Korean scholars revisit international adoptions from Korea

In recent news from my alma mater, St. Olaf College, English professor, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, is mentioned for her co-authored essay, "Rethinking Consent to Adoption," about internation adoptions of Korean children.

Concerning the numbers for 2009,

With the international trend clearly turning toward domestic solutions and family preservation, we may wonder why over 1,080 babies went to the U.S. from South Korea this year for adoption.

The authors continue by pointing out the legal (and fading cultural) bias against unwed mothers. That bias has been the engine behind moving the children of those unwed mothers into adoption, rather than promoting family preservation or even domestic adoption within Korea. The writers note that the laws are changing to accomodate a longer period for a mother to consider placing her child for adoption, but they encourage that much more be done to improve the attitude and process of adoption in Korea.

Fascinating perspective.

Mayo Clinic electronic newsletter

The Mayo Clinic website has tons of great information, even beyond what we usually consider medical information, such as healthy eating and various aspects of healthy living. On the Clinic's homepage, you can sign up to receive its electronic newsletter.

Recently, the newsletter ran this helpful piece on talking to children about adoption. Topics in the article include when to talk to your child about adoption, how to discuss it, how to address racial or cultural differences, and answering children's questions.

Insights into international adoptions

A story in the New York Times looks at international adoptions, especially adoptions of Korean children in the 1950s to 1980s, and the difficulty with cultural and racial adjustments the children went through. Now adults, numerous adoptees were interviewed for a report, which enlightens many issues of transracial adoptions.

The report was issued by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a nonprofit adoption research and policy group based in New York. Since 1953, parents in the United States have adopted more than a half-million children from other countries, the vast majority of them from orphanages in Asia, South America and, most recently, Africa. Yet the impact of such adoptions on identity has been only sporadically studied. The authors of the Donaldson Adoption Institute study said they hoped their work would guide policymakers, parents and adoption agencies in helping the current generation of children adopted from Asian countries to form healthy identities.

“So much of the research on transracial adoption has been done from the perspective of adoptive parents or adolescent children,” said Adam Pertman, executive director of the institute. “We wanted to be able to draw on the knowledge and life experience of a group of individuals who can provide insight into what we need to do better.”

The study recommends several changes in adoption practices that the institute said are important, including better support for adoptive parents and recognition that adoption grows in significance for their children from young adulthood on, and throughout adulthood. South Korea was the first country from which Americans adopted in significant numbers. From 1953 to 2007, an estimated 160,000 South Korean children were adopted by people from other countries, most of them in the United States. They make up the largest group of transracial adoptees in the United States and, by some estimates, are 10 percent of the nation’s Korean population.

The report says that significant changes have occurred since the first generation of adopted children were brought to the United States, a time when parents were told to assimilate the children into their families without regard for their native culture.

Yet even adoptees who are exposed to their culture and have parents who discuss issues of race and discrimination say they found it difficult growing up.

Adoption can be an uphill struggle

In a heartwrenching story, with a likely happy ending, a West Virginia couple learned that giving foster care to a child does not always neatly lead to the availability of the child for adoption. In the New York Times account of the story of Kathryn Kutil and Cheryl Hess, it was even more complicated by the state's position on their same-sex relationship. Early in the article, the reporter asks, "Was it somehow O.K. for a lesbian couple to care for older kids no one else would take in but not for a newborn whom another set of more "deserving" parents might want?"

Several states outright prohibit adoption by homosexuals, and in some states only one party of a gay couple can adopt but not both parties. In the case of Kutil and Hess, when their infant foster child became available for adoption, the court opined "that the best interest of the child is to be raised by a traditional family, mother and father."

Ultimately, the West Virginia supreme court had to decide that the judge had improperly weighed the various factors to determine the best interest of the child. However, the adoption will still require approval of the state health and human services department and confirmation by a county judge, all of which will take several more months.

As Kathryn Kutil said before the jury in the county courthouse, "We've done nothing wrong but love this baby and love her with everything we had."

An angle on Chinese New Year in America

Happy Year of the Ox!

A recent L. A. Times story tells of families with adopted children from Asia celebrating the New Year:

For the Larsons and thousands of U.S. families who have adopted children from Asia, the Lunar New Year is a moment to help their children reconnect with their homeland and for parents to discover a culture that would otherwise be foreign to them. Lunar New Year, which occurs today, is regarded as the most important cultural holiday among Chinese, Vietnamese and some Koreans.

(Photo by dbking; used by permission.)

Can surrogacy ever go "mainstream"?

Recently, the New York Times magazine told the story of a woman whose child was carried by a gestational surrogate.

In expressing her conflicting emotions, the author writes, "It was a desperate measure, to be sure, and one complicated by questions from all the big sectiors: financial, religious, social, moral, legal, political."

Even amidst her mix of feeling inferior and feeling elated, the new mother shares her joy of participating in the miracle of life: "The miracle of [our son's] existence speaks to the generosity of humanity--and to the magical, unified coordination of more than a dozen people in the act of his creation."

Earlier this year, Newsweek reported about military wives who become surrogates for numerous reasons, including the extra income.

(Photo by anyjazz65; used by permission.)

Biology and family dynamics blur

In a slightly irreverent telling of the scientific and medical news, William Slateren writes in Slate.com about "another guy got his mother-in-law pregnant." No, it's not a made-for-tv, sordid interfamily love triangle.

When a "mother" was unable to bear her own child because she had had a hysterectomy, the woman and her husband had her egg fertilized with his sperm (so far, so good), and then the embryo was implanted in the woman's mother. Yes, the baby's grandmother was the surrogate.

For quite a few years, assisted reproduction, surrogacy, and the peeling apart of maternity have been taking various twists and turns. As usual, the law has had to catch up with people's family arrangements. In many cases, the law isn't even in the rear-view mirror yet.

(Photo by Jose Miguel Serrano; used by permission.)

Meeting your own family from down the street

Adopted children often grow up wondering what their "real" families are like. In an essay in the New York Times magazine, a man describes meeting his birth parents. As it happened, after years of looking for his birth mother, it turned out that his biological mother and father had eventually married and ended up living not too far from where the man grew up with his adoptive parents.

He describes his sharing his experience with his wife this way: "I showed her all the photographs [from my birth mother], which she took and framed and added to the wall of our apartment devoted to family pictures. Even now, the pictures . . . cause me to do a double take as I walk by them, not so much wondering, Who are those people, as thinking, Oh, there you are."

An old family, which felt like a new family, now feels like an old family.

(Photo by Jeff Belmonte; used by permission.)

International adoptions are down

For most Americans, "international adoption" means American couples adopting children from other countries. Over the past couple decades, this type of adoption has benefited children in need of families and U.S. couples who have usually exhausted state-side options for adoption or assisted reproduction. However, when standards by foreign governments or the scruples of certain agencies have been lax, issues such as child trafficking have arisen. Other times, children have been separated from their birth parents without full documentation of the parents' voluntarily giving up their right. When countries monitor their adoption process more closely or provide adoptive parents within their own nation, the prospects for adoptions by Americans from those countries slow or dwindle.

Recently, China has taken measures that make the process longer and more expensive for an American couple to adopt a Chinese orphan. Newsweek reported the details of the shrinking pool of international children available for adoption. The magazine website's interactive chart shows trends of various countries over the past decade.

Similarly, Korea is promoting adoption within its country. The New York Times reports "last year, for the first time, more babies here [in South Korea] were adopted by South Koreans than foreigners, as the government announced recently with great fanfare: 1,388 local adoptions compared with 1,264 foreign ones. What is more, South Korea — which still is one of the top countries from which Americans adopt — has set a goal of eliminating foreign adoptions altogether by 2012."

As plans in various countries continue and succeed, the "best interests" of the children involved will most likely be served, such as preserving their cultural and ethnic identities, assisting their sense of self-identity, and maintaining any family ties that may remain. The flip-side for many Americans is the shrinking range of opportunities to address a future without children to call their own.

(Photo by iandeth; used by permission.)

Frozen embryos and the couples who make them

Debate and concerns over frozen embryos and assisted reproduction have been churning for several years now. However, there is no resolution on the horizon. The issues are deeply personal, ethical, and often legal. The range of feelings and opinions is captured well in this L.A. Times article. For many couples with embryos they no longer want or need, the compromise between implanting the embryos for pregnancy and destroying them is donating them for research. But such a decision is not straight-forward. Many in the political arena wish to elevate embryos to a status (nearly) equal to full personhood.

An excerpt:

"People are not quite sure where this set of issues belongs," says Yuval Levin, bioethics director for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, an ecumenical think tank in Washington that publishes the New Atlantis. "To some it's an element of the abortion debate. For other people it has to do with science and medicine. We've never really thought through what the moral status of the embryo is."

That's beginning to happen. The proposed Colorado amendment states, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include any human from the time of fertilization." If it is passed, the courts would have to interpret the meaning of those words, says Kristi Burton, sponsor of the initiative and founder of Colorado for Equal Rights, which focuses on the rights of unborn children. The goal of the amendment, says Burton, a college student, "is to respect and protect all life."

Fertility advocates are skeptical that "personhood laws" wouldn't limit their choices for reproductive healthcare. In August, Resolve released a statement opposing the Colorado amendment.

"The motivation is abortion," says R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "If the Supreme Court allows states to declare embryos as personhood, you would be in a position to say immediately that all abortions have to stop."

(Photo by cyancey; used by permission.)

"Virtual twins" show nature wins over nurture

Twin studies always grab the attention of social and medical scientists. This story about "virtual twins," siblings whose parents adopted one and biologically bore one within a 9-month window, fascinates me because of what is says about adoption.

“I expected the virtual twins to be more alike than they were because they had been raised together all their lives,” said Dr. Segal, who has also studied hundreds of pairs of fraternal and identical twins, including dozens reared apart. “Yet they were so much less alike. It gives us another piece of evidence in the whole nature-versus-nurture puzzle.”

For several generations, well into the 1970s, families who adopted children tried to "pass" the child as biological, whether by matching physical features or withholding facts about the adoption. Now, many families celebrate adoption, especially cross-racial or cross-cultural adoptions.

Yet, adoption entails many complex issues, which some families don't fully appreciate until the adoptive relationship has matured.

Obviously, adoption is a much BIGGER issue than I can address here, but check back for further reflections or related stories. Or better yet, share your comments too.

(Photo by Narzissus, used by permission.)