I don't know if it's because I'm an international adoptive parent who has suffered the agony of the wait, because I write about adoption every day so am constantly aware of how many people are at any given time somewhere in the process experiencing the anxiety, because I have traveled a lot and now live in a developing nation, because I'm worrier in general, or because studying history has left me with a deep well of fear, but the ... more

After banning adoptions from India in June of this year, Demark has shifted course and is now again allowing its citizens to adopt Indian children.

After a media-festooned frenzy over allegations from a man claiming to have put his kids in an orphanage "temporarily", then supposedly being devastated to learn that they'd been adopted by Danes and whooping and hollering and generally raising a ruckus, the Danish program slammed shut.

Now those claims have apparently... more

Continued from the previous post

Children in America are far from immune from the potential of sexual abuse with between 39 and 60 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse struggling to exist today.

• 1 in 4 girls is sexually abused before the age of 18. • 1 in 6 boys is sexually... more

I wrote yesterday on a look at a criticism of international adoption that takes issue with taking a child from one country and raising that child in another, citing calls of "cultural genocide" and "racism", and juxtaposing those against claims from some adult adoptees who celebrate their change of location and circumstance 60 years later.

A story in today's news, brings up another hit that adoption takes often and prompts me to once again draw some comparisons that many choose to ignore.

The... 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

Continued from the previous post where China has been the topic.

China is now getting ready to host the Olympics, and as Grant pointed out in his blog, the upcoming hoo-haa that goes along with is a very big deal and the Chinese are keen to keep attention focused on good stuff.

Perhaps because people are actually paying some attention at the moment, and because the poop is hitting the fan in places like Burma, Sudan and North Korea in very big ways, China's propping up... more

Continued from the previous post where we've been looking at adoptions from China.

Does China's system of government, which of course includes their system for international adoptions, show itself to be an exemplary example countries like Cambodia and Guatemala should emulate? Should that standard be the template others should mirror?

Some would have it that the reason China's adoption process is so rarely criticized has everything to do with the country's status as a burgeoning economic powerhouse and political hot potato and nothing to do with the realities of its adoption... more

Our China Adoption Blogger, Grant, wrote recently about Burma and how the horrid events in that country could eventually impact adoptions from China.

He is no doubt right, and for families waiting ... and waiting and waiting, as the timeframe for adoptions from China just gets longer and longer ... the anxiety levels for parents in the process must be rising through the roof.

As we all know the wait is torture, no matter what, and being aware of global events that through... more

There is more news from Cambodian here, and here, and adoption-related news of a more general nature here on the Adoption News Blog.

Anyone planning to be in Cambodia, here's... more

Sri Lankans are concerned that Cambodia has become base for the Tamil Tigers, their arms smuggling and human trafficking.

Their weapons purchases are more sophisticated now, but the criminal infrastructure put in place in the early 1990s, when Cambodia was its primary arms bazaar, is still there, enabling drugs and human smuggling, credit card fraud and money laundering.

In yet another "ain't that just rich"... more