Post by Youngster Joey on Apr 14, 2012 4:19:07 GMT -5
I don't know how closely all of you follow news like this, but a few years ago, an American woman adopted a 7-year-old boy from a Russian orphanage. She ended up sending him back to Russia less than a year later, claiming she could no longer take care of him because of severe mental illness that had not been disclosed to her during the adoption process. According to her, he threw violent temper tantrums, threatened to set the house alight, and regularly attacked family members. Here's a description of the case.
The cruel way the woman chose to deal with her adopted son aside, should adoptive parents be allowed to return children when it's simply not working out?
As cruel as it is for the child, I believe that sometimes, it's really the only humane solution for everyone. Former Soviet countries are notorious for the inhumane treatment that goes on in orphanages, where hundreds of children are cared for by just a few overtaxed, underqualified staff. Many of the children don't even get a fair chance at mental stability from the get-go, already brain damaged from birth by their mothers' alcoholism and often abused or neglected afterwards before being abandoned or seized by the state.
Almost all of these disturbed children have reactive attachment disorder as a result. Reactive attachment disorder, in short, is a profound inability to attach to or empathize with other human beings because of a lack of a consistent, caring and attentive caretaker in the very early years of life. It's extremely difficult to treat; their brains have essentially been wired from experience that they can't rely on other people. Because of the effect the neglect has on brain wiring and chemistry, the children are also strongly predisposed to bipolar disorder, depression, conduct disorder, psychosis, drug addiction, and whatever other unpleasant mental disorder you want throw in there. The disorder is a nice way of saying a kid is a budding sociopath, really.
One could argue that adoptive parents should be aware of the potential problems before they adopt, but the fact is, they often aren't. There's a cultural stigma in adopting children from Eastern European countries, especially in Russia, and none of the countries have the resources to care for emotionally damaged children anyway. So, to encourage international adoption, the agencies lie. It's really not uncommon to read accounts online about how agencies will assure parents that the children are perfectly psychiatrically normal, and then the kid ends up committed to a mental hospital within months of arriving in the US. (Of course, it's a bit inaccurate to just talk about adoption problems as if it only occurs in Eastern European adoptions. The same thing happens in our own American foster care system, which also has issues with not fully disclosing children's psychiatric histories.)
Given how emotionally damaged the adopted child is, returning the child to the state can only leave one more deep emotional scar. I won't deny that. But at the same time, it's not all about the child. The toll the child takes on the rest of the family, including other children, is enormous, and sometimes the rights of the majority simply have to override the rights of the individual. Dissolving the adoption may even be the best outcome overall; many families can't afford to pay the astronomical costs (easily 100k+/year) of the treatment the child so desperately needs. But the state can.
Of course, many argue that adopted children are no different from biological children, and therefore the parent has to lie in the bed they've made. It's not the child's fault that they're disordered, after all. The parents made the commitment, and they have to stick to it because it's morally the right thing to do. It's a perfectly valid argument, and one I certainly can't dismiss.
Your thoughts?
The cruel way the woman chose to deal with her adopted son aside, should adoptive parents be allowed to return children when it's simply not working out?
As cruel as it is for the child, I believe that sometimes, it's really the only humane solution for everyone. Former Soviet countries are notorious for the inhumane treatment that goes on in orphanages, where hundreds of children are cared for by just a few overtaxed, underqualified staff. Many of the children don't even get a fair chance at mental stability from the get-go, already brain damaged from birth by their mothers' alcoholism and often abused or neglected afterwards before being abandoned or seized by the state.
Almost all of these disturbed children have reactive attachment disorder as a result. Reactive attachment disorder, in short, is a profound inability to attach to or empathize with other human beings because of a lack of a consistent, caring and attentive caretaker in the very early years of life. It's extremely difficult to treat; their brains have essentially been wired from experience that they can't rely on other people. Because of the effect the neglect has on brain wiring and chemistry, the children are also strongly predisposed to bipolar disorder, depression, conduct disorder, psychosis, drug addiction, and whatever other unpleasant mental disorder you want throw in there. The disorder is a nice way of saying a kid is a budding sociopath, really.
One could argue that adoptive parents should be aware of the potential problems before they adopt, but the fact is, they often aren't. There's a cultural stigma in adopting children from Eastern European countries, especially in Russia, and none of the countries have the resources to care for emotionally damaged children anyway. So, to encourage international adoption, the agencies lie. It's really not uncommon to read accounts online about how agencies will assure parents that the children are perfectly psychiatrically normal, and then the kid ends up committed to a mental hospital within months of arriving in the US. (Of course, it's a bit inaccurate to just talk about adoption problems as if it only occurs in Eastern European adoptions. The same thing happens in our own American foster care system, which also has issues with not fully disclosing children's psychiatric histories.)
Given how emotionally damaged the adopted child is, returning the child to the state can only leave one more deep emotional scar. I won't deny that. But at the same time, it's not all about the child. The toll the child takes on the rest of the family, including other children, is enormous, and sometimes the rights of the majority simply have to override the rights of the individual. Dissolving the adoption may even be the best outcome overall; many families can't afford to pay the astronomical costs (easily 100k+/year) of the treatment the child so desperately needs. But the state can.
Of course, many argue that adopted children are no different from biological children, and therefore the parent has to lie in the bed they've made. It's not the child's fault that they're disordered, after all. The parents made the commitment, and they have to stick to it because it's morally the right thing to do. It's a perfectly valid argument, and one I certainly can't dismiss.
Your thoughts?