I began a comment on Lisa's Guatemalan Blog for today that ended up growing out of that box and begging for its own, so I'm giving in and making a comment a post in its own right.

Lisa's post was a response to an article in Mother Jones by a woman who adopted from Guatemala and now wonders out loud and publicly, "Did I steal my daughter?".

Reaction... more

There is a great deal of criticism in some circles when it comes to the international adoption reality of removing a child from one country and raising him in another.

Terms as strong and emotive as "cultural genocide" and "racism" are tossed around like grenades, and the whole idea of international adoption is condemned as evil or tragic or both.

Children adopted from a country may be thought to have been robbed of their culture, and there is no shortage of adult adoptees who are happy to back up this idea with resentments over the fact that they don't speak the language of their birth country nor feel they truly fit when they return after a life lived elsewhere.

Dire... more

Although adoption from Lebanon isn't big enough for a Yahoo group or its own category on the Adoption.com forums, it does happen, and it does make the news.

This story about a family from New Hampshire proves it ... but Boy Howdy!!! it ain't easy, or often.

According to the US... more

Any look at Africa adoptions can be complicated, as this story from Nigeria proves. With international Africa adoptions all being country-specific, a lack of understanding of just how things work can cause a world of problems. In all aspects of adoption, educating yourself is the first and most important step, and trying to do adopt without going through every single on of the steps can lead to heartache.

A Nigerian-born, Canadian citizen adopted a Nigerian child, and is now... more

I'm starting today off with numbers ... the number of children adopted in a year worldwide.

Any guesses?

Somewhere around a quarter of a million would be about right -- 250,000.

Sound like a lot?

It's 1.5% of the estimated 16 million orphans placed in care each year, and 85% take place within the country of the child's birth.

In the US?

125,000, or about half of the total number of adoptions... more

Or: Why it occasionally looks like Sandra goes out of her way to annoy some people.

If you're approaching the international adoption world from somewhere out there where it all seems reasonable, clear-cut and simple, sooner or later you are bound to come up against brick walls intentionally built to make the process sound either impossible, immoral, unethical, or otherwise a generally bad idea.

As an adoptive parent, an advocate for children and for adoption, and a blogger for Adoption.com, it is my responsibility... more

A story in today's news, although heartwarming and hopeful, has me feeling more than a bit sad.

The focus is on adults adopted from Viet Nam as children who are now returning to their birth country for their own children, noting that agencies dealing with adoptions from the country are reporting a growing number of parents are "making the same trip their adoptive parents took more than three decades ago."

There... more

I decided early this morning that today's post would be a catch-up on bits of adoption news floating around my desk. When I learned that another power cut was in the cards for a better part of the day, that settled it. Writing anything deeper without the ability to bounce around the Net researching isn't how I like to work, so a good little tidy sounded even better ... my blogging equivalent to some light dusting.

Little did I know I'd end up in tears.

As is far too often really obvious, adoptive parents get a lot... more

There's no doubt that adoption is a hot topic these days. For starters, Nickelodeon is coming out with a cartoon voiced by a young adoptee from China, and there are a couple of books getting press at the moment that have adoption-related... more

Continued from here ...

It is, very thankfully, beyond the scope of my rather prodigious imagination to anywhere near fully grasp the suffering that must go with the first flow of HIV-contaminated mother's milk. What can presenting that nipple feel like to a mother who understands exactly what it is she is offering? Where does the concept of the lesser of two evils right itself enough for anyone to find peace enough for milk to... more