

Also a bunch of Americans were bitching when Russia closed down their adoption to America. If American kids were adopted by Russians then killed or abuse people would be shouting to stop adoption to Russia.

4 hours ago, Inthemadhouse said:

I have close family members moving to a group home next week. They are cute, loveable kids with no  serious mental/emotional/physical problems.  The issue is lack of foster homes available for three children of mixed genders and no available family to take them in. 

The place seems nice.  There are cottages that are set up like homes, with a house mother and a limited number of kids.  Each one has a dog and seems to be set up to provide as much of a homelike situation as possible.  The place has it's own school and doctors office. 

The goal is for the children to return to their mother, and they will stay in the group home until either that happens or it becomes clear that she can not have them back and an adoptive placement will be found.

It's not a home, but what else do you do with kids when there are no homes available? 

 

How old are they? It's sad kids especially over 10 go to group homes. I had to turn down placements because I'm "full" but cps is so desperate for foster homes. They're willing to put kids in homes with no beds available.  

On Tuesday, June 07, 2016 at 10:50 AM, AuLait said:

Of course some children will need to be up for adoption because family can't/won't care for them. That is a given. No one is suggesting we force children (and adults) into living situations they do not want.

What I took from the video is that for those parents or relatives who DO want to keep their children but can't/won't due to financial, health, or education concerns monies are better put towards keeping those families together rather than putting the child in an institution and then that child being adopted internationally, maybe never to see their loved ones again. Keeping families together, when it's possible. It won't always be possible.

Its sad how adoption agencies lie and pass these kids off as orphans. They're not. Their families are too poor to care for them. In America people can try to apply for food stamps,section 8,WIC,disability  in  third world countries this isn't an option.  

On Tuesday, June 07, 2016 at 1:49 AM, Mercer said:

Adoption doesn't address the root of those problems, though. It removes one child from the situation while leaving other children and adults exactly where they were. Adoption is not a cure for systemic issues, or for economic inequality, and cannot be viewed as such. The underlying issues are still there, and just removing a handful of children to new homes won't fix it

That doesn't mean adoption is bad or shouldn't happen. Being raised in a family environment is crucial for healthy child development. For some children, their best/only shot at having that is through adoption, and in some cases that just isn't an option in their country of origin. (Though these children are often older and have special needs; the children in the greatest need do not tend to be the children in great demand by prospective adoptive parents.) I'm fully aware that sometimes international adoption really is the best viable option for a specific child, and shouldn't be dismissed just because it doesn't save the whole world.

Adoption is the solution to not having a family, though, not the solution to poverty.

And this is what these evangelical christians are missing. The orphan sunday and one church one child movements doesn't solve the root of the problem. How do we prevent kids from being put in orphanages or kids from coming into foster care? 

[Toothfairy]

On Monday, June 06, 2016 at 8:47 PM, Cleopatra7 said:

Are these institutions still called "orphanages" or do they go by other names? Not snarking, I'm generally curious. How are group homes different than old school orphanages?

There's different levels and types of group homes. Basically just imgaine taking 6-10 kids all with the same problems,trauma, and issues, overmedicating them and keep locks and cameras everywhere. Even the bathroom. Some group homes are nice. I'm technically a group home because I have 6+ kids. The state can give waivers so foster parents can take in more kids. 

A lot of group homes IMO aren't good. A ton of kids are abused,molested,raped and forgotten about. Relationships aren't formed because staff get paid minimum wages and quit,leave or move on. The sofa is nailed down to the floor. Locks and alarms on the refrigerator, doors, windows,bathroom,  staff holding kids down when they misbehave or putting them in a room until they calm down.

Group homes were meant to serve kids with severe issues and juvenile delinquents short term. It's a step away from residential treatment in some cases. 

Unfortunately due to lack of foster homes kids especially teens, the hardest to place are placed there. My daughter was in a group home for 6 months level 14. Highest level which is for kids with severe emotional issues and juvenile  delinquents.  Why? She was 14 caseworker called 40 placements all said no and she had nowhere else to go. Until 6 months later they called me to take her. Some of my other kids have similar stories like this. 

Not every group home is bad. Some are nice and offer services. Like Alabama children's home. Others are awful. 

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150723/PC16/150709453

On Monday, June 06, 2016 at 8:09 PM, JesusCampSongs said:

"intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries" is xenophobia (per the dictionary). 

Recognizing that the USA, for all of its electricity and indoor plumbing, has major issues with racism, and that importing foreign children of color into a country where they will be on the receiving end of said racism, with possibly fatal results, might not be the best of ideas, is realism. 

There is no transitive property of white privilege; I can't give an adopted child a pass on experiencing racism because s/he lives in my house and the government says s/he belongs to me. I can't reasonably expect that s/he'll never get shot by a vigilante like Trayvon Martin, or be gunned down without cause by law enforcement like Amadou Diallo, or be denied housing or passed up for jobs/promotions because of a too-ethnic name, or experience psychological damage by an untold number of microaggressive papercuts occurring on a daily basis. 

Which would you prefer: not having indoor plumbing or having to be a racial minority in a society as racist as the USA's? 

Both are awful. White folks who are colored blind can harm their black child. The child grows up thinking their white looking black but then society treats them as a black person. White people shouldn't adopt if they don't believe in black lives or admit to their white privilege. 

 

One if the stories on the child catchers was an above rubies couple adopted from Africa and treated the kids like slaves. The kids said they went from Africa back to Africa

[PraiseDog]

Geez, late to this thread, but thank you for posting this video.  It cleared up many misconceptions I had about international adoptions.  Really, $37 per month (per the first Ethiopian family profiled) was all it took to help this family keep and take care of their children?  That's astounding, and something all these missioncationaries would do well to remember.  

[foreign fundie]

Honest question here, not attempting to attack anyone or something.

Many Americans are prepared to financially adopt a child in the Global South so it can stay with its own family. Now I know a European couple who adopted a black baby from the USA. (Open adotions from the USA were quite popular a while ago, don't know about now.)https://psmag.com/america-s-unseen-export-children-most-of-them-black-c5280185c4f0#.w287z72wt

The single mom had a kid already and was too poor to raise another one. Would well-of people in the USA be willing to sponser such a kid, so he could stay with his mum? Or is that a different matter and if so, why?

I wonder because it sometimes seems we (myself included) feel more drawn to or feel more compassion for people in far and unknown places. It seems natural to want to help them or solve their poverty. Yet poor people nearby are expected to help themselves or more easily judged.

[PraiseDog]

That's a good question Foreign Fundie, and I don't pretend to know the answer to it. I do speculate that when people try to adopt a child from a different country, they prefer to believe the country of origin rejects this child, for whatever reason. Sometimes that's true - sometimes not - but when this child comes from the same country, there's more judgement about the parents.