Adoption Children From Africa, Research Paper Example

Many children are adopted from foreign countries to parents in the United States who are unable to have children of their own or have a desire to add diversity to their family. Although these children are adopted from many countries, parents-to-be typically prefer countries in Africa and Asia due to the speedy process involved and the availability of many children who need to find good homes. While these adoption practices are common, many individuals believe that this adoption method is inappropriate. Critics claim that lack of regulation of adoption practices in Africa make this process unfair to their country of origin and the child’s original family, and that adoptive parents are often unaware with the struggles that are faced in the child’s home family as a consequence. It is therefore necessary to determine the main reasons why families adopt children from Africa in addition to the process involved that many future parents are unable to examine. Ultimately, adopting children from Africa does more harm to the child’s biological parents and the country of origin than it does benefit for foreign parents.

Adopting children from Africa is an easily observable trend in the United States and many other nations. Celebrity families, such as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, are well known for endorsing this trend. Many factors contribute to the popularity of adopting children from Africa, but the most prominent reason behind this is the long and difficult process that families are required to go through in order to adopt a child from the United States. Families who wish to adopt American children are required to go through strict regulatory processes (Hicks). First, they must register with their local adoption agencies, which typically require a fee and thorough examination of the interested family. This process may include a series of interview and a home examination, depending on the agency, and agencies must comply with governmental regulations to ensure that all potential adoptive parents will be able to offer their child a good home and upbringing (Grant). In addition, potential adoptive parents often have to wait several years before they are able to receive a child due to the process involved. In some cases, pregnant mothers will be interviewed and allowed to determine which family will be allowed to adopt her child. While this could be conducted anonymously, some pregnant mothers wish to meet the potential adoptive parents face to face. In other situations, the child is matched to the potential adoptive family based on information the family provided to the adoption agency and families are matched on this basis. As a consequence, some families are more likely to acquire a child before others and there is a certain amount of bias involved in this process. It is possible that some families will never be matched. In order to bypass this long and stressful process, many couples decide to adopt children from overseas where these regulations are not in place. Therefore, adopting children from Africa is a popular option.

Individuals who are opposed to the adoption of African children claim that this practice should be discontinued for several reasons. Firstly, the origin of the adopted child is uncertain. Adoption is a profitable process, and this extends to adoptions that occur in the United States. Unlike the bureaucratically regulated processes that occur domestically however, parents who wish to adopt children overseas are able to move the process along more quickly by offering money. Although interviews with the potential adoptive family may be required by some agencies, this can be overlooked in other cases. Essentially, many adoption agencies located in Africa are unconcerned with the quality of the potential parents which reflects a lack of concern regarding child welfare. This may extend to the fact that these adoption agencies may not be truthful as to the origin of the children they distribute to foreign couples and it is possible that many children may be taken away from families that are perfectly capable of caring and providing for them and wish to keep them in their care. In other cases, it is possible that these African adoption agencies are offering loving families such as great sum of money for their child that they are unable to refuse the offer due to their financial situation. While these practices would be considered illegal in the United States, this same process isn’t regulated in many African countries so these adoption agencies are able to get away with many unethical practices (Fogg-Davis). Upon examining this situation more closely, it appears that the agencies are buying and selling children in order to gain a profit, which, in essence, is slavery.

A 2012 article entitled “African adoption should be discouraged ‘at all costs,’ group say” published on CNN’s website backs up this argument (Whiteman). The article begins by discussing a young African child by the name of Nyla who was adopted by a family living in Hong Kong. When the parents asked for the child’s backstory, they were informed that “Nyla was just two or three days old, no one really knows for sure, when she was found abandoned in the middle of a field in Rwanda”. In addition, the child appeared to be in a fragile state; she appeared to be black and blue and her umbilical cord was still attached. However, it is difficult to confirm whether this story was true or not. According to the The African Child Policy Forum (ACPF), many African children are taken from their home country illegally and that it is difficult to determine the origin of these children due to the lack of documentation provided to adoptive families. Essentially, it is difficult to determine whether young African children are taken from loving families against the family’s will, if these adoption agencies are buying these children with the permission of the family, or whether the process is completely legal and children without homes are being found new families overseas. However, it is certain that the money involved could encourage illegal processes and that it is almost impossible for adoptive families to know whether or not this occurred in their individual case. Ultimately, those who oppose the adoption of children from Africa believe this process should be stopped because the lack of adoption regulation encourages child abuse.

Since the adoption of children from Africa encourages illegal activities, some of which may directly damage the child, many organizations are calling for either the cessation or regulation of these practices. A recent study found that “In the eight years from 2003 to 2010, more than half of the children adopted from Africa came from Ethiopia (22,282), followed by South Africa (1,871), Liberia (1,355) and Madagascar (1,331) and Nigeria (1,118), according to Selman” (Whiteman). Humanitarian organizations are therefore calling for a family driven policy to prevent the illegal acquisition of children for adoption overseas. While this is a long and difficult process, an obvious first step will be to involve governments in the illegal trade of these children and increase the sentence for offenders. In addition, there is a clear need for law enforcement to crack down on these practices. It may be difficult to establish this regulation due to the economic status of these countries, and in situations where this may not be financially possible, it is necessary to enforce regulation in the country that the child will be sent to live.

While it is difficult to determine the origin of adoptive children who are born overseas, the government of the adoptive parents can play an essential role in identifying children that have been illegally transferred to a new family. Since many countries require customs processes, this screening can potential occur when the child arrives on the soil of the new country. Rather than accepting the story of the adoptive parents and allowing the family access to the country, it may be necessary to implement a process that requires questioning of the individuals or organization of the group that transferred the care of the child to the new family. If members of the U.S. government are able to interview the adoption organization regarding the status of each adoptive child that enters the country, they will be more likely to detect illegal procedures. An additional way that would assist child abuse in the form of international adoption would be to locally convince parents of the terrors that are involved in this adoptive process and encouragement to accept the system set in place in the United States and other countries that require the regulation of adoption.

In order to ensure that potential adoptive parents are aware of the evils of overseas adoption, it is necessary to implement an education program. In addition, it may be necessary to conduct more field research in order to determine the stories of individuals who were born in Africa and sent to the United States. Ways to determine whether the adoption was truly illegal or influenced by money would be to send researchers to the several African countries that most overseas adoptions occur in. Then, the researchers should interview families to find those that were impacted by the lack of regulation of adoption. It is important for these families to be allowed to communicate with potential adoptive parents in other countries to demonstrate the damage that this is causing them. Ways to spread this information could be in the form of documentaries and public service announcements. Furthermore, legal adoptive agencies in the potential adoptive parent’s home country should make these individuals aware of the benefits of the domestic adoption process over adopting children from overseas. Ultimately, the parents can be assured that they are in fact giving a child in need a good home and that they feel safe knowing their child’s origin.

In conclusion, allowing potential adoptive parents to retrieve children from Africa is unethical as long as we ignore the fact that the origin of these children are unknown. We prefer to believe that these children are being treated fairly and being sent to a loving home, but in many situations this was already the case. Many of these children were taken from their families in exchange for profit, and human trafficking is illegal. Therefore it is necessary to search alternative options, and above all else, to promote domestic adoption to ensure that all children are being treated fairly.

Works Cited

Fogg-Davis H. The Ethics of Transracial Adoption. 2002.

Grant A. Why You Should Consider Open Adoption. Adoptimist. 2 August 2013. Web. 5 April 2014.

Hicks R. “adoption: The Essential Guide to Adopting Quickly and Safely. Perigee Press, 2007

Whiteman H. African adoption should be discouraged ‘at all costs,’ group says. 31 May 2012. Web. 5 April 2014. <http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/29/world/africa/africa-child-adoption/>