In China, a whole adoption industry has sprung up, from tour operators running trips to orphanages, to hotels catering for foreigners who, after many months of paperwork, go to collect their child (and “donations” of around US$3,000 are often made to orphanages).
But even though the Chinese adoption system is usually well regulated, there have been reports of babies being snatched and sold to orphanages. Last year, adoption authorities temporarily stopped adoptions in the Hunan Province in southern China after a baby-trafficking ring was exposed (10 people were convicted).
Of course it is understandable that anyone who visits a country where poverty is rife would want to take a child out of that, but it’s not as simple as saving someone; people sometimes underestimate the trauma some children can suffer if they are taken out of their country. Chris Atkins, a social worker for the adoption support service After Adoption, was adopted from Hong Kong in the 1960s by a white couple. “I have worked with adult transnational adoptees who have suffered breakdowns, have problems with relationships and have huge issues with their identity,” she says. “There is the feeling of displacement, the constant challenge to fit in somewhere and it lasts a lifetime. I grew up with a fear of rejection and I still don’t feel entirely comfortable in British society but nor do I feel comfortable in Chinese society. I love my parents dearly and on the one hand I’m glad I had the opportunities I’ve had. But I would rather have stayed in Hong Kong.”
So what will the effect on all these celebrity adopted children be? Joan Crawford adopted her four children, ostensibly for the good publicity, but her relationship with them was so bad she disinherited two and the remaining two only got tiny slices of her fortune. Surely, like children who stay with their birth parents, some adopted children will have problems, others won’t. In an interview earlier this year, Mia Farrow said of her daughter’s relationship with Allen: “She was on the streets in Korea when she was captured and brought to the state orphanage. And in a way I can see from her perspective — a very limited perspective — that she’s improved her situation.”
Maybe the biggest problem these kids will face isn’t the fact of their adoption — it is being the children of celebrity parents.
RSS