'The lie we love' was published in the winter of 2008, in Foreign Policy Magazine. The journalist E.J. Graff analyzed the myth of the millions of abandoned children (babies) in orphanages in poor countries who are waiting to be saved by Western families. The myth was that in reality most children in orphanages have parents and are either sick or older; the babies who are adopted have been placed for adoption with dubious methods or through trafficking. The culprits are not the adopting parents who have good intentious but are largely naive, but middle men (and women), orphanages, authorities and agencies which demand and earn high fees in the transaction of placing children for adoption.
There is enough evidence for this argument. Baby trafficking took place in Guatemala and more recently in China. Child abductions are known from India and Nepal. There are unscrupulous orphanages in most countries, that place children abroad. Reports like this are useful for alerting the public and making clear to those concerned that the public has an eye on their practices.
At the same time, scandalizing reports like this cover as much as they unveil. They aim to mobilize rather than inform. They emphasize on the fraud and pars pro toto insinuate that fraud is endemic in the system as a whole. By doing so they perpetuate another myth.
The other myth is that international adoption is an unregulated industry. (The use of the terms 'industry' and 'markets for babies' in these reports are deliberate innuendos to highlight that children are treated as commodities.) This is a popular but false assertion. Any adoption recognition of a foreign court by a German, any visa application and naturalization of internationally adopted children is mediated by the state and highly regulated. German courts regularly reject requests for legal recognition, if the procedures do not fulfill German standards of adoption and alternative forms of care were not checked. This hurts the families, but it is enough to make agencies taking the existing regulation more seriously.
The same is true for the US. If the American embassy staff feel "uneasy" with many visa applications (Graff, p. 65), then they have a duty to act. And in contrast to the myth of unregulated industry American embassies have acted in the past. Last year, 80 adopting families were stranded in Nepal due to embassy action; currently Cambodia is in the spotlight. Countries have been completely closed for IA by receiving countries due to corruption and trafficking. As a result, there are steadily falling numbers of adoptions and more and more countries closed for adoption despite the myth of a networked and seemingly profitable industry backed up by a powerful political lobby.
The point is not to excuse any trafficking or corruption in international adoption, which clearly takes place. There are too many irregularities and corrupt middlemen in many procedures. The existing regulation via issuance of visas and recognition procedures of court is too indirect, bureaucratic and often painfully slow. This is undisputed. However, the image of an unregulated industry entirely governed by greed, corruption and lies is equally a myth - just like the millions of orphaned babies waiting to be rescued. It is an image that is portrayed as a counterpart to the idyll of the loving adoptive family in a world full of scandals. The truth is, as is so often, somewhere in the middle: complex, complicated and less suitable for a good story.
There is enough evidence for this argument. Baby trafficking took place in Guatemala and more recently in China. Child abductions are known from India and Nepal. There are unscrupulous orphanages in most countries, that place children abroad. Reports like this are useful for alerting the public and making clear to those concerned that the public has an eye on their practices.
At the same time, scandalizing reports like this cover as much as they unveil. They aim to mobilize rather than inform. They emphasize on the fraud and pars pro toto insinuate that fraud is endemic in the system as a whole. By doing so they perpetuate another myth.
The other myth is that international adoption is an unregulated industry. (The use of the terms 'industry' and 'markets for babies' in these reports are deliberate innuendos to highlight that children are treated as commodities.) This is a popular but false assertion. Any adoption recognition of a foreign court by a German, any visa application and naturalization of internationally adopted children is mediated by the state and highly regulated. German courts regularly reject requests for legal recognition, if the procedures do not fulfill German standards of adoption and alternative forms of care were not checked. This hurts the families, but it is enough to make agencies taking the existing regulation more seriously.
The same is true for the US. If the American embassy staff feel "uneasy" with many visa applications (Graff, p. 65), then they have a duty to act. And in contrast to the myth of unregulated industry American embassies have acted in the past. Last year, 80 adopting families were stranded in Nepal due to embassy action; currently Cambodia is in the spotlight. Countries have been completely closed for IA by receiving countries due to corruption and trafficking. As a result, there are steadily falling numbers of adoptions and more and more countries closed for adoption despite the myth of a networked and seemingly profitable industry backed up by a powerful political lobby.
The point is not to excuse any trafficking or corruption in international adoption, which clearly takes place. There are too many irregularities and corrupt middlemen in many procedures. The existing regulation via issuance of visas and recognition procedures of court is too indirect, bureaucratic and often painfully slow. This is undisputed. However, the image of an unregulated industry entirely governed by greed, corruption and lies is equally a myth - just like the millions of orphaned babies waiting to be rescued. It is an image that is portrayed as a counterpart to the idyll of the loving adoptive family in a world full of scandals. The truth is, as is so often, somewhere in the middle: complex, complicated and less suitable for a good story.
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