Needed Balance for CTV’s Adoption Report: The Real Reason Parents Choose International Adoption

Heh.  My wife found out that her family while in Ottawa for an award for adoption advocacy (for their oldest adopted son), were put on camera for a Robert Fife piece about adoption.  The more I watch it the more I think the CTV was actually taking a swipe at them for adopting from Russia.  They split the piece giving them a pat on the head for adopting six children from Russia’s underfunded, unsafe orphanages, but then launch into a plea for Canadian adoption.  The quick suggestion by the narrator is that people don’t like to adopt in Canada because of FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome), a common problem amongst the many thousands of aboriginal children in the system in Canada.  However if the guy took two seconds to talk to my in-laws, they would know that those same reasons are held up for not adopting from Russia - FAS is a major problem there too.

The biggest reason in my mind to choose international adoption over domestic is not FAS or “red tape” as the video suggests.  The biggest reason is that the need simply is not as great for children in Canada as it is in places like China, Haiti, or Russia.  While our system isn’t perfect, the child welfare system in Canada work pretty well.  All orphans or children under protection are housed in hoster families, with a semblance of a normal life.  They are well funded and supported and want for nothing, except real parents (though as someone who knows many foster parents, do not doubt that the vast majority really love the children in their care!)

Contrast this with the situation my new brothers and sisters (in law) left behind in eastern Russia.  They resided in an orphanage, with hundreds of other kids.  While America and Canada may have progressed beyond the “Little Orphan Annie” institution, Russia has not had the funds.  Their building was an ancient cement structure, with unreliable heating and electricity.  In the year before they were adopted, for months in the middle of winter some orphanages in their city with without heat at all.

Imagine that.  Russian winter, without heat for months.

As Coltyn said in the video, rats were commonplace in the building.  The staff there cared as best they could for them, but were sparse given the numbers of children in their care.  Health care was sporadic at best.  I could tell you a lot more about different health concerns that they faced after coming to Canada, but our system was up to the task.

Russia is better today than 7 years ago when most of them were adopted.  But they still run orphanages, and an institution is no way to raise a child.

Other countries that are popular are worse off.  Haiti is well known for its problems.  Ethiopia is also one which is commonly looked at, as well as old Eastern Bloc countries like Romania and Bulgaria, and the Ukraine.  Compared to them, Canada’s orphans are in paradise.  That to me is the real driver of most international adoptions.

It is really sad that so many Canadians, living as we do with Satellite TV and cel phones for everyone, and an XBox 360 in every room of even the poorest households, have the gall to complain that they “can’t afford” more kids.  Whether natural or adopted, children need love and care first and foremost.   Lucky for us, those are renewable resources that actually increase in quantity with each additional child in your life.  The fact that there are any children that need adoption at all should be a shame to us all that we prefer to have our twice annual trip to Cancun than to give an orphan the love and the family that they deserve - whether Canadian-born or born elsewhere.

If you could do something to save one child’s life, why wouldn’t you?  Do your part.  Not everyone needs to do what my family did.  But everyone should do something.  Support an adoption group or charity.  Support a group that seeks to improve the plight of orphans in the 3rd world.  Consider adoption.  Give a child a home.  Imagine what kind of message it sends to your children about compassion and caring in adding a child to it who never had a home.  If you’ve raised your children right, they’d be thrilled to switch to a bunk bed to save a new brother or sister from life without a family.